THE MIRACLES OF RIGHT THOUGHT. Orison Swett Marden

always hold the ideal of wholeness and think of ourselves as perfect beings, even as He is perfect, any tendency to disease anywhere would be neutralized by this restorative healing force.

       Think and say only that which you wish to become true.

      People who are always excusing themselves; constantly saying that they are tired, used up, played out, “all in,” that they are all out of kilter somewhere; that they are always unfortunate, unlucky; that fate seems to be against them; that they are poor and always expect to be; that they have worked hard and tried to get ahead, but could not, little realize that they are etching these black pictures—enemies of their peace, happiness, and success, and the very things which they ought to wipe out of their minds forever—deeper and deeper into their consciousness, and are making it all the more certain that they will be realized in their lives. Never for an instant admit that you are sick, weak, or ill unless you wish to experience these conditions, for the very thinking of them helps them to get a stronger hold upon you.

      We are all the products of our own thoughts. Whatever we concentrate upon, that we are. The daily habit of picturing oneself as a superb man or woman sent to earth with a divine mission, and with the ability and the opportunity to deliver it grandly, gives a marvelous confidence, uplifting power and perpetual encouragement.

      If you wish to improve yourself in any particular, visualize the quality as vividly and as tenaciously as possible and hold a superior ideal along the line of your ambition. Keep this persistently in the mind until you feel its uplift and realization in your life. Gradually the weak, imperfect man, which mistakes, sins and vicious living have made, will be replaced by the ideal man; your other, better God-self.

      Every life follows its ideal; is colored by it; takes on its character; becomes like it. You can read a man’s character if you know his ideal, for this always dominates his life.

      Our ideals are great character-molders, and have a tremendous life-shaping influence. Our heart’s habitual desire soon shows itself in the face; out pictures itself in the life. We cannot long keep from the face that which habitually lives in our minds.

      We develop the quality of the thought, emotion, ideal, or ambition which takes the strongest hold upon us. Therefore, you should let everything in you point toward superiority, nobility. Let there be an upward trend in your thinking. Resolve that you will never have anything to do with inferiority in your thoughts or your actions; that whatever you do shall bear the stamp of excellence.

      This up reaching of the mind, this stretching of the mentality toward higher ideals and grander things, has an elevating, transforming influence which tends to lift the whole life to higher levels.

      Human life is so constructed that we live largely upon hope; the faith that runs ahead and sees what the physical eye cannot see.

      Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the outline of the image itself; the real substance, not merely a mental image. There is something back of the faith, back of the hope, back of the heart yearnings; there is a reality to match our legitimate longing.

      What we believe is coming to us is a tremendous creative motive. The dream of home, of prosperity, the expectancy of being a person of influence, of standing for something, of carrying weight in our community, all these things are powerful creative motives.

       Your whole thought current must be set in the direction of your life purpose.

      The great miracles of civilization are wrought by thought concentration. Live in the very soul of expectation of better things, in the conviction that something large, grand, and beautiful will await you if your efforts are intelligent, if your mind is kept in a creative condition and you struggle upward to your goal. Live in the conviction that you are eternally progressing, advancing toward something higher, better, in every atom of your being.

      Many people have an idea that it is dangerous to indulge their dreaming faculties, their imagination, very much, for fear that in doing so they would become impracticable; but these faculties are just as sacred as any others we possess. They were given us for a divine purpose; so that we could get glimpses of intangible realities. They enable us to live in the ideal, even when we are compelled to work in the midst of a disagreeable or inhospitable environment.

      Our dreaming capacity gives us a peep into the glorious realities that await us further on. It is the evidence of things possible to us.

      Building air castles should no longer be looked upon as an idle, meaningless pastime. We first build our castles in our consciousness, picture them in detail in our ambition, before we put foundations under them and reality into them.

      Dreaming is not always castle-building. Every real castle, every home, every building was an air castle first. Legitimate dreaming is creative; it is bringing into reality our desires; the things for which we long and hope. A building would be impossible without the plans of an architect; it must be created mentally. The architect sees behind the plans the building in all its perfection and beauty.

      Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architect’s mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement.

      Our visions are the plans of the possible life structure; but they will end in plans if we do not follow them up with a vigorous effort to make them real; just as the architect’s plans will end in his drawings if they are not followed up and made real by the builder.

      All men and women who have achieved great things have been dreamers, and what they have accomplished has been just in proportion to the vividness, the energy and persistency with which they visualized their ideals; held to their dreams and struggled to make them come true.

      Do not give up your dream because it is apparently not being realized; because you cannot see it coming true. Cling to your vision with all the tenacity you can muster. Keep it bright; do not let the bread-and-butter side of life cloud your ideal or dim it. Keep in an ambition-arousing atmosphere. Read the books which will stimulate your ambition. Get close to people who have done what you are trying to do, and try to absorb the secret of their success.

      This mental visualizing of the ideal as vividly and as sharply as possible is the mental molding of the thing that will finally match your vision with its reality; that will make your dream come true.

      Take a little time before retiring at night and get by yourself. Sit quietly and think and dream to your heart’s content. Do not be afraid of your vision, or of your power to dream, for “without a vision the people perish.” The faculty to dream was not given to mock you. There is a reality back of it. It is a divine gift intended to give you a glimpse of the grand things in store for you and to lift you out of the common into the uncommon; out of hampering, iron conditions into ideal ones, and to show you that these things can become realities in your life.

       These glimpses into paradise are intended to keep us from getting discouraged by our failures and disappointments.

      I do not mean fanciful, ephemeral pipe dreaming, but real, legitimate desire and the sacred longings of the soul, which are given us as constant reminders that we can make our lives sublime; that no matter how disagreeable or unfriendly our surroundings may be, we can lift ourselves into the ideal conditions which we see in our vision.

      There is a divinity behind our legitimate desires.

      By the desires that have divinity in them, I do not refer to the things that we want but do not need; I do not refer to the desires that turn to dead-sea fruit on our lips or to ashes when eaten, but to the legitimate desires of the soul for the realization of those ideals, the longing for full, complete self- expression, for the time and opportunity for the weaving of the pattern shown us in the moment of our highest transfiguration.

      “A man will remain a rag picker as long as he has only a rag picker’s vision.”

      Our mental attitude, our heart’s desire, is our perpetual prayer which Nature answers. She takes it for granted that we desire what our heart asks for—that what we want we are headed toward, and she helps