Читать книгу Achieve the Highest Potential - Collier Books - Robert Collier - Страница 10

Table of Contents

The Fundamental Law of the Universe is that every form of life holds within itself vitality enough to draw to it every element it needs for growth and fruition. But it is only as it casts off all outside support, and puts its dependence solely upon the life force that created it and left its spark within it, that it is able to draw to itself the elements it needs for complete growth and fruition.

Take the giant redwoods of California. By no law known to man can they draw water to their foliage hundreds of feet in the air! Yet they do draw it—hundreds of gallons every day.

It is not done through pressure from below—from the roots. It is done by pull from above! In other words, the need is first established, then the need itself provides the means or the “pull” to draw to it the elements it must have for expression!

All through Nature, you will find that same law. First the need, then the means. Use what you have to provide the vacuum, then draw upon the necessary elements to fill it. Reach up with your stalk, spread out your branches, provide the “pull” and you can leave to your roots the search for the necessary nourishment. If you have reached high enough, if you have made your magnet strong enough, you can draw to yourself whatever elements you need, no matter if they be at the ends of the earth!

God formed a Seed of Himself in you. He gave it power to attract to itself everything it needs for its growth, just as He did with the seed of the tree. He gave it power to draw to itself everything it needs for fruition, just as He did with the tree. But He did even more for you. He gave your Seed of Life power to attract to itself everything it needs for its infinite expression!

You see, Life is intelligent. Life is all-powerful. And Life is always and everywhere seeking expression. What is more, it is never satisfied. It is constantly seeking greater and fuller expression. The moment a tree stops growing, that moment the life in it starts seeking elsewhere for means to better express itself. The moment you stop expressing more and more of Life, that moment Life starts looking around for other and better outlets.

The only thing that can restrict Life is the channel through which it works. The only limitation upon it is the limitation you put upon it.

The secret of success lies in this: There is inside you a Seed of God capable of drawing to you any element you need, to bring to fruition whatever of good you desire. But like all other seeds, its shell must be broken before the kernel inside can use its attractive power. And that shell is thicker, harder, than the shell of any seed on earth. Only one thing will break it—heat from within—a desire so strong, a determination so intense, that you cheerfully throw everything you have into the scale to win what you want. Not merely your work and your money and your thought but the willingness to stand or fall by the result—to do or to die. Like the Master when He cursed the fig tree for its barrenness, you are willing to demand of the Seed of Life in you that it bear fruit or perish.

That is the secret of every great success. That is the means by which all of life, from the beginning of time, has won what it needed.

What was it gave to certain animals protective shells, to others great speed, to still others a sting, to those who needed them claws or horns? What gave to the bold and strong the means to destroy, to the weak and cowardly facilities for hiding or escape? What but the Seed of Life in each, giving to every form of life the means that form craved to preserve its skin.

Since the very creation of the earth, Life has been threatened by every kind of danger. Had it not been stronger than any other power in the Universe—were it not indeed a part of God Himself—it would have perished ages ago. But God who gave it to us endowed it with unlimited resource, unlimited energy. No other force can defeat it. No obstacle can hold it back.

What is it that saves men in dire extremity, who have exhausted every human resource and finally turned to God in their need? What but the unquenchable flame of God in them—the Seed of Life He has given to each of us— with power to draw to us whatever element we feel that we need to save us from extinction.

The story is told of a little girl four years old, who had been taught to believe in a protecting Deity. She got lost one day, and was gone for hours. Her mother was on the verge of desperation when at last she saw her child coming home. She was all alone, yet seemed to be holding somebody’s hand and her lips were moving as if she were carrying on a sprightly conversation. Her mother opened the front door just in time to see her drop the invisible hand and to hear her say:

“You may go now, God. This is where I live. And thank you very much!”

It was all quite simple as she explained it to her mother. She had wandered about until she got tired and hungry. Then she realized that she didn’t know the way home.

“I knew I was losted, Mother,” she said, “so I asked God to take me home. I knew that He knew the way. Then I started for home and God showed me where to go. And here I am.”

“Why, then,” some will ask, “does not the God in you exert itself to bring you food when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, clothing when you are cold, money when you are in debt?” Why? Because you don’t put your dependence upon it for these. You look for these things to your hands or your friends or some means within the power of those around you. It is only when you despair of all ordinary means, it is only when you convince it that it must help you or you perish, that the Seed of Life in you bestirs itself to provide a new resource.

That is why psychological or metaphysical means so seldom cure a patient who continues to put some of his dependence upon drugs or treatments. It is not that the spirit in you is a “jealous God.” It is that it takes a real need to stir Him into action. As long as you show that you feel there is a chance of your being saved through some other means, the Seed of Life in you is not going to bestir itself to help you. And as long as it sees that you are depending upon your friends or the stock market or some other method to supply your urgent need of money, it is not going to worry itself about it.

“Unity Weekly” tells of a woman alone in a big city, jobless, anxious and discouraged, and worried about her husband who was seeking work in another town.

Because there was no one else to whom she could look for help, she prayed until she was able to put utter faith in God, to believe that He would look after her and to put all her dependence upon Him. Then she was able to go out into the street with springy step, with a heart full of confidence and a face that radiated belief in herself and in her ability to do things. She threw away her sheet of Want Ads, and on impulse, turned into a cheerful looking building and found a desirable job! Within a day or two after, an unexpected check came to her in the mail, and a letter of good news from her husband.

Another case was that of a subnormal boy, about to be rejected by a school. His mother had taught him to believe in God, so he kept repeating to himself—“God will tell me what to do.” God did—to such good purpose that a few years later he graduated at the head of his class !

Then there was a woman who was expected to die from a seemingly incurable and painful disease. She asked that her bed be moved to a window, and as she looked out at the starry spaces in the long hours of the night, she thought of God—of His power, of His goodness, of His love for every creature, of Jesus saying that not even a sparrow fell without His marking it. And as she pondered all this, belief in His ability and His willingness to cure her came to her, until presently there began to flow into her consciousness the belief that she WAS cured, and she amazed her attendants by sitting up and asking for something to eat. Today she is alive and well.

How can YOU stir the boundless force of the God in you into action? How can YOU draw upon its infinite resource for your urgent needs?

Utter faith, utter dependence—that is the only answer. No half-way measures will do. If you want help and have exhausted all the methods that physicians and surgeons and practitioners can offer you, and want now to go direct to the Source for new Life, new health and strength, you cannot keep on dabbling with drugs and treatments and hope to stir the Seed of Life in you into action. You must drop everything else. You must put your whole dependence upon the infinite power of that Seed of God in you. You must get the attitude of our revolutionary patriots— “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this cause. Either I live by it or I die with it!”

Get that attitude of mind, and the stirring of your Seed of Life into action is simple.

Say to yourself—“I am one with the Life Force that runs the Universe, the great I AM of which Jesus said— ‘Before Abraham, was I AM.’ I AM energy. I AM power. I AM filled with omnipotent life. The vitality of God permeates every fiber of my being. I AM well and whole in every part of my body. I AM made up of billions of cells of Intelligent Life, and that Intelligence is guiding me to Health and Happiness and Prosperity.”

E. Stanley Jones, author of CHRIST OF THE INDIAN ROAD, tells how he broke down completely with nervous exhaustion and brain fatigue at the end of eight years of missionary work in India, just when he had learned the ways of the people, and conditions seemed ripe for him to do the most good.

He was terribly depressed and disappointed, until one night in the midst of his prayers, he seemed to hear a voice saying—“Are you yourself ready for this work to which I have called you?” “No, Lord,” he answered, “I am done for. I have reached the end of my resources.” “If you will turn that over to me,” the voice told him, “and not worry about it, I will take care of it.” “Lord,” he responded gladly, “I close the bargain right here I”

That was many years ago. The Doctors had just told him he would have to leave India and go back home for a couple of years to rest. Instead, he threw himself with renewed energy into his work, and he never before knew such health as he has had since. He seems to have tapped a new source of life for body, mind and spirit. Yet all he had to do was to take it!

Does this mean that you are to make no effort to help yourself? By no means! This was never meant for a lazy man’s world. The whole purpose of existence is growth, and all of nature is continually growing. Whenever anything stops growing, it starts to die.

We were given hands to work with, brains to think with. We were expected to use these.

For while it is not the roots that send the moisture to the tops of the tall trees, it is the roots that dig down to the moisture and nutriment to start it flowing. It requires an urgent need to draw to you resources beyond the power of your hands, just as it requires the evaporation of the moisture in the leaves to pull the water to the tops of the tallest trees, but unless the hands or the roots do their part first, that need will never be satisfied. The trouble with most people is that they go as far as their hands or their immediate abilities will take them, and stop there.

It is as though a tree sent up its stem only as high as the root pressure carried the water from the earth. That would give us a forest of stunted trees, just as dependence upon their hands gives us the masses who live in poverty and misery.

It is only when you multiply your hands by thousands, it is only when you conceive and start great projects impossible of attainment by you alone, that you call forth the power of the Seed of Life in you, to draw to you every element you need for complete growth and fruition.

When George Mueller of England started his first orphanage, he had no money, no backers, no material resources to depend upon. He saw the need, that is all, so he went as far as he could in supplying that need. And each time, when he had reached the end of his resources, yet kept confidently trying, the need was met I In fifteen years, he built five orphanages and spent more than $5,000,000—all without a single visible means of support I

When St. Theresa proposed to build an orphanage, she was asked how much she had on which to start. When it developed that her total wealth was only three ducats, her superiors laughed at the idea. “It is true,” she answered them, “that with only three ducats I can do nothing, but with God and three ducats I can do anything!” And she proceeded to prove it by building the orphanage whose good work made her famous.

In the fields of philanthropy and religion, you can find hundreds of similar stories. And in the fields of business, you find many thousands more. How many times have you read of some great institution that was founded on nothing but hard work and the faith of its founder. Henry Ford began on little else. Stewart started what is now the John Wanamaker store with a total cash capital of $1.50.

Sometimes, in fact, it seems to be an advantage not to have enough money when you start a new project. Then you don’t put your faith in the money—you put it in IDEAS. In other words, you look to MIND to supply the means.

Someone expressed it well when he said we must work as if everything depended upon us, and at the same time, pray as if everything depended upon God.

What does an oculist do when you go to him for glasses? Fit your eyes with glasses that take away ALL the strain and enable you to see perfectly? No, indeed I The best oculists give you glasses a little short of the strength necessary to take all the strain off your eyes. They relieve you of the heavy burden, but they leave your sight just enough short of perfection to keep your eyes working towards that end.

The result? When you go back six months or a year later, your eyes are stronger—you can take glasses which do less of your work—until in time you do without them altogether.

What do business leaders advise young people today? Live within your income? No, indeed I Go into debt! Reach out I Spread yourself! Then dig the harder to catch up I

You are entitled to just as much of the good things of life as Ford or Rockefeller or Morgan, or any of the rich men around you. But it is not THEY who owe it to you. And it is not the world that owes you a living. The world and they owe you nothing but honest pay for the exact service you render them.

The one who owes you everything of good—riches and honor and happiness—is the God inside you. Go to him! Stir him up! Don’t rail against the world. You get from it what you put into it—nothing more. Wake up the God inside you! Demand of him that he bring you the elements you need for riches or success. Demand— and make your need seem as urgent as must have been the need of the crustacean to develop a shell, of the bird to grow wings, of the bear to get fur.

Demand—and KNOW THAT YOU RECEIVE! The God in you is just as strong as ever He was in those primitive animals in pre-historic days. If He could draw from the elements whatever was necessary to give the elephant its trunk, the camel its hump, the bird its wings, and to each creature the means it required to enable it to survive, don’t you suppose He can do the same today to provide YOU with the factors you consider essential to your well-being?

The answer is that you have already brought into being your “hump” or your “trunk” or whatever it was that you felt you must have. You are, in short, what your thoughts and fears and beliefs have made you. Your present condition reflects the successful result of your past thought!

Astonishing as it may sound to many people, you are now living in a world of your own making. But you don’t have to keep on living there if you don’t like it. You can build a new world in exactly the same way you built that one—only it would be well to build it on a different model.

It is the Einstein doctrine of the extended line, which must return to its source. An evil thought or act goes out upon its course, but the Eternal Lawmaker has decreed that it must return to its creator. A good act or thought is governed in the same way. “By their fruits, ye shall know them.”

So don’t complain of your lot. Don’t rail at the difficulties and obstacles that confront you. Smile on them! Treat them as friends. Bless them—for they can be made to bless you!

You see, they have not been sent from Heaven to punish you. You asked for them yourself. They are of your own making, and they are your friends, because they call forcibly to your attention some wrong method you have been using. All you have to do is to change your methods, and the results will automatically change with them. It is just as though you were doing some problem in multiplication, and you kept saying—“One times one is two.” That would throw your whole result out of balance, and it would stay out until you learned your mistake and made one times one equal one.

“You are not higher than your lowest thought,

Or lower than the peak of your desire.

And all existence has no wonder wrought

To which ambition may not yet aspire.

O Man! There is no planet, sun or star

Could hold you, if you but knew what you are.”

What, then, is the method to be used to get what you want from life?

1st—DESIRE. Decide what it is you want. Make it something so worthwhile that all other things will seem small and unimportant beside it, something so urgent that you can say to the God Inside You—“Give me this or I perish!”

2nd—See yourself having it. Visualize the thing you want. See yourself with it. Try to get the FEEL of having it, the joy and thankfulness you would get out of it. In Burton Rascoe’s Memoirs, he tells how he worked out his life on a predetermined schedule, in which everything came true because he thought it, he desired it and he BELIEVED it. Here are a few typical lines from it:

“When I was fifteen years old, I wanted to live in Chicago some time and I knew I would; the university I wished to go to was the University of Chicago and I knew I would; there was only one newspaper in the world I ardently wished to work on—the Chicago Tribune—and I knew five years in advance that I would some day work there; when I was a reporter I knew I would be some day literary editor.

“When I was literary editor of the Chicago Tribune I knew I would some day live in New York and be literary editor of the New York Tribune.

“In 1927 I wanted $50,000 and knew I would get it; within less than a year I had over $100,000, almost without any effort on my part.”

3rd—Be thankful for having received it. Remember the admonition of the Master—“Whatsoever things ye ask for when ye pray, believe that ye RECEIVE them, and ye shall have them.” You cannot believe that you actually receive the things you ask for without being thankful for them. So give thanks, sincere thanks, for having received the things you prayed for, and try to FEEL grateful. Remember to SMILE! Repeat aloud daily Adelaide Proctor’s poem—

“My God, I thank Thee, who has made the earth so bright;

So full of splendor and of joy, beauty and light;

So many glorious things are here, noble and right.

“I thank Thee too that Thou hast made joy to abound;

So many gentle thoughts and deeds circling us round,

That in the darkest spot of earth Thy love is found.”

4th—Act as though you HAD already received the thing you asked for. Faith without works is dead. Do some physical thing each day such as you would do if you had the object you prayed for. If you are asking for money, for instance, GIVE a little, even though it be only a dime, just to show the freedom from money worry that is now yours. If you are asking for love, say a kindly word to each of those with whom you come in contact. If you are asking for health, dance about your room, sing, laugh, do some of those things you will do when you have fully manifested the good health you crave.

5th—Shozv your affection for the thing you asked for. Give your love to it, pour it out just as you would if you had the object in your hands. Only by making it REAL to you in your thoughts can you materialize it in your life.

We go, you know, in the direction of our thoughts. What we long for—and expect—that we are headed towards. So look for the kind of things you want to see. Look for them in your own life—and in the lives of those around you. Look for them—AND BEGIN DOING THEM! Remember those lines of Goethe’s:

“Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;

What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;

Begin, and then the work will be completed.”