Читать книгу The Prosperity Bible - Kahlil Gibran - Страница 209

Our first lesson is introductory, desiring to give the student the right viewpoint of the subject, to enable him to see clearly the relation between character and achievements in life, and to clear the ground for the practical rules and instructions to follow:

Our first rule then, and one of the most important of all, is this:

MAKE YOURSELF OVER

The student of these lessons will very probably interpose this objection: We expected to get practical instructions in money-making and our teacher is giving us theoretical instruction in the building of character.

And for the very good reason that moneymaking, money-keeping and right moneyusing depend on character. Nothing more directly bearing on material interests could be given a student than the up-building of a strong, progressive, courageous and determined character. All real success in life in all departments of human endeavor depends on that. Men conquer material conditions by first conquering themselves. Men become rich in worldly goods by becoming rich in intellectual power, in faith, hope, courage, and in the creative powers of the mind. The outward life is a reflex of the inward life and no man can become master of the outward and physical realms who does not master the kingdom within. No one is prepared to make wealth, conserve wealth, or rightly use wealth, who is in mental poverty, moral weakness or of a cowardly spirit.

The Great Master of Nazareth knew the order in which happiness, harmony, health and riches in fact all outward good come into the life, and expressed it when he said: “Seek first the Kingdom that is within and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Multitudes of men want results in their lives without the trouble on their part of furnishing the efficient cause. But results do not come from mere wishing. Harvests do not come without the sweat and toil of the laborer and the sowing of the seed.

All the greatest blessings of life and all our mightiest achievements result from right thinking, right feeling and right willing.

Until a man gets the right conception of the meaning of life, of the unlimited powers of the human soul, until his nature is burning with desire to do and dare and win, until his Will is developed by exercise and he has acquired Courage and indomitable Perseverance, he is poorly equipped for either attaining or rightly using money. It is well worth the student’s attention, therefore, to study the relation between strong character and great achievements.

Most people have to do considerable judicious weeding in the garden of their minds getting rid of many inherited and traditional ideas and notions of earlier times freeing the mentality from Fear, Worry, Doubt, and planting therein the seeds of Faith in themselves, in Nature, in the Law of Opulence, Faith in their own Rights, and developing Courage, Hope, Ambition and Patience, until mentally and spiritually they have rebuilt themselves into a nobler type of being.

As man’s present outward condition whether poverty or wealth, happiness or misery is largely the result of his past methods of thinking, so will the future outward conditions be the direct outgrowth of his future methods of thinking.

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” which is but another way of saying that man’s body is the result of his thinking (conscious or unconscious); his speech, manner, gait, his culture conduct, his influence among men, his success or failure all are the natural sequence of his thoughts.

How, then, you ask, can one make himself over? Just as a tailor makes over a coat, a carpenter makes over a house, a shipbuilder makes over a ship by changing the pattern or the design. We build our lives from Ideals as the carpenter builds his house from plans. If we change our ideas, our conceptions of life, its privileges and responsibilities, our thoughts of ourselves, our ideals of character, and persist in holding the new ideas and ideals, we shall develop characters in harmony with them. Whatever we want in our outward life in material expression, we must first build into our mental life, into our Ideals, Purposes and Will.

Events, conditions and seeming results of chance or miracle in our outward life, are all under law and in reality are mostly genuine materializations of forms we have built up in our thought realm.

Life proceeds as a stream from the “within” to the “without,” from the mental and spiritual to the physical and material expressions. We must therefore create wealth in the mind before we realize its possession in the life.

This is not peculiar to the subject of money-making but applies to all life’s activities, as we see that the architect first builds his house in his mind before he erects it on the material plane; the engineer constructs his tunnel mentally before he pierces the mountain or builds his underground railway; the financial magnate builds his plans of commercial conquest or aggression in the silence and secrecy of his own mind before he takes the first step toward their outward realization.

We shall treat this more fully in succeeding pages sufficient for the student at present to be impressed with the great fact that right ideas and conceptions, right plans and purposes, clear vision of opportunities, a strongly developed power of mental creation, unflinching courage, an adamantine will and a perseverance that never tires, are among the essential requisites in moneymaking.

Let me assure the student of these pages that much thought, time and effort spent in getting a clear grasp of these truths, and in weeding out erroneous ideas and impressions from the mind, in getting a right viewpoint of this subject, a right concept of one’s own place in nature as Lord and Master, a right view of one’s intimate relation to, and vital connection with, the Great Source of all Wisdom, Strength and Goodness, through which he may draw unlimited supplies in all life’s honest endeavors, is not wasted, but will prove of unspeakable advantage to him in conquering Poverty and acquiring Wealth.

These considerations are not incidental, or accessory, but vital and fundamental to the subject.

The student, therefore, should make a close inspection of his own mental and spiritual equipment for the great struggle he is to enter upon in the conquest of the conditions and limitations of life.

Then he must gain by reflection, study and experience a clear and lofty ideal of the type of character he would reach, the style of man he must become if he would succeed in the race for wealth, in the battle he would fight to rise from the “cabined, cribbed and confined” conditions of poverty to the enjoyment and power of great wealth.

He will doubtless find himself in possession of qualities of mind and traits of character not only useless but positively detrimental to success in life. These he must no matter how great the effort or long the struggle eliminate. Then he will find other mental qualities and characteristics essential to success conspicuous by their absence, or by very faint expression in his life. These he must develop, nourish, exercise and call into Strength and Beauty.

So the work of making one’s self over is a three-fold work: a thorough diagnosis of our own mental, moral and spiritual equipment for the battle before us; elimination of undesirable ideas, characteristics, habits, etc.; and the cultivation of the undeveloped germs of mental and spiritual qualities essential to success.

This three-fold work of preparation is as rational and essential to one seeking wealth as the careful study of the mental qualities, the physical endowment and the rigid training of the athlete before a contest as necessary as the discipline, training and equipment of the soldier in war.

The man who thinks himself qualified without this three-fold mental discipline to enter upon the fierce competitions and tremendous difficulties in his struggle for his share of worldly good, is as truly a fool as the man who, untrained, wages war with the athlete in the arena.

No one but a fool expects the harvest without toil and seed-sowing. Only the fool expects results without adequate cause. Right ideas, views of life, right conceptions of your own powers, right ideals and purposes, the right courage and will and the right hope and spirit, constitute the adequate cause for the result we call success. They are the fruitful seed of the harvest you wish to reap.

The student cannot be too deeply impressed with the necessity of this mental and spiritual preparation. In this making-over process, time, money, effort and zeal are well expended. Every teacher who can give you a fruitful idea, every book that can bring a real inspiration, every exercise of mental gymnastics that can strengthen the will, every ray of light that can give you clearer vision of true ideals, is of priceless value to you.

Poverty Is a Mental Disease

Of course there are exceptional cases where from some misfortune or wrong doing of others, Poverty seems forced upon an individual, either by uncontrollable circumstances in his own life, or by the action of others. Yet in the vast majority of cases the Poverty of man’s material condition is the natural and inevitable result of Poverty in himself in his thought realm of reasoning, emotion and volition. The mental Poverty is mother and father of the Poverty of his material conditions. The outward conditions of a man’s life are a reflex of his thought world. This view of the case will help the student in his resolve to thoroughly diagnose the condition of his thought realm and to bring his mental machinery into such a state of efficiency that his whole character will assume a nobler type, and with the natural result that his outer conditions shall reflect his improved mentality.

Eliminate Wrong Ideas, Ideals, Moods

Among the erroneous notions which it may be necessary to root out of the mind is the thought (traceable to false religious teaching) that the possession of much money is not in harmony with true religion.

It is quite true that the love of money is a root of evil, and that many who have great wealth are under great temptations to neglect their spiritual interests. But note this fact that while money loved and worshipped, and money hoarded by miserly avarice, are great evils and a source of great temptation, poverty on the other hand, has its peculiar evils and temptations, and that no position in life is free from possible temptation, while every blessing in life, by abuse, many become a curse. Note also that the evident design of nature is abundance and not poverty so that while we may say God is the author of Beneficence and Abundance, and nature’s law is certainly Opulence no one can say God is the author of Poverty.

The end nature aims at is Abundance for All and if we must find an origin for Poverty we can never trace it to divine design.

The notion that sickness, suffering and poverty are in any way necessarily related to a religious life, is one of the falsest teachings ever given out in the name of religion. God is the author of Health, Happiness, Wealth and Wisdom, and sickness, misery, poverty, ignorance, are incidents of our undeveloped condition or results of our own neglect. No life under the blighting influence of poverty can prove the “abundant life,” the full-orbed, symmetrical and beneficent life, which every rational man desires.

The Worry Fiend and his Allies must be routed if you are to secure that peace and inward calm so essential to efficient thinking and working. Psychology today in trumpet tones declares that no one can enjoy health who is a victim of worry, anger, jealousy or fear. Along with these, we should put irresolution, timidity, depression, lack of confidence in one’s self all of them Negative Emotions, utterly unfitting us for the conflict of life!

These emotions exhaust the life energy and leave a man only fractional strength for the stubborn ordeals of life. People suffer more real exhaustion and loss from the evils they fear but which never happen than they do from evils that actually materialize in their lives. At an old man’s funeral it was said of him: he had a multitude of troubles in life, most of which never happened. What an infinite pity that the time and strength which might be utilized in grand achievements for ourselves and the world, are too often wasted in worry, fear or envy with the one result of weakness and suffering and lost opportunities of usefulness?

Fear has been called truly “the great hob-goblin of the race.” It magnifies our foes and minifies our friends. It is always saying: “There is a lion in the way!” Its cry is the cry of the coward servant of Elisha: “Alas! my Master, what shall we do?” It sees the foes, difficulties and magnifies them into gigantic proportions. “The tearful and the unbelieving” both go to the same doom according to Scripture.

The whole progress of humanity nationally and individually is a progress from the dominion of fear to the realm of faith.

Fear has a strange magnetic power a thought-creative power of materializing into our outward life the very objects feared! It seems to be a magnet with great force, drawing into the orbit of the life the very object feared by the mind. “The thing that I “feared,” said the sacred writer, “is that which came upon me.” Faith, on the other hand, says with Elisha: “They that are for us are greater than those that be against us.” Faith sees the angelic hosts ready to assist us in time of need. Let the student remember the axiom: “thought takes form in action and being.”

The Way to Drive Out Worry, Fear, Etc.

In place of centering our thought upon the Worry, Fears, Doubts and Irresolution, which constitute man’s mental poison, the proper method is to forget that these have controlled us, and put all our mental effort into the cultivation of their antidotes:

Peace, Trust, Faith, Resolution, Courage. The expulsive power of a new and contrary idea or affection is recognized by all psychologists, and from the standpoint of mental science we should not allow the mind to dwell upon undesirable qualities or things. Think health, not sickness; success, not failure; courage, not fear; faith, not doubt; the increasing good coming into your life, not the evil.

Especially is it necessary to enlarge and strengthen Faith, which is not a mere belief or assent of the understanding to certain statements but as Edward E. Beals expresses it: “Faith is the trolley pole which one raises to meet the Great Forces of Life and Nature, and by means of which one receives the inflow of the Power which is behind, and in all things, and is enabled to apply, that Power to the running of his own affairs.” The illustration is most apt and forcible. Faith is the vital bond of connection between the soul of man and its Infinite Source of supply. It is more. It is the great awakener of the latent forces in the soul of man. To the sick it uncaps the fountain of healing waters in the soul and floods the whole spiritual nature with new life and power. To the weak it brings strength; to the timid, courage; to the despairing, hope. Faith opens the soul’s interior vision and discloses the realities of the Spirit Realm realities that being recognized and patiently waited for, have the strange power of materializing themselves in our outward life conditions.

We must assiduously cultivate Faith in ourselves. No man ever becomes truly successful who is deeply impressed with his own weakness or inferiority. It is the confident, hopeful men who carry with them the thought-vibration: “I can and I will” who win in life’s battle.

If a man could keep his poor opinion of himself to himself, even then it would cripple him in his life work, but the more surely does it do so because every one’s fear thoughts however zealously he may seek to hide them in language or conduct create an atmosphere of doubt, timidity and fear about him that radiates into the minds of all who come in contact with him.

Thoughts and Moods are Catching. No man can keep his thoughts entirely to himself. The air of negativity of doubt and irresolution with which multitudes of men surround themselves finds its way into other minds and becomes a barrier to success at every point.

This lack of confidence in yourself, however, is most disastrous in its effects upon yourself, as it is a frost which kills all the budding plans, purposes and hopes which are so essential to success. Get rid then,

I beg of you, of all false notions as to the limitations of your own powers for while it is quite true you have only developed these powers to a very limited extent, and there seems to be a very great difference between your life and the “lives of great men remember there is absolutely no limit to the extent to which your powers may be unfolded. You are vitally connected with the Storehouse of Divine Wisdom, Power and Strength and can draw at will and to any extent for “in God we live and have our being.” Potentially, therefore, you have more ability, undeveloped and unused, in your nature than all men of all the ages have ever exhibited.

Cultivate, too, Faith in “the Power that makes for Righteousness/’ in the angelic wisdom and help, in a Higher Guiding Intelligence in your life, in “Destiny,” or your “Guiding Star” as the Great Souls, who have been World Leaders, have done.

Cultivate absolute faith, too, in the Laws (which you are now mastering) of Financial Success and remember that the throne of God is no more stable, the revolution of the sun no more certain, the law of gravitation no more a fixture, than is the operation of these fixed laws of financial increase.

With faith in self, in your fellows, in the Law, hold your head erect, assert to your own soul your Mastery of Conditions, and with the confidence of the “I can and I will” spirit, enter life’s arena.

Helen Wilmans, of whose remarkable career we shall have more to say later, declares: “I made myself over completely. From being like a limp rag, I became sufficiently positive to conquer all my environments.” In another place she declares, “I became as a God and knew that no power could come against me.”

Claim for Yourself Unlimited Power, Wisdom

Until a man gets at least a glimpse into the depths of human nature he can never realize himself or life’s possibilities. So long as he measures himself and sets limitations on his forces, so long will he limit his achievements and all his life expressions.

The True View is that no one can measure Man’s Greatness (that is your greatness) any more than he can fix a limit to God’s Greatness. Man as child of God, started on eternal progression, is germinally at least, a god, and the clearer his vision of this truth, the more constant his recognition of this fact, the faster will divinity manifest in his character and life. Every man (that means you) contains germinally at least not only all the attributes of human greatness (all the talent, ability, genius which men have ever given expression to in history) but also the fulness of divinity. The human race is a family of the Gods.

You have, therefore, not one talent but the whole ten of human endowment. You have Genius, which is but concentrated energy and persevering will power. You have “all power” even as Jesus declared of himself. You are more than able to conquer. Hold this thought: it means success.