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The Secret of the Ages, by Robert Collier, [1926], at sacred-texts.com
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You'll always respect him.
For he not only has made good, but he always will make good. He has found and appropriated to himself the
[paragraph continues] "Talisman of Napoleon"—absolute confidence in himself.
The world loves a leader. All over the world, in every walk of life, people are eagerly seeking for some one to follow. They want some one else to do their thinking for them; they need some one to hearten them to action; they like to have some one else on whom to lay the blame when things go wrong; they want some one big enough to share the glory with them when success crowns his efforts.
But to instill confidence in them, that leader must have utter confidence in himself. A Roosevelt or a Mussolini who did not believe in himself would he inconceivable. It is that which makes men invincible—the Consciousness of their own Power. They put no limit upon their own capacities—therefore
they have no limit. For Universal Mind sees all, knows all, and can do all, and we share in this absolute power to the exact extent to which we permit ourselves. Our mental attitude is the magnet that attracts from Universal Mind everything we may need to bring our desires into being. We make that magnet strong or weak as we have confidence in or doubt of our abilities. We draw to ourselves unlimited power or limit ourselves to humble positions according to our own beliefs.
A long time ago Emerson wrote: "There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel;
what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this Universal Mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent."
The great German physicist, Nernst, found that the longer an electric current was made to flow through a filament of oxide of magnesium, the greater became the conductivity of the filament.
In the same way, the more you call upon and use your subconscious mind, the greater becomes its conductivity in passing along to you the infinite resources of Universal Mind. The wisdom of a Solomon, the skill of a Michael Angelo, the genius of an Edison, the daring of a Napoleon, all may be yours. It rests with you only to form the contact with Universal Mind in order to draw from it what you will.
Think of this power as something that you can connect with any time. It has the answer to all of your problems. It offers you freedom from fear, from worry, from sickness, from accident. No man and no thing can interfere with your use of this power or diminish your spare of it. No one, that is, but yourself.
Don Carlos Musser expresses it well in "You Are":
"Because of the law of gravitation the apple falls to the ground. Because of the law of growth the acorn becomes a mighty oak. Because of the law of causation, a man is 'as he thinketh in his heart.' Nothing can happen without its adequate cause."
Success does not come to you by accident. It comes as the logical result of the operation of law. Mind, working
through your brain and your body, makes your world. That it is not a better world and a bigger one, is due to your limited thoughts and beliefs. They dam back the flood of ideas that Mind is constantly striving to manifest through you. God never made a failure or a nobody. He offers to the highest and the lowest alike, all that is necessary to happiness and success. The difference is entirely in the extent to which each of us AVAILS himself of that generosity.
There is no reason why you should hesitate to aspire to any position, any honor, any goal, for the Mind within you is fully able to meet any need. It is no more difficult for it to handle a great problem than a small one. Mind is just as much present in your little everyday affairs as in those of a big business or a great nation. Don't set it doing trifling
rums in arithmetic when it might just as well be solving problems of moment to yourself and the world.
Start something! Use your initiative. Give your mind something to work upon. The greatest of all success secrets is initiative. It is the one quality which more than any other has put men in high places.
Conceive something. Conceive it first in your own mind. Make the pattern there and your subconscious mind will draw upon the plastic substance or energy all about you to make that model real.
Drive yourself. Force yourself. It is the dreamer, the man with imagination, who has made the world move. Without him, we would still be in the Stone Age.
Galileo looked at the moon and dreamed of how he might reach it. The telescope was the fruition of that dream.
[paragraph continues] Watt dreamed of what might be done with steam—and our great locomotives and engines of today are the result. Franklin dreamed of harnessing the lightning—and today we have man-made thunderbolts.
Initiative, plus imagination, will take you anywhere. Imagination opens the eyes of the mind, and there is nothing good you can image there that is not possible of fulfillment in your daily life.
Imagination is the connecting link between the human and the Divine, between the formed universe and formless energy. It is, of all things human, the most God-like. It is our part of Divinity. Through it we share in the creative power of Universal Mind. Through it we can turn the most drab existence into a thing of life and beauty. It is the means by which we avail ourselves
of all the good which Universal Mind is constantly offering to us in such profusion. It is the means by which we can reach any goal, win any prize.
What was it gave us the submarine, the aeroplane, wireless, electricity? Imagination. What was it that enabled man to build the Simplon Tunnel, the Panama Canal, the Hell Gate span? Imagination. What is it that makes us successful and happy, or poor and friendless? Imagination—or the lack of it.
It was imagination that sent Spanish and English and French adventurers to this new world. It was imagination that urged the early settlers westward—ever westward. It was imagination that built out railroads, our towns, our great cities.
Parents foolishly try to discourage imagination in their children, when all it needs is proper guidance. For imagination
forms the world from which their future will take its shape. Restrain the one and you constrict the other. Develop the one in the right way, and there is no limit to the other. Uncontrolled, the imagination is like a rudderless ship. Or even, at times, like the lightning. But properly controlled, it is like the ship that carries riches from port to port. Or like the electric current, carrying unlimited power for industry and progress.
Do you want happiness? Do you want success? Do you want position, power, riches? Image them! How did God first make man? "In his image created He him." He "imaged" man in His Mind.
And that is the way everything has been made since time began. It was first imaged in Mind. That is the way everything
you want must start—with a mental image.
So use your imagination! Picture in it your Heart's Desire. Imagine it—daydream it so vividly, so clearly, that you will actually BELIEVE you HAVE it. In the moment that you carry this conviction to your subconscious mind—in that moment your dream will become a reality. It may be a while before you realize it, but the important part is done. You have created the model. You can safely leave it to your subconscious mind to do the rest.
When Jesus adjured His disciples—"Whatsoever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye RECEIVE it," He was not only telling them a great truth, but he was teaching what we moderns would call excellent psychology as well. For this "belief" is what acts upon the subconscious
mind. It is through this "belief" that formless energy is compressed into material form.
Every man wants to get out of the rut, to grow, to develop into something better. Here is the open road—open to you whether you have schooling, training, position, wealth, or not. Remember this: Your subconscious mind knew more from the time you were a baby than is in all the books in all the colleges and libraries of the world.
So don't let lack of training, lack of education, hold you back. Your mind can meet every need—and will do so if you give it the chance. The Apostles were almost all poor men, uneducated men, yet they did a work that is unequalled in historical annals. Joan of Arc was a poor peasant girl, unable to read or write—yet she saved France! The pages
of history are dotted with poor men, uneducated men, who thought great thoughts, who used their imaginations to master circumstances and became rulers of men. Most great dynasties started with some poor, obscure man. Napoleon came of a poor, humble family. He got his appointment to the Military Academy only through very hard work and the pulling of many political strings. Even as a Captain of Artillery he was so poverty-stricken that he was unable to buy his equipment when offered an appointment to India. Business today is full of successful men who have scarcely the rudiments of ordinary education. It was only after he had made his millions that Andrew Carnegie hired a tutor to give him the essentials of an education.
So it isn't training and it isn't education
that make you successful. These help, but the thing that really counts is that gift of the Gods—Creative Imagination!
You have that gift. Use it! Make every thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit. Make it work and produce for you. Think of things—not as they are but as they MIGHT be. Make them real, live and interesting. Don't merely dream—but CREATE! Then use your imagination to make that CREATION of advantage to mankind—and, incidentally, yourself.