Your Forces and How to Use Them (Complete Six Volume Edition). Prentice Mulford
the power, first of attracting thought, and next of sending that thought out again. You do not, of yourself, make your thought: you only receive and feel it as it comes to you.
What kind of thought you most charge that magnet (your mind) with, or set it open to receive, it will attract most of that kind to you. If, then, you think, or keep most in mind, the mere thought of determination, hope, cheerfulness, strength, force, power, justice, gentleness, order, and precision, you will attract and receive more and more of such thought-elements.
These are among the elements of success. These qualities are of thought-element as real things as any we see or feel. The more you set the magnet in this direction, the stronger it grows to attract these elements.
Whatever of thought you think or receive, you send from you again, an invisible substance to act on others.
Your own thought is now in the air, acting on and attracting to you of its kind the thought of others, whose bodies you may never have seen. The people you are in the future to meet, who may help or damage your fortunes, are those whose thought in like manner sent far from their bodies has already met and mingled with your own. That attraction tends to bring you together in the body. It will certainly bring you together in some form of existence.
When determined thought meets determined thought, and unites on a similar purpose, a double power for success comes of such union, be the bodies used by such thought, mind, or spirit, in the same house or a thousand miles apart. But if you are thinking most of the time discouragement or anger, or any form of ill-temper, you are sending hundreds and thousands of miles away from your body this thought-element of discouragement, hopelessness, or anger, literally a part of your unseen self. It attracts, meets and mingles with the same thought-element similarly sent out by others (parts of such people). So it attracts you to them, your partners in misery. You hurt each other’s health and fortune.
A thought attracts thought of like kind. Keep any thought fixed in your mind, say the thought of strength or health, and you attract to you more and more of the thought-element of strength and health. Keep in mind the idea of force, “go-ahead,” push, and you attract to you in element that which gives you force, push, and go-ahead.
So long as you are in a confident, determined, serene frame of mind, having some special aim in view based on right and justice, so long are you moving in this way the strongest silent power of your thought in attracting to you the persons you need to co-operate with. If your aim is not based on right and justice, you will still move this silent power of your mind, but it will not affect results so beneficial to you as your thought based on your highest idea of right.
If you wish to gain through deceit and craft, you can do so. You will attract, by the same law and method, deceitful and dishonest thought in advance of its body. You will then work with the dishonest in the body. Dishonest mind herds together through a natural law. The dishonest are certain to injure each other at last in some way.
A thought, be it good or bad, is a thing or construction of unseen element as real as a tree, a flower, a clock. It is already-made before you think or receive it, as your mind through its mood, frame, or attitude attracts it. As you think it, you put it out again to act, move, or influence others. But your thought spoken or whispered in the privacy of your room is put out with more force so to act on others than if you merely “think it.” And if two or more persons talk together without wrangle or disagreement on a common purpose in any business, they send out a proportionately greater volume of force to work on other minds relative to such business. If your company so putting out thought-element or force do not agree, if they are angry and wrangle with each other, the force so sent from them is injurious to that business. If they talk peacefully, and will set aside individual preferences or prejudices in order to work out the common purpose in view, the thought or force they generate is constructive, and acts favorably on other minds far and near to advance that business.
So whenever you think, you are affecting your fortunes for good or ill; and whenever you talk to others, you are making a force still greater to make or lose for you health, friends, and money. Every thought of yours, silent or spoken, has a literal value.
If you receive (that is, think) the thought that you cannot succeed in any undertaking, that thought also goes out, meets and attracts other discouraged, despondent “I can’t” thought, brings you nearer and nearer the hopeless, fretting people’s bodies it is in advance of, injures your health and all pushing business ability, and brings you at last in personal contact with people who only help to ruin each other.
You are working then your thought-power for nonsuccess. You can use this power to bring you good or ill results, as you can use the locomotive to carry your body on a journey, or to crush your body by throwing yourself before it.
Whatever plan or scheme of business you fix your mind persistently upon in the determination to succeed, it commences then as a thought-construction of unseen element to draw aiding forces to you. By “aiding forces” is meant first, ever-growing fertility of mind to breed new plans for pushing your business; secondly, drawing to you the best people to aid you in your plans.
Do not waste your power in looking for such aiding forces with your body. Let silent, persistent resolve in mind do the work. It will do it if you persevere holding to this frame of mind. It is no new power, though possibly new to most of us. It is constantly, though unconsciously, exercised for good or ill all about us. Because your body is not the only power you have to work with. Your body is only the instrument used by your mind, or spirit. Your mind, your invisible self, uses your body in, say, cutting down a tree, or other work of hand, exactly as your body uses the axe. But when such force (thought) is not using the body, it is at work with greater power elsewhere.
To think persistent resolve, to think persistent push in your one aim and purpose,—to simply think it, and do nothing else,—will create for you a power as certain to move and effect results as the jackscrews placed under the heaviest building will move it upward. The power you so create of your mind and of unseen forces will work while you sleep. It will bring to you new devices, plans, and methods for moving your business forward. And as you get these plans, they will move your body to act. You cannot sit still when an idea that means business comes to you: such idea is for you power. But you can tire your body to such an extent that you will have no power to receive an idea when it does come. All successful business is based on a continual in-flowing of new idea, plan, device, scheme.
Your spirit, or thought, acts and works on others while your body sleeps. It may do this with those whose bodies are also asleep. If you are angry or discouraged on going to sleep, your invisible self on leaving its body will probably be attracted to some other angry or discouraged nature. The better mood you are in on quitting your body at night, and entering on your other existence, the better the thought or person you will meet in that existence to further your purpose. If you have no purpose, you will then probably meet with another purposeless nature. To have no special purpose in life, to simply drift, is to have nothing on which to focus or concentrate your thought-power. If it is not so concentrated, but scattered, fastening on one thing to-day, and another to-morrow, you will be restless, moping, and unhappy in mind. If unhappy in mind, you can never be healthy in body.
Spirit, or thought, is always active, be the body asleep or awake. When the body is unconscious in sleep, your mind then enters on its other phase of life and activity. You have only exchanged one form of existence for another. When you awake, you do literally “take the body up” to use for purposes on the earth-stratum of life.
Your thought acts on others, for or against you, far and near, while you are awake. But it acts more strongly on those to whom it is attracted when your body sleeps. It is then less distracted by the hopes, fears, prejudices, customs, and surroundings of its body-life. It is better, then, if you have any purpose in view, not to fix your thought too strongly when awake on such persons as you may think may co-operate with you, because your spirit, when out of its body, has a much wider range of acquaintance and action than when using its body. You may concentrate its force overmuch, while it holds the body, on some person less likely to help you than the person or thought to which it is attracted while away from the body. In such case its force is placed in two directions when it should be but in one. Talking your business plan or project