Читать книгу The Magic Word - Robert Collier - Страница 5

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So many people have won to success and happiness by making “Treasure Maps” to more easily visualize the things they wanted, that Nautilus Magazine recently ran a prize competition for the best article showing how a “Treasure Map” had helped to bring about one’s heart’s desire. Caroline J. Drake won the contest.

“I had been bookkeeper,” she wrote, “in a large department store for seven years when the manager’s niece, whose husband had just died, was put in my place.

“I felt stunned. My husband had died ten years previously, leaving a little home and some insurance. But sickness and hospital bills had long since taken both home and money. I had supported the family for eight years and kept the three children in school, but had not been able to save any money. The eldest child, a boy, had just finished high school but as yet had found nothing to do to help along.

“Day after day I looked for work of any kind to do which might pay rent and give us a living. I was thirty-five years old, strong, capable and willing; but there was absolutely no place for me. For the first time in my life I was afraid of the future. The thought that we might have to go on relief appalled me.

“Thus three months passed. I was behind two months with the rent when the landlord told me I would have to move. I asked him to give me a few days longer in which to try and find work. This he agreed to do.

“The next morning I started out again on my rounds. In passing a magazine stand I stopped and glanced over the papers and magazines. It must have been the answer to my many prayers that led me to pick up the copy of a magazine which stared me in the face. Idly I opened it and glanced at the table of contents. My mind was in such a turmoil that I was barely conscious of the words which my eyes saw.

“Suddenly my eye was caught by a title about ‘treasure-mapping’ for success and supply. Something impelled me to buy a copy of the magazine which proved to be the turning point in our lives.

“Instead of looking for work, I went home. Still under the influence of that ‘Something’ (which I did not then understand) I began to read the magazine. Strange and unreal as it then seemed, still I did not doubt. I read each article eagerly and in its order. When I came to the article about treasure-mapping to bring success and supply, something about the idea seemed to hold me in its grip. As a child I had always loved games, and this idea of making a treasure-map reawakened that old desire.

“I read the article several times. Then, with a bunch of papers which I hunted up, I set to work to make my treasure-map of success and supply. So many things came into my mind to put on that treasure-map I First, there was the little cottage at the edge of town. Then there was a little dress and millinery shop which I had always longed for. Then, of course, a car. And in that cottage would be a piano for the girls; a yard in the back where we could work among the flowers of an evening or a morning. My enthusiasm grew by leaps and bounds. From magazines and papers I cut pictures and words and sentences—all connected with the idea of success and abundance.

How I Made the “Treasure-Map"

“Next I found a large sheet of heavy white paper and began building that map. In the center I pasted a picture of a lovely little cottage with wide porches and trees and shrubbery around it. In one corner of the map I put a picture of a little storeroom and underneath I pasted the words, ‘Betty’s Style Shop.’ Close to this I pasted pictures of a few very stylish dresses and hats.

“At different places on the map I placed sentiments and mottoes—all carrying out the idea of success, abundance, happiness and harmony.

“I do not know how long I worked on that treasure-map which was to be the means of attracting into our lives the things which we had need of and desired. I could already feel myself living in that cottage and working in the little dress shop. Never had I felt so completely fascinated and thrilled with an idea as with that treasure-map and what I was sure it would bring us. I tacked the map on the wall of my bedroom, right in front of my bed, so that the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing at night would be that treasure-map of my desires.

“Every night and morning I would go over every detail of that map until it fairly seemed to become a part of my very being. It became so clear that I could call it instantly to mind at any moment in the day. Then in my Silence period I would see myself and the children going through the rooms of the cottage, laughing and talking, arranging the furniture and curtains. I would picture my daughters at the piano singing and playing; I would see my son sitting in the library with books and papers all around him. Then I would picture myself walking about my shop, proud and happy; peopie coming in and going out. I would see them buying the lovely hats and dresses, paying me for them and going out smiling.

“During all this time, I was learning more and more of the power of the mind to draw to us the things and conditions like unto our thoughts. I understood that this treasure-map was but the means of impressing upon my subconscious mind the pattern from which to build the conditions of success and harmony into our lives. Always, after each of my Silence periods, I would lovingly thank God that the abundance and harmony and love were already ours. I believed that I had received; for mentally living in the cottage and working in the shop was to me the certain fact that I would take possession of them in the material world just as in the mental.

“When the children found out what I was doing, they entered heartily into the spirit of the game and each of them soon had a treasure-map of his own.

“It was not many weeks before things began to happen. One day I met an old friend of my husband’s and he told me that he and his wife were going west for several months and asked if we would come out and take care of their house for the rent. A week later we were settled in that cottage, which was almost the very picture of the one I had on my treasure-map. A little later my son was offered work evenings and Saturdays in an engineering office, which proved the means of his entering college that fall.

“We had been in the cottage nearly two months when I saw an advertisement in the local paper for a woman to take charge of a lady’s dress shop. I answered the ad and found that the owner was having to give up the shop for several months, perhaps permanently, on account of her health. Arrangements were quickly made so that I was to run the business and share half the expenses and the profits.

“Within six months after we started treasure-mapping for supply, we had accomplished practically everything that map called for. When the owner of the cottage came back several months later, he made it possible for us to buy the place and we are still here.

“The business, too, is mine now. The lady decided not to come back, so I bought the business, paying her so much a month. It is a much larger and more thriving business now—thanks to the understanding of the power of thought which I gained through my study and practice.”

In another article in Nautilus, Helen M. Kitchel told how she used a “Treasure Map” to sell her property. She pasted an attractive picture of her house on a large sheet of paper, put a description of it underneath and then surrounded picture and description with such mottoes as—“Love, the Divine Magnet, attracts all that is good” —and others of a similar nature. She hung her map where she could see and study it several times a day, and repeated some of the affirmations or mottoes whenever the thought of making a sale occurred to her.

She also started a little private letter box which she called “God’s Box” and in it, whenever the thought occurred to her, she placed a letter written to God telling of her needs and desires. Then each month she went over the letters, taking out and giving thanks for those that had been answered.

Within a year her house was sold, on the very plan she herself had outlined in one of her “Letters to God,” on the exact basis and for the exact price she had asked in that letter.

Another method is to “Talk with God.” Go somewhere where you can be alone and undisturbed for a little while, and talk aloud to God exactly as you would to a loving and understanding Father. Tell Him your needs. Tell Him your ambitions and desires. Describe in detail just what you want. Then thank Him just as you would an earthly father with whom you had had a similar talk and who had promised you the things you asked for. You will be amazed at the result of such sincere talks.

“My word shall not come back to me void, but shall accomplish that whereunto it was sent.” Whatever you can visualize—and BELIEVE in—you can accomplish. Whatever you can see as yours in your mind’s eye, you can get. “In the beginning was the Word.” In the beginning is the mental image.

Corinne Updegraff Wells had an article in her little magazine “Through Rose Colored Glasses” that illustrates the power of visualizing your ambitions and desires. “Many years ago,” she says, “a young girl who lived in a New York tenement was employed by a fashionable Fifth Avenue modiste to run errands, match samples and pull basting threads.

“Annie loved her job. From an environment of poverty she had become suddenly and miraculously an inhabitant of an amazing new world of beauty, wealth and fashion. It was thrilling to see lovely ladies arrive in fine carriages, to watch the social elite preen before Madam’s big gold framed mirrors.

“The little errand girl, in her starched gingham, soon became filled with desire and fired with ambition. She began imagining herself as head of the establishment instead of its most lowly employee. Whenever she passed before mirrors she smiled at a secret reflection she saw of herself, older and more beautiful, a person of charm and importance.

“Of course, nobody even suspected the secret existence of this make-believe person. Hugging her precious secret, Annie smiled confidently at that dazzling reflection in the mirror and began playing an exciting game. ‘I’ll pretend I’m already Madam. I’ll be polite and look my best and have grand manners and learn something new each day. I’ll work as hard and take as much interest as though the shop were really and truly mine.’

“Soon fashionable ladies began whispering to Madam: ‘Annie’s the smartest girl you’ve ever had!’ Madam herself began to smile and say: ‘Annie, you may fold Mrs. Vandergilt’s gown if you’ll be very careful,’ or ‘I’m going to let you deliver this wedding dress,’ or, ‘My dear, you’re developing a real gift for color and line,’ and, finally, ‘I’m promoting you to the work-room.’

“The years passed quickly. Each day Annie came more and more to resemble the image she alone had seen of herself. Gradually, the little errand girl became Annette, an individual; then Annette, stylist; and finally, Madam Annette, renowned costume designer for a rich and famous clientele.

“The images we hold steadfastly in our minds over the years are not illusions; they are the patterns by which we are able to mould our own destinies.”

“You never can tell when you do an act

Just what the result will be,

But with every deed you are sowing a seed,

Though the harvest you may not see.

Each kindly act is an acorn dropped

In God’s productive soil;

You may not know, but the tree shall grow

With shelter for those who toil.

“You never can tell what your thought will do

In bringing you hate or love,

For thoughts are things and their airy wings

Are swifter than carrier doves.

They follow the law of the universe—

Each thing must create its kind,

And they speed o’er the track to bring you back

Whatever went out from your mind.”

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox