Having, had your “holiday for dreaming and wishing” you have probably started your detailed plan by now. May it give you pleasure and lead to much benefit! If you outline the steps correctly and follow along those steps, it certainly will! (You can now discard your earlier statement of success in favour of your detailed plan.)
This lesson will deal with difficulties you may be experiencing in the building of your plan and will also contain some suggestions for the furtherance of it.
One hindrance to success is that many people feel tied. There are people around them, very often relatives, to whom they feel a sense of duty. They have become so immersed in this idea of duty that they often feel that they are bound to a certain district, or a certain home, as securely as though they were held with invisible chains.
Such people should ask themselves if this is really so. Isn’t it often, a desire for security, for a settled haven which holds them? People indulge in vague dreams of “making a change”, in seeking adventure or realising their years-long desires, but at the first hint of a possible “opening of the door”, they draw back in fright.
It is then that they plead that they cannot be spared, that their services or company is essential. If such people will consider how they came to be in these restricting circumstances, they will almost always discover that it was a sense of security they wanted. They preferred to have their adventurous dreams as just a pleasant pastime – not as an outlined plan of fulfilment.
People like this will often go from one restricting circumstance to another. As soon as they are free, they get tied up to the next. Yet, all the time. they say, “What I would like to do would be is…” but the dream remains a castle in the air because they never come to the point of outlining the way to its fulfilment in their minds.
If you are one of these people, see if something can be done about it now. Each of us must live his or her own life, using the talents that are God-given. For each will be required to give an “account”, at life’s end, of how those talents have been used. It will not be enough to be able to say, “I spent my life in helping so-and-so to live his or her life”. The question will be asked, “But what did you do with your life and talents?”
Nor will it be enough to say, “I lived my own life for many years and then spent the rest with all my talents, instincts and desires buried while I did my duty for so-and-so”. We have to use our talents and live our lives all the time. We are not really living in a true sense at all if we are existing only for the service or comfort of another.
This does not mean that you should throw all your duties and responsibilities overboard and rush off on some wild-goose chase. If you have tied yourself or, by unsought circumstances are tied to other people so that you cannot at once do what your own inclinations tell you you are fitted to do or be, then accept the circumstances for the present but spend your spare time in preparing yourself for the life you intend to live when you are free. Think and talk about it naturally and follow the interest openly whenever possible. It is good for our inner dreams to have an airing, and in that we should be, not secretive and tense, but relaxed and simple.
I know of a man who deeply yearned to work in an orphanage among mentally or physically handicapped children. He had his own skilled trade, but it did not satisfy him. He also had an aged mother to support. An insurmountable obstacle, you think? Not at all. This is what he did. For a time he worked hard, drawing the biggest salary he could earn. Then he left his job and took a low-paid one in an institution where he could get experience, working among children. When his capital was low, he went back to his skilled trade and saved hard again. He repeated this for several years until he had saved sufficient money to provide his mother with a small income for the remaining years of her life. Then he took a post in an orphanage, working among handicapped children. The work is unpaid, but he is content with just his keep because he is doing what he wants to do.
During these weeks continue exactly a before regarding the exercises. Go on building up your detailed plan of the steps to your success. By now you will have more ideas and will have something to add, I expect. In any case, review your whole position and read your detailed plan often.
Once more I must impress this truth upon you. Do not let your dream be merely the acquisition of sufficient money to enable you to do nothing for the rest of your life. We all have talents hidden within ourselves, and if these are not used they will rust and cause us acute inward conflict and discomfort. No-one is happy unless they are using their own special gifts.
If your work is dull and tedious, it is because you are not using your talents, and unlimited leisure would therefore be even more tedious. So draw up your detailed plan with care, for on it will depend your future happiness and success.
Do not choose what you think would bring you the most profit or social advancement, nor what would be considered a “refined” or dignified occupation. Plan to do what you feel you can do best, and what brings you the greatest happiness when you are engaged in it. You know what makes the hours fly, what absorbs and enthralls you. That is what you are intended to do! That is your way to success for that very thing is what you have it in you to do with skill. So do a lot of practical “day-dreaming” and above all, be happy. Don’t hurry tensely to be free from ties, but know that they will gradually dissolve without hurt or harm to others if you keep faith.
Early on in this Course I told you something of the early days of this organisation – how tiny it was, and how huge it was in my expectations! All that I thought built for at that time, came to me. But as the years went by and I continued writing lessons, books, articles, charts and leaflets so abundantly, it became clear that much more expansion was needed. We needed typewriters to copy all the writings, typists to use the machines. Duplicators to use the typed stencils and produce never-ending copies for despatch. Staff to work the duplicators, enormous stocks of paper. Stencils and duplicating ink. Staff to sort the finished sheets and to staple them, to address all the hundreds of envelopes – and of course the envelopes themselves! Space to store the paper where it would keep dry (for the machines cannot accept damp paper) and space for all the staff to work in. The needs were immense representing an expenditure of over ten times what I had at the time. Looking back, I am still stirred by that early picture, for I never had the least doubt that all I desired would come to me.
I have read biographies of people who had great needs for a great work, and a great faith to go with it. They just ordered everything, then prayed for donations to be sent them, to pay the bills when they came in. Nearly always, this is just what happened. I admire their courage immensely, but it has always seemed to me unnecessary to follow such a “hair-raising” procedure.
Why not make a great work self-supporting so that, instead of people making donations and getting nothing in return, they paid for goods or services received? I know that it is proper to give freely to worthy causes, but there are always plenty of these. For myself, as well as giving to public charities, I also give a lot to private ones. That is, I find a local person or family who are in genuine need, either of actual necessities or of being cheered up by luxuries because they have suffered losses or been through much sorrow, or are lonely and old perhaps. To these people I have given food parcels, clothing, coal and (I’ve just made a mental count) over the years have provided four television sets to four local families. People collecting for good causes, school prize days, old people’s treats etc, also get my support. I’ve never mentioned this before because there was no need to do so, but in this instance it is necessary so that you will see that my point of view was not prompted by an unwillingness to give freely to others. I just mean that by faith we can contact supply and so can draw down our needs from the divine Source, through His offspring, and in return for goods or services. We don’t need “Divine Intervention”, which is what many people desire when they pray.
We have “Divine Indwelling”. What we need is “human intervention” – that is, the human contacting the indwelling divine Spirit and making our faith intervene, and bring results.
You may be interested to read this copy of an old leaflet of years ago. I called it:
THANK YOU SINCERELY
It was kind of you to think of contributing to the expenses of this Organisation. It happens though, that I really do live the abundant life that I teach. I never even consider anything new in the way of equipment, premises, supplies etc., unless I have all the money to pay for it in full. It seems to me that anything less than complete supply of all my own needs would not demonstrate the reality of faith to my students, so I look upon prosperity as a sort of silent example of what an active faith can do! The money is all safely sitting in the bank awaiting the time to write the cheques for the firms concerned.
Although my expenses are huge, I never owe anything to any firm, but send a cheque within a few days of the invoice arriving. Several of the firms’ representatives have told me, that my amazingly prompt payment has convinced them about the reality of faith. Especially when they have learnt that I never ask students for their fees, but leave all the paying arrangements to them. Even my auditor is almost speechless about it at times. However, I do appreciate your great kindness of thought in this matter. Will you mind if I put your gift into the Help The Student Fund instead? This Fund can always do with extras as it has a lot of uses I am sure you will agree to putting your gift into the Student Fund, and thank you sincere for your kindness and generosity.
Faced, therefore, all those years ago, with a capital of about £150 and needs of about £2,000 (a notable sum at the time), it never even occurred me to ask for donations. I just went on drawing supply by faith, a little at a time, end as much as I needed at that moment, and continued until I had fulfilment of all. I gave the highest value I could achieve, physically, mentally or spiritually, in return for money received. In fact, I have had to date about five hundred thousand letters telling me of the good value I give (Yes, half a million.)
Remembering those early times, I can’t help smiling because I never felt in the least poor or over-burdened with responsibilities, or faced with too large a task. In my leisure time I went cycling or walking, read detective stories or listened to the radio. (There was no television when this organisation began.)
I still have my thought building notebooks where I wrote down my desires for the Work, and all I intended it to grow into so that it would carry my joyous message of faith across the world. It has phrases such as, “Faith is my magnet, drawing to me all that I desire!” “How thrilling faith-successes are – I’ve huge plans for the Work and know quite well they will all come true.” And, “Yippee – here I come”
It was all, you see, very lighthearted – and one has to be very sure of success, to be lighthearted when there isn’t a sight of it. In those first days, everything was so tiny that I did all my own typing of stencils, addressing of envelopes, duplicating etc. Sometimes (as in the Weekly Links Course and in the booklets, “Overcoming The World” and “Weight of Glory”) I composed and typed the lessons or books straight on to the stencil. The “A Way To Pray” leaflet was composed by me, typed, decorated and duplicated during one morning. On Thursdays I walked to the post with the-entire week’s mail in one shopping bag. (Now a mail van calls to collect our bulging mailbags.) In the next lesson I will continue this “story of my faith”.
REMEMBER:- Change your thoughts and you change your circumstances. You have 14 more weeks to practise prosperity-thinking. By then it should be a habit.
Bernard
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