Golden Gate Course 8

By now you will know how to recognise the difference between wishes, vague dreams and true desires. You will he able to sort out your own – and will be able to assess other people’s too! (Of course you will not say anything to these people if you feel that they are not ready to understand and respond – they will progress later on.) But an awakened person can learn a lot by pondering on the expressed wishes of others.

A student wrote to me, telling how he longed to “live in the country and help mankind”. (Since then, several other people have described a similar dream.) Later he said that he had talked about it while in a social club one evening. A stranger sitting nearby appeared interested and presently got into conversation. He explained that he could show him the way to fulfilment. He was a charity organiser and could offer him worthwhile but low-paid work in a quiet country district. It seemed ideal, but this student was horrified! In a letter to me, he explained why. He revealed that what he really wanted was to own his own cottage in the country and have “nothing else to do but benefit humanity”.

You see how vague dreams like this just lead nowhere? They are more a hindrance than a help, for they suggest to the dreamer that he really has an idea of what he wants to do with his life (whereas he has not) and so he goes on, drifting and dissatisfied. There is no need for people just to dream. They should desire. If they are determined, they will surely find the way.

Follow these lines of thought regarding your own desire. Work out (adding notes in your book as you go) the steps that will lead to what you want in life. Don’t try to cut out work altogether! You would only be very bored in a short space of time. There is nothing so fascinating as working at something you are really fitted for.

During the next weeks plan with the aid of your notebook the ways that occur to you to reach your goal. It will be an absorbing occupation! Don’t be concerned with obstacles, tensely and miserably thinking that you cannot achieve your desire. That old saying, “Where there’s a will there’s a way”, is very true

Work out a course of action exactly as though you were planning a coming holiday. If you lack knowledge about part of it, go to a reference library, or find some way to gather knowledge about it. If there is anything that is hindering you physically and mentally, think out how you can overcome that hindrance.

Today as I write this, I read that Reg Harris, the cycle racer and three times World Professional Sprint Cycling Champion was a “weak and puny boy”. At thirteen he saved his pennies to buy his first cycle – a second-hand machine costing six shillings. His father was only a manual worker, but the boy determined to be a racing star. He even gave up his job in a garage and took on one as a coal-heaver in order to develop his muscles! He went on to become an Olympic medal winner.

Build your plan, step by step, with a good heart, writing up your description of the necessary steps you need to take to your good fortune. Don’t hesitate to ask the opinion of anyone who knows – but see that they do know and are not just fond of giving advice.

Spend these next weeks in making your plan – which you can enlarge on later. At first it can be in “wish” form. Then by degrees, change it into a true desire. In fact, this is the way all desires begin – we have to wish before we can desire. This early “wishing” can be most restful. Many years ago I used to relax, when tired, by imagining myself lying on grass beside a river. I would “listen” in my imagination to the sound of rippling water and “see” driftwood going by, and fish jumping up to the flash of the sunlight. To me, this was just a lazy dream, but the time came when I lived close to a small river. Because I had persisted, my dreaming and wishing had turned into a desire, and the desire came true through the action of my mind.

So you see that wishing can be useful, provided it doesn’t stop there! If you feel like taking a little holiday from your study and practice, this would be quite a good thing. Instead of thought building, do some wishing and dreaming. Tell yourself all about it, or write it down, or go over it in the form of mental pictures. Let these be practical wishes, applicable to you (just as my river-bank dreaming was). Keep more or less to the same theme and do it each day, letting your mind drift lazily as the mental pictures flow. You’ll find it refreshing. And presently those wishes and dreams will turn into true desires – so your “holiday” will be a profitable one. After it, you will return to your regular thought building with zest.

At this point I must tell you about a student of long ago. After he had had a few lessons and begun to realise the power of thought building, he told me in several letters of his dreaming of the past. He said that when he was a youth, he used to imagine himself walking in lovely parks and gardens. With his mind’s eye he would picture the smooth lawns, vast and vivid, the flower-beds in glowing colours, the sandy paths between. In imagination he wandered along, coming to little streams with rustic bridges over them, and goldfish circling in the pools.

“It was all too absurd to tell anyone”, he wrote, “because I lived in a district so poor, neglected and ugly that I can see now it would be described as a slum!” But this didn’t stop him dreaming. However, the nearest he got to his lovely gardens was a plant nursery, there he was employed in work connected with seeds and bulbs. He had been there some years when one day an important customer visited the nursery. The owner himself conducted him round, and during conversation the customer mentioned that he was badly in need of a temporary gardener. Could the owner possibly spare one of his men? At that moment they were passing this student who was at work. The owner introduced him and asked him if he would like to fill the position, and of course he said he would. And eventually it led to a permanent job there. So he found himself delightedly walking and working in the scenes of his youthful dreams. “Only after the first few lessons from you”, he told me, “did I realise that it was my visualising that had brought me all I longed for.”

So be quite happy to dream, but hasten the process of fulfilment by doing it deliberately. Encourage the dream to grow presently into a true desire, and then thought build for it with confidence, realising that you are using tools and carrying out a scientific process of mental creation. Now we come to the next “secret exercise”. Here it is:

SECRET EXERCISE NO 3.

Alone in a room, stand erect and, raising your arms sideways, sweep them up till your hands meet above your head. Lower them and repeat, thinking as you do this seven times that you are describing the outline of a magnet around you. Now charge your magnet with power in this way.

Sweep your arms up over your head again, clasp your hands, palm to palm. Draw a deep breath and, while holding it, stretch your whole body upwards, gripping your clasped fingers. Release your breath.

Pause, with arms hanging loosely at sides and realise that you are a magnet attracting to yourself that which is yours under the Divine Law of abundant supply. Think of what it is you particularly want, and then say within yourself (but with no outward sound) on an exultant note of faith:

“A magnet am I
To attract and draw
From earth and sky
All that is mine
Under the Law
The abundant Law Divine.”

Before you end this exercise, wait a moment to visualise your prayer being answered and expect the answer to come into manifestation

This exercise should be done daily until your desire is fulfilled then used for another.

REMEMBER. Change your thoughts and you change your circumstances. You have 16 more weeks to practise prosperity-thinking. By then it should be a habit.

Bernard

—ooOoo—