The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran

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 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