The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran

his way in the world. “Look as though you have already succeeded,” his friend told him. Shakespeare expresses the same thought in another way — “Assume a virtue if you have it not.” Look the part. Dress the part. Act the part. Be successful in your own thought first. It won’t be long before you will be successful before the world as well.

      David V. Bush, in his book “Applied Psychology and Scientific Living,” says:

      “Man is like the wireless operator. Man is subject to miscellaneous wrong thought currents if his mind is not in tune with the Infinite, or if he is not keyed up to higher vibrations than those of negation.

      “A man who thinks courageous thoughts sends these courageous thought waves through the universal ether until they lodge in the consciousness of someone who is tuned to the same courageous key. Think a strong thought, a courageous thought, a prosperity thought, and these thoughts will be received by someone who is strong, courageous and prosperous.

      “It is just as easy to think in terms of abundance as to think in terms of poverty. If we think poverty thoughts we become the sending and receiving stations for poverty thoughts. We send out a ‘poverty’ mental wireless and it reaches the consciousness of some poverty-stricken ‘receiver.’ We get what we think.

      “It is just as easy to think in terms of abundance, opulence and prosperity as it is to think in terms of lack, limitation and poverty.

      “If a man will raise his rate of vibration by faith currents or hope currents, these vibrations go through the Universal Mind and lodge in the consciousness of people who are keyed to the same tune. Whatever you think is sometime, somewhere, received by a person who is tuned to your thought key.

      “If a man is out of work and he thinks thoughts of success, prosperity, harmony, position and growth, just as surely as his thoughts are things — as Shakespeare says — someone will receive his vibrations of success, prosperity, harmony, position and growth.

      “If we are going to be timid, selfish, penurious and picayunish in our thinking, these thought waves which we have started in the universal ether will go forth until they come to a mental receiving station of the same caliber. ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ and minds of like thinking are attracted one to the other.

      “If you need money, all you have to do is to send up your vibrations to a strong, courageous receiving station, and someone who can meet your needs will be attracted to you or you to him.”

      When you learn that you are entitled to win — in any right undertaking in which you may be engaged — you will win. When you learn that you have a right to a legitimate dominion over your own affairs, you will have dominion over them. The promise is that we can do all things through the Mind that was in Christ.

      Universal Mind plays no favorites. No one human being has any more power than any other. It is simply that few of us use the power that is in our hands. The great men of the world are in no wise SUPER Beings. They are ordinary creatures like you and me, who have stumbled upon the way of drawing upon their subconscious mind — and through it upon the Universal Mind. Speaking of Henry Ford’s phenomenal success, his friend Thomas A. Edison said of him — “He draws upon his subconscious mind.”

      The secret of being what you have it in you to be is simply this: Decide now what it is you want of life, exactly what you wish your future to be. Plan it out in detail. Vision it from start to finish. See yourself as you are now, doing those things you have always wanted to do. Make them REAL in your mind’s eye — feel them, live them, believe them, especially at the moment of going to sleep, when it is easiest to reach your subconscious mind — and you will soon be seeing them in real life.

      It matters not whether you are young or old, rich or poor. The time to begin is NOW. It is never too late. Remember those lines of Appleton’s:

      I knew his face the moment that he passed

      Triumphant in the thoughtless, cruel throng —

      I gently touched his arm — he smiled at me —

      He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be!

      Where I had failed, he’d won from life, Success;

      Where I had stumbled, with sure feet he stood;

      Alike — yet unalike — we faced the world,

      And through the stress he found that life was good.

      And I? The bitter wormwood in the glass,

      The shadowed way along which failures pass!

      Yet as I saw him thus, joy came to me —

      He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be!

      We did not speak. But in his sapient eyes

      I saw the spirit that had urged him on,

      The courage that had held him through the fight

      Had once been mine. I thought, ‘Can it be gone?’

      He felt that unasked question — felt it so

      His pale lips formed the one-word answer, ‘No!’

      Too late to win? No! Not too late for me —

      He is the Man that Still I Mean to Be!

      Chapter 16 — Unappropriated Millions

      The main difference between the mind of today and that of our great-great-grandfathers was that in their day conditions were comparatively static, whereas today they are dynamic. Civilization ran along for centuries with comparatively little change. Most people lived and died in the places where they were born. They followed their fathers’ avocations. Seldom, indeed, did one of them break out of the class into which he had been born. Almost as seldom did they even think of trying to. No wonder, then, that civilization made little progress.

      Today we are in the presence of continual change. Men are imbued with that divine unrest which is never satisfied with conditions as they are, which is always striving for improvement. And thought is the vital force behind all this change.

      Your ability to think is your connecting link with Universal Mind, that enables you to draw upon It for inspiration, for energy, for power. Mind is the energy in static form. Thought is the energy in dynamic form.

      And because life is dynamic — not static; because it is ever moving forward — not standing still; your success or failure depends entirely upon the quality of your thought.

      For thought is creative energy. It brings into being the things that you think. Think the things you would see manifested, see them, believe them, and you can leave it to your subconscious mind to bring them into being.

      Your mind is a marvelous storage battery of power on which you can draw for whatever things you need to make your life what you would have it be. It has within it all power, all resource, all energy — but YOU are the one that must use it. All that power is static unless you make it dynamic. In the moment of creative thinking your conscious mind becomes a Creator — it partakes of the power of Universal Mind. And there is nothing static about one who shares that All-power. The resistless Life Energy within him pushes him on to new growth, new aspirations. Just as the sap flowing through the branches of the trees pushes off the old dead leaves to make way for the new life, just so you must push away the old dead thoughts of poverty and lack and disease, before you can bring on the new life of health and happiness and unlimited supply.

      This life is in all of us, constantly struggling for an outlet. Repress it — and you die. Doctors will tell you that the only reason people grow old is because their systems get clogged. The tiny pores in your arteries get stopped up. You don’t throw off the old. You don’t struggle hard enough, and the result is you fall an easy victim to failure and sickness and death.

      Remember the story of Sinbad the Sailor, and the Old Man of the Sea? The Old Man’s weight was as nothing when Sinbad first took him on his shoulders, but he clung there and clung there, slowly but surely sapping