The Inner Secret. William Walker Atkinson

I was regarded as an intelligent worker along the lines of my vocation—and a hard worker as well. I applied all of the accepted and tested rules of Worldly Wisdom—all the Rules for Success announced by the "practical" men of the world—or at least the essence and substance of them separated from the non-essential and incidental. I had met with a fair degree of success, as such is usually measured. I had my "ups and downs", always coming "up" after a "down", I am glad to say. In short, I was the fair average of the reasonably successful ambitious man nearly forty years of age.

      But, in my heart I knew that I had failed, inasmuch as at the best, I was only a fair, average, commonplace successful man of affairs—there were thousands of others like me, some a little better and some a little worse. I had done nothing which seemed to me to be worthy of the powers which I felt should be innate within me.

      I was still in the crowd—I had never been able to step very far out of it, never more than a foot or two at the most. The dreams of my youth were unrealized. My secret ambitions were still nothing more than hopes. While I was spoken of as a worthy example of reasonable success, and though I was favorably regarded by those "higher up", yet I knew in my heart of hearts that I had done nothing really "worth while"—that according to my own standards I was a failure. Worst of all, I had failed to find that "Something" which was "about" or "above" persons which served as their inspiration and touchstone of success—I had failed in my Quest of the Inner Secret.

      * * * * *

      About this time, shortly before I had reached the age of forty years, the Deluge overtook me. I seemed to be the victim of a malicious fate, and at the mercy of sardonic, cruel supernatural forces. Everything that I valued in the material world was swept away from me by a series of avalanche-like happenings. By reason of circumstances apparently beyond my control, and through causes seemingly beyond inclusion in any possible previous calculation on my part, there were set. into motion a series of events which when they reached the field of my interests had attained the force and destructive motion of a tornado. It seemed like the happening of the impossible. All circumstances seemed to conspire for my destruction.

      My business prospects were ruined. My investments were wiped out. My social and business standing was destroyed. My business passed into other hands. By reason of quite unfounded and unjust accusations, seemingly supported by an almost diabolical chain of circumstantial evidence, my good name was almost lost, and the respect of my business and social associates was seriously jeopardized.

      My family was alienated from me; my children felt that I had disgraced them; my life-companion believing the slanderous tongues of those who were arrayed against me, and refusing to allow me to explain away the ugly appearances and circumstances connected with my downfall, insisted upon a legal separation which afterward was made permanent. Yet I was as innocent as a babe concerning the offenses charged against me. Time has since fully vindicated me in the eyes of the public, and in the courts of the law—the mills of the gods have ground to dust my enemies and unjust accusers. But, at that time, I seemed destined to utter ruin.

      My health broke under the strain, and I became a mental and physical wreck for the time being. I was eventually forced to seek employment at a meagre recompense in a distant city, under most discouraging circumstances and with most unattractive prospects for the future. In the eyes of my former friends and associates I was "down and out", a "has been", a man "all in" and "through".

      Looking back over the period of thirty years which intervenes between that time and the present, I can see that I was then a living example of the condition expressed in the lines of Henley's "Invictus". For surely the scroll was charged with punishments, and I was covered with the night that was "black as the pit from pole to pole"; truly I was in the "fell clutch of circumstance", and my head was bloody "under the bludgeonings of chance".

      Yet in the darkest hour I felt within me that there was a way out, and that I should iind it. Strange as it may seem in view of the circumstances, I felt within me a still stronger conviction that there was really an Inner Secret of Success and Personal Power—and that I should find it. Indeed, it was this conviction alone which enabled me to bear the burden, and to keep my soul alive. Without this I doubtless should have sunk deeper and deeper into the mire, never to rise therefrom.

      I was not as yet the possessor of "the unconquerable soul"—not yet "the master of my fate, the captain of my soul": certainly not consciously so, at least. Yet, under the debris which had accumulated on the surface of my nature, the spark of "That Something Within" was still glowing, and was ready to burst into a blaze of manifestation when the air of understanding was allowed to penetrate to it. I know this now; but at that time I merely "sensed" it in a faint glow of intuition.

      Before leaving this disagreeable stage of my story, however, I wish to state positively that notwithstanding the pain and torture of that experience, my humiliation and the tremendous price demanded of and paid by me, I do not now regret even a single incident of it. I consider the price well paid for that which has come to me through the experience and all connected with it. Though it caused me to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, yet it brought me safely through the pass which leads out of that valley into the wonderful region lying on the other side of the mountains which encompass that "vale of doubt and fears". I paid, and paid in full; but I have been repaid a thousand-fold, and the price now seems but a mere 'bagatelle when compared with what I have gained.

      Rather than to lose my present consciousness of Truth, and to return to my old condition of half-truths, bondage, and ignorance, I would gladly pay this price not merely once but many times. I seemed at that time to have lost everything that made life worth living; yet through losing this I found all that constitutes Real Life, the light of which makes all that went before now to seem pitifully weak and mean.

      Not every one who discovers "That Something Within"—the Inner Secret—is called upon to pay this price; many, indeed, seemingly escape this ordeal entirely, while others experience it in merely a slight degree. But, with some, like myself, who seemingly are blind to the Truth so near to them, and who apparently are determined to "escape their own good", there seems to be needed the interposition of forces which first destroy in order that other forces may build on the vacated site-of the interposition of the Unseen Hand which, often roughly, picks up the individual and removes him from his old environment and condition, despite his cries and protests, only later to deposit him gently but firmly in a new environment and condition more nearly in accord with his heart's desire.

      It would seem that that "Something Within", determined to be free and active, sometimes is compelled to tear asunder the enshrouding and confining chrysalis of circumstance, in order that the living entity may bathe in the sunshine and breathe the air of freedom. Or, perhaps, it is the "labor pains" of the spiritual birth, which, though so painful to undergo, are so easily forgotten in the joys of the after experience. At any rate, whatever may be the final cause or explanation, it sometimes seems necessary for the "I Am I" to descend into hell in order that it may ascend to the heaven of its being and expression.