The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran

be six months or a year from now depends upon what you think today.

      So make your choice now:

      Are you going to bow down to matter as the only power? Are you going to look upon your environment as something that has been wished upon you and for which you are in no way responsible? Or are you going to try to realize in your daily life that matter is merely an aggregation of protons and electrons subject entirely to the control of Mind, that your environment, your success, your happiness, are all of your own making, and that if you are not satisfied with conditions as they you have but to visualize them as you would have them be in order to change them?

      The former is the easier way right now — the easy way that leads to the hell of poverty and fear and old age.

      But the latter is the way that brings you to your Heart’s Desire.

      And merely because this Power of Universal Mind is invisible, is that any reason to doubt it? The greatest powers of Nature are invisible. Love is invisible, but what greater power is there in life? Joy is invisible, happiness, peace, and contentment. The radio is invisible — yet you hear it. It is a product of the law governing sound waves. Law is invisible, yet you see the manifestation of different laws every day. To run a locomotive, you study the law of applying power, and you apply that law when you make the locomotive go.

      These things are not the result of invention. The law has existed from the beginning. It merely waited for man to learn how to apply it. If man had known how to call upon Universal Mind to the right extent, he could have applied the law of sound waves, the law of steam, ages ago. Invention is merely a revelation and an unfoldment of Universal Wisdom.

      That same Universal Wisdom knows millions of other laws of which man has not even a glimmering. You can call upon It. You can use that Wisdom as your own. By thinking of things as they might be instead of as they are you will eventually find some great Need. And to find a need is the first step towards finding the supply to satisfy that need. You’ve got to know what you are after, before you can send the Genie-of-your Mind a-seeking of it in Universal Mind.

      The Acre of Diamonds

      You remember the story of the poor Boer farmer who struggled for years to glean a livelihood out of his rocky soil, only to give it up in despair and go off to seek his fortune elsewhere. Years later, coming back to his old farm, he found it swarming with machinery and life — more wealth being dug out of it every day than he had ever dreamed existed. It was the great Kimberley Diamond Mine!

      Most of us are like that poor Boer farmer. We struggle along under our surface power, never dreaming of the giant power that could be ours if we would but dig a little deeper — rouse that great Inner Self who can give us more even than any acre of diamonds.

      As Orison Swett Marden put it:

      “The majority of failures in life are simply the victims of their mental defeats. Their conviction that they cannot succeed as others do, rob them of that vigor and determination which self-confidence imparts, and they don’t even half try to succeed.

      “There is no philosophy by which a man can do a thing when he thinks he can’t. The reason why millions of men are plodding along in mediocrity today, many of them barely making a living, when they have the ability to do something infinitely bigger, is because they lack confidence in themselves. They don’t believe they can do the bigger thing that would lift them out of their rut of mediocrity and poverty; they are not winners mentally.

      “The way always opens for the determined soul, the man of faith and courage.

      “It is the victorious mental attitude, the consciousness of power, the sense of mastership, that does the big things in this world. If you haven’t this attitude, if you lack self-confidence, begin now to cultivate it.

      “A highly magnetized piece of steel will attract and lift a piece of unmagnetized steel ten times its own weight. Demagnetize that same piece of steel and it will be powerless to attract or lift even a feather’s weight.

      “Now, my friends, there is the same difference between the man who is highly magnetized by a sublime faith in himself, and the man who is de-magnetized by his lack of faith, his doubts, his fears, that there is between the magnetized and the de-magnetized pieces of steel. If two men of equal ability, one magnetized by a divine self-confidence, the other demagnetized by fear and doubt, are given similar tasks, one will succeed and the other will fail. The self-confidence of the one multiplies his powers a hundredfold; the lack of it subtracts a hundredfold from the power of the other.”

      Have you ever thought how much of your time is spent in choosing what you shall do, which task you will try, which way you shall go? Every day is a day of decision. We are constantly at crossroads, in our business dealings, our social relations, in our homes; there is always the necessity of a choice. How important then that we have faith in ourselves and in that Infinite intelligence within. “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.” “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

      In this ever-changing material age, with seemingly complex forces all about us, we sometimes cry out that we are driven by force of circumstances. Yet the fact remains that we do those things, which we choose to do. For even though we may not wish to go a certain way, we allow ourselves to pursue it because it offers the least resistance.

      To every man there openeth

      A way, and ways, and a way.

      And the high soul climbs the high way,

      And the low soul gropes the low:

      And in between, on the misty flats,

      The rest drift to and fro.

      But to every man there openeth

      A high way and a low,

      And every man decideth

      The way his soul shall go.

      John Oxenham.

      Now, how about you? Are you taking active control of your own thought? Are you imaging upon your subconscious mind only such things, as you want to see realized? Are you thinking healthy thoughts, happy thoughts, and successful thoughts?

      The difference between the successful man and the unsuccessful one is not so much a matter of training or equipment. It is not a question of opportunity or luck. It is just in the way they each of them look at things.

      The successful man sees an opportunity, seizes upon it, and moves upward another rung on the ladder of success. It never occurs to him that he may fail. He sees only the opportunity, he visions what he can do with it, and all the forces within and without him combine to help him win.

      The unsuccessful man sees the same opportunity, he wishes that he could take advantage of it, but he is fearful that his ability or his money or his credit may not be equal to the task. He is like a timid bather, putting in one foot and then drawing it swiftly back again -and while he hesitates some bolder spirit dashes in and beats him to the goal.

      Nearly every man can look back — and not so far back either with most of us — and say, “If I had taken that chance, I would be much better off now.”

      You will never need to say it again, once you realize that the future is entirely within your own control. It is not subject to the whims of fortune or the capriciousness of luck. There is but one Universal Mind and that mind contains naught but good. In it is no images of Evil. From it comes no lack of supply. Its ideas are as numberless as the grains of sand on the seashore. And those ideas comprise all wealth, all power, and all happiness.

      You have only to image vividly enough on your subconscious mind the thing you wish, to draw from Universal Mind, the necessary ideas to bring it into being. You have only to keep in mind the experiences you wish to meet, in order to control your own future.

      When Frank A. Vanderlip, former President of the National City Bank, was a struggling youngster, he asked a successful friend what one thing he would urge a young man to do who was anxious to make his way in the world. “Look as though you