First, to realize that you have the power;
Second, to know what you want.
Third, to center your thought upon it with singleness of purpose.
To accomplish these steps takes only a fuller understanding of the Power-that-is-within-you.
But what is this power? Where should you go to locate it? Is it a thing, a place, an object? Has it bounds, form or material shape? No! Then how shall you go about finding it?
If you have begun to realize that there is a power within you, if you have begun to arouse in your conscious mind the ambition and desire to use this power — you have started in the pathway of wisdom. If you are willing to go forward, to endure the mental discipline of mastering this method, nothing in the world can hinder you or keep you from overcoming every obstacle.
Begin at once, today, to use what you have learned. All growth comes from practice. All the forces of life are active — peace — joy — power. The unused talent decays. Open the door —
“Behold I stand at the door and knock; if ANY MAN hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.”
So let us make use of this dynamo, which is you. What is going to start it working? Your Faith, the faith that is begotten of understanding. Faith is the impulsion, the propulsion of this power within. Faith is the confidence, the assurance, the enforcing truth, the knowing that the right idea of life will bring you into the reality of existence and the manifestation of the All power.
All cause is in Mind — and Mind is everywhere. All the knowledge there is, all the wisdom there is, all the power there is, is all about you — no matter where you may be. Your Mind is part of it. You have access to it. If you fail to avail yourself of it, you have no one to blame but yourself. For, as the drop of water in the ocean shares in all the properties of the rest of the ocean water so you share in that all-power, all-wisdom of Mind. If you have been sick and ailing, if poverty and hardship have been your lot, don’t blame it on “fate.” Blame yourself. “Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.” But you’ve got to take it. The power is there — but you must use it. It is round about you like the air you breathe. You don’t expect others to do your breathing for you. Neither can you expect them to use your Mind for you. Universal Intelligence is not only the mind of the Creator of the universe, but it is also the mind of MAN, your intelligence, your mind. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!”
So start today by KNOWING that you can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be. The rest will follow.
“Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.”
Chapter 4 — Desire; The First Law of Gain
If you had a fairy-wishing ring, what one thing would you wish for? Wealth? Honor? Fame? Love? What one thing do you desire above everything else in life? Whatever it is, you can have it.
Whatever you desire wholeheartedly, with singleness of purpose — you can have. But the first and all-important essential is to know what this one thing is. Before you can win your heart’s desire, you’ve got to get clearly fixed in your mind’s eye what it is that you want.
It may sound paradoxical, but few people do know what they want. Most of them struggle along in a vague sort of way, hoping — like Micawber — for something to turn up. They are so taken up with the struggle that they have forgotten — if they ever knew — what it is they are struggling for. They are like a drowning man — they use up many times the energy it would take to get them somewhere, but they fritter it away in aimless struggles — without thought, without direction, exhausting themselves, while getting nowhere.
You’ve got to know what you want before you stand much chance of getting it. You have an unfailing “Messenger to Garcia” in that Genie-of-your Mind — but YOU have got to formulate the message. Aladdin would have stood a poor chance of getting anything from his Genie if he had not had clearly in mind the things he wanted the Genie to get.
In the realm of mind, the realm in which is all practical power, you can possess what you want at once. You have but to claim it, to visualize it, to bring it into actuality — and it is yours for the taking. For the Genie-of-your-Mind can give you power over circumstances. Health, happiness and prosperity. And all you need to put it to work is an earnest, intense desire.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, let us go back for a moment to the start. You
are infected with that “divine dissatisfaction with things as they are” which has been responsible for all the great accomplishments of this world — else you would not have gotten thus far in this book. Your heart is hungering for something better. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness (right-wise ness) for they shall be filled.” You are tired of the worry and grind, tired of the deadly dull routine and daily tasks that lead nowhere. Tired of all the petty little ills and ailments that have come to seem the lot of man here on earth.
Always there is something within you urging you on to bigger things, giving you no peace, no rest, no chance to be lazy. It is the same “something” that drove Columbus across the ocean; that drove Hannibal across the Alps; that drove Edison onward and upward from a train boy to the inventive wizard of the century; that drove Henry Ford from a poor mechanic at forty to probably the richest man in the world at sixty.
This “something” within you keeps telling you that you can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, have anything you want to have — and you have a sneaking suspicion that it may be right.
That “something” within you is your subconscious self, your part of Universal Mind, your Genie-of-the-brain. Men call it ambition, and “Lucky is the man,” says Arthur Brisbane, “whom the Demon of Ambition harnesses and drives through life. This wonderful little coachman is the champion driver of the entire world and of all history.
“Lucky you, if he is your driver. “He will keep you going until you do something worthwhile — working, running and moving ahead.
“And that is how a real man ought to be driven.
“This is the little Demon that works in men’s brains, that makes the blood tingle at the thought of achievement and that makes the face flush and grow white at the thought of failure.
“Every one of us has this Demon for a driver, IN YOUTH AT LEAST.
“Unfortunately the majority of us he gives up as very poor, hopeless things, not worth driving, by the time we reach twenty-five or thirty.
“How many men look back to their teens, when they were harnessed to the wagon of life with Ambition for a driver? When they could not wait for the years to pass and for opportunity to come?
“It is the duty of ambition to drive, and it is your duty to keep Ambition alive and driving.
“If you are doing nothing, if there is no driving, no hurrying, no working, you may count upon it that there will be no results. Nothing much worthwhile in the years to come.
“Those that are destined to be the big men twenty years from now, when the majority of us will be nobodies are those whom this demon is driving relentlessly, remorselessly, through the hot weather and the cold weather, through early hours and late hours.
“Lucky YOU if you are in harness and driven by the Demon of Ambition.”
Suppose you have had disappointments, disillusionments along the way. Suppose the fine point of your ambition has become blunted. Remember, there is no obstacle that there is not some way around, or over, or through — and if you will depend less upon the 10 per cent of your abilities that reside in your conscious mind, and leave more to the 90 per cent that constitutes your subconscious, you can overcome all obstacles.