By now you should be feeling more hopeful, cheerful, confident and happy than you can ever remember. Are you? Pause and consider this. Think of some earlier period of your life when your hopes were high, when you had many plans for your future, many bright dreams. Are you as confident now as then? Better still, are you more confident and optimistic? For you have good cause to be.
Believe me, there are sound, scientific reasons for great confidence because, if you follow these lessons eagerly and faithfully, your thoughts will change, and as your thoughts change, so your whole outer life will swing into rhythm with them.
The greatest delusion you can have is to imagine your thoughts do not matter, to regard thoughts as wispy things, gone in a flash and of no consequence. A person’s whole life is the sum-total of their past thoughts. A person’s whole future will be shaped by the thoughts they think now.
Get this truth as a conviction in your mind. It is vitally important. Do not “wonder” about this Course, whether it will work some magic without your knowing it or doing anything, and bring you prosperity, whether it is any “good”, and so on. If you stop wondering and start believing, but you will certainly know all about it because you will definitely be doing something yourself. So this Course can not only be “very good” it can bring you your heart’s desires.
Two students who realised the immense power of thought and its wonderful consequences, were quoted in our magazine, and I reproduce the extracts here, with my comments made at the time.
In these magazine pages I sometimes tell you about my thought building successes. I do this because I want to stimulate and strengthen your own faith. I know that if I can get you believing that you can, you will have success too. And nothing would please me more than to bring you all spiritual, mental and material success. However, it is possible that some of you may say, “Oh, that’s all very well for Bernard, but I can’t thought build like that”. If I show you that some students can, will you believe that you can too?
First, here is a letter from one who wrote; “I put your ‘Shaft-Prayer’ into practice. Did not tell anyone, not even my husband. I wanted some money for something, and ‘saw’ the money in my purse. Next day my husband made me a present of that amount!”
“I told you last time”, wrote a second student, “that the wife had a pay rise. I didn’t say that wasn’t all I’d ‘asked for’. Well, I had asked, for promotion and a rise. She got the rise and I was quite satisfied with just a part of what I had asked for. But listen, She has now been promoted to supervisor and another rise in pay with it. Admitted she has all the qualifications, ability and experience required, but the opportunity wasn’t there. This promotion has been created for her. So how’s that for an answer to thought building?”
In another letter this student wrote, “In spite of being so successful with so many building operations in the past eight months I still realise I can meet with set-backs, but this time I will know it will, be my fault in some way – and not God’s neglect as I used to think, years ago. The result being that I used to drift further and further away from the very help that could have set me back on the right road.”
Later still he wrote about perseverance in connection with, his successes. He said in his letter to me that he had been thought building for several months before securing for his wife the advancement which she so much desired. (Incidentally this student had already obtained one or two substantial successes for himself.)
If you take the trouble to read some of the biographies of successful people, the first thing (If you read with opened eyes) that will strike you is the persistence they had at the time when they were unsuccessful. It is easy enough to be persistent once you have swung into the “highway of success”, but if you would attain to the fulfillment of your desires be persistence both in actual effort and in the optimism of your thoughts while there is no visible sign of success. This “holding on” is the chief difference between success and a failure, for if all the successful people you know or have heard of, gave up or faltered before they had their first visible sign of achievement, not one of them would ever have “got there”.
If, for instance, Edgar Rice Burroughs had faltered and lost hope after his manuscript of the “Tarzan” book had be rejected by ten publishers, they would never have seen the light of day, and never given so much pleasure to the millions of people who have read the books and seen the films. But not only ten – twenty publishers rejected the book. Yet he had such persistence that he went on – and you all know what success became visible to himself and the world in the end.
Joseph Conrad, who became very famous as a novelist and short-story writer in the early 1900’s, persisted in his idea that he could write for more than twenty years before publishers agreed with him. But his hidden persistence, while surrounded by failure, at last brought success to him openly for all the world to see.
It was only after much failure that Edison was successful with his wonderful inventions. He kept on when lesser men would have grown tired,
This is the spirit that succeeds, When I offered you this course I did so because I considered that you had a good chance of success. I decided that you had the spirit to succeed. Have you? Prove it for yourself by perseverance and determination as you go through these vital lessons.
Right away I want you to procure for yourself a notebook. (Get a strong one for it will be a friend to you for a long time to come.) Find a place where you can keep it secretly for it is important that you do not let others know what it is you are attempting to bring about in your life. Later, when you have attained to your desires, all your world will see and then you will be able to reply to admiring questions (You can, if you wish, have one loyal companion to go through the lessons with you and share your experiences.)
First of all, write down the “Golden Gate” affirmation in your notebook.
Then begin to write down what you mean by success, happiness and prosperity. Don’t be fearful at putting it into words. Remember this notebook is private and you are not obliged to show it to anyone. When you first begin to write you may find some difficulty in putting your dreams into actual words. That is because they have been only vague wishes – and how can you make vague wishes turn into concrete reality? But persevere, adding something every day if you like, shaping your desires for your future as clearly as you possibly can.
Each day, read over what you have written, picturing it all as clearly as you can in your mind. Be careful to avoid phrases like “I wish” or “I would like”. Say, “I strongly desire” or “I intend” instead. No matter how impossible your dreams may seem to be, do not be sceptical and amused by them. Be in deadly earnest, Write at the beginning of each day’s entry, and underline it, the Biblical words, “Judge not according to appearances”. And at the end write, “All things are possible to him that believeth”.
Give at least ten minutes each day to reading over what you have written in your notebook. Put a lot of strong feeling and strong desire into what you read – not in an anxious, strained way, but in a happy, determined, confident way.
By the end of the two weeks you should have a clear, concise, revised statement of success, neatly written out afresh in your notebooks with the Biblical statements at the head and foot as I have described. This is the chart which you will use on your journey to prosperity, so you see it is very important that it should be clear.
Once you have it completed, use it as often as you wish (provided you do not neglect your duties and become just a dreamer). But use it at least once a day. Be happy about it, smile to yourself often when you think what a lovely future is before you. Crowd out every smallest thought of doubt or fear immediately it arises by saying the “Golden Gate” affirmation, for if you allow negative thoughts in your mind you will effectively stop the wonderful transformation that is already beginning to take place in your inner depths (and heights) of mind. All your positive, happy, confident thoughts fly out in unseen rays of great magnetic power and, attracting the necessary forces, begin to work most powerfully to shape into visible form what you have in mind.
When deciding on your desires, see that they are real ones. Not flights of absurd fancy and fantasy like childhood games. You are adult and mature and your thought building is work, not play. Form your desires around that which you feel capable of doing, of enjoying, things that would satisfy you and make your life complete. Arrange for your achievement to come in easy stages so that you can adjust to it as it unfolds. In Lesson One I wrote of my desire as first a seed, then a tiny plant, then a tree. Regard yours in the same way.
In your next lesson I will take you still further along this thrilling, magic path to attainment.
REMEMBER:- Change your thoughts and you change your circumstances. You have twenty eight more weeks to practise prosperity thinking. By then it should be a habit.
-Bernard
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