The Book of Life. Robert Collier

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 percent that constitutes your subconscious, you can overcome all obstacles. Remember this—there is no condition so hopeless, no life so far gone, that mind cannot redeem it.

      Every untoward condition is merely a lack of something. Darkness, you know, is not real. It is merely a lack of light. Turn on the light and the darkness will be seen to be nothing. It vanishes instantly. In the same way poverty is simply a lack of necessary supply. Find the avenue of supply and your poverty vanishes. Sickness is merely the absence of health. If you are in perfect health, sickness cannot hurt you. Doctors and nurses go about at will among the sick without fear—and suffer as a rule far less from sickness than does the average man or woman.

      So there is nothing you have to overcome. You merely have to acquire something. And always Mind can show you the way. You can obtain from Mind anything you want, if you will learn how to do it. “I think we can rest assured that one can do and be practically what he desires to be,” says Farnsworth in “Practical Psychology.” And psychologists all over the world have put the same thought in a thousand different ways.

      “It is not will, but desire,” says Charles W. Mears, “that rules the world.” “But,” you will say, “I have had plenty of desires all my life. I’ve always wanted to be rich. How do you account for the difference between my wealth and position and power and that of the rich men all around me?”

      The Magic Secret

      The answer is simply that you have never focused your desires into one great dominating desire. You have a host of mild desires. You mildly wish you were rich, you wish you had a position of responsibility and influence; you wish you could travel at will. The wishes are so many and varied that they conflict with each other and you get nowhere in particular. You lack one intense desire, to the accomplishment of which you are willing to subordinate everything else.

      Do you know how Napoleon so frequently won battles in the face of a numerically superior foe? By concentrating his men at the actual point of contact! His artillery was often greatly outnumbered, but it accomplished far more than the enemy’s because instead of scattering his fire, he concentrated it all on the point of attack!

      The time you put in aimlessly dreaming and wishing would accomplish marvels if it were concentrated on one definite object. If you have ever taken a magnifying glass and let the sun’s rays play through it on some object, you know that as long as the rays were scattered they accomplished nothing. But focus them on one tiny spot and see how quickly they start something.

      It is the same way with your mind. You’ve got to concentrate on one idea at a time.

      “But how can I learn to concentrate?” many people write me. Concentration is not a thing to be learned. It is merely a thing to do. You concentrate whenever you become sufficiently interested in anything. Get so interested in a ball game that you jump up and down on your hat, slap a man you have never seen before on the back, embrace your nearest neighbor—that is concentration. Become so absorbed in a thrilling play or movie that you no longer realize the orchestra is playing or there are people around you—that is concentration.

      And that is all concentration ever is—getting so interested in some one thing that you pay no attention to anything else that is going on around you.

      If you want a thing badly enough, you need have no worry about your ability to concentrate on it. Your thoughts will just naturally center on it like bees on honey.

      Hold in your mind the thing you most desire. Affirm it. Believe it to be an existing fact. Let me quote again the words of the Master, because there’s nothing more important to remember in this whole book. “Therefore I say unto you, what things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.”

      And again I say, the most important part is the “believe that ye receive them.” Your subconscious mind is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. If you can truly believe that you have received something, can impress that belief upon your subconscious mind, depend upon it, it will see that you have it. For being a part of Universal Mind, it shares that Universal Mind’s all power. “The Father that is within me, He doeth the works.” Your mind will respond to your desire in the exact proportion in which you believe. “As thy faith is, so be it unto thee.”

      The people who live in beautiful homes, who have plenty to spend, who travel about in yachts and fine cars, are for the most part people who started out to accomplish some one definite thing. They had one clear goal in mind, and everything they did centered on that goal.

      Most men just jog along in a rut, going through the same old routine day after day, eking out a bare livelihood, with no definite desire other than the vague hope that fortune will some day drop in their lap. Fortune doesn’t often play such pranks. And a rut, you know, differs from a grave only in depth. A life such as that is no better than the animals live. Work all day for money to buy bread, to give you strength to work all the next day to buy more bread. There is nothing to it but the daily search for food and sustenance. No time for aught but worry and struggle. No hope of anything but the surcease of sorrow in death.

      You can have anything you want—if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish—if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose; if you will understand and believe in your own powers to accomplish.

      What is it that you wish in life? Is it health? In the chapter on health I will show you that you can be radiantly well—without drugs, without tedious exercises. It matters not if you are crippled or bedridden or infirm. Your body rebuilds itself entirely every eleven months. You can start now rebuilding along perfect lines.

      Is it wealth you wish? In the chapter on success I will show you how you can increase your income, how you can forge rapidly ahead in your chosen business or profession.

      Is it happiness you ask for? Follow the rules herein laid down and you will change your whole outlook on life. Doubts and uncertainty will vanish, to be followed by calm assurance and abiding peace. You will possess the things your heart desires. You will have love and companionship. You will win to contentment and happiness.

      But desire must be impressed upon the subconscious before it can be accomplished. Merely conscious desire seldom gets you anything. It is like the daydreams that pass through your mind. Your desire must be visualized, must be persisted in, must be concentrated upon, and must be impressed upon your subconscious mind. Don’t bother about the means for accomplishing your desire—you can safely leave that to your subconscious mind. It knows how to do a great many things besides building and repairing your body. If you can visualize the thing you want, if you can impress upon your subconscious mind the belief that you have it, you can safely leave to it the finding of the means of getting it. Trust the Universal Mind to show the way.

      The mind that provided everything in such profusion must joy in seeing us take advantage of that profusion. “For herein is the Father glorified—that ye bear much fruit.”

      You do not have to wait until tomorrow, or next year, or the next world, for happiness. You do not have to die to be saved. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” That does not mean that it is up in the heavens or on some star or in the next world. It means here and now! All the possibilities of happiness are always here and always available. At the open door of every man’s life there lies this pearl of great price—the understanding of man’s dominion over the earth. With that understanding and conviction you can do everything, which lies before you to do, and you can do