THE MIRACLES OF RIGHT THOUGHT. Orison Swett Marden

      Preface

       Table of Contents

      The demand during its first two years for nearly an edition a month of Peace, Power, and Plenty, the author’s last book and its re-publication in England, Germany, and France, together with the hundreds of letters received from readers, many of whom say that it has opened up a new world of possibilities to them by enabling them to discover and make use of forces within themselves which they never before knew they possessed, all seem to be indications of a great hunger of humanity for knowledge of what we may call the new gospel of optimism and love, the philosophy of sweetness and light, which aims to show how people can put themselves beyond the possibility of self-wreckage from ignorance, deficiencies, weaknesses, and even vicious tendencies, and which promises long-looked-for relief from the slavery of poverty, limitation, ill-health, and all kinds of success and happiness enemies.

      The author’s excuse for putting out this companion volume, The Miracle of Right Thought, is the hope of arousing the reader to discover the wonderful forces in the Great Within of themselves which, if they could unlock and utilize, would lift them out of the region of anxiety and worry, eliminate most, if not all, of the discords and frictions of life, and enable them to make of themselves everything they ever imagined they could and longed to become.

      The book teaches the divinity of right desire; it tries to show that the Creator never mocked us with yearnings for that which we have no ability or possibility of attaining; that our heart longings and aspirations are prophecies, forerunners, indications of the existence of the obtainable reality, that there is an actual powerful creative force in our legitimate desires, in believing with all our hearts that, no matter what the seeming obstacles, we shall be what we were intended to be and do what we were made to do; in visualizing, affirming things as we would like to have them, as they ought to be; in holding the ideal of that which we wish to come true, and only that, the ideal of the man or woman we would like to become, in thinking of ourselves as absolutely perfect beings possessing superb health, a magnificent body, a vigorous constitution, and a sublime mind.

      It teaches that we should strangle every idea of deficiency, imperfection, or inferiority, and however much our apparent conditions of discord, weaknesses, poverty, and ill-health may seem to contradict, cling tenaciously to our vision of perfection, to the divine image of ourselves, the ideal which the Creator intended for His children; should affirm vigorously that there can be no inferiority or depravity about the man God made, for in the truth of our being we are perfect and immortal; because our mental attitude, what we habitually think, furnishes a pattern which the life processes are constantly weaving, outpicturing in the life.

      The book teaches that fear is the great human curse, that it blights more lives, makes more people unhappy and unsuccessful than any other one thing; that worry-thoughts, fear-thoughts, are so many malignant forces within us poisoning the very sources of life, destroying harmony, ruining efficiency, while the opposite thoughts heal, soothe instead of irritate, and increase efficiency and multiply mental power; that every cell in the body suffers or is a gainer, gets a life impulse or a death impulse, from every thought that enters the mind, for we tend to grow into the image of that which we think about most, love the best; that the body is really our thoughts, moods, convictions objectified, outpictured, made visible to the eye. “The Gods we worship write their names on our faces.” The face is carved from within by invisible tools; our thoughts, our moods, our emotions are the chisels.

      It is the table of contents of our life history; a bulletin board upon which is advertised what has been going on inside of us.

      The author believes that there is no habit which will bring so much of value to the life as that of always carrying an optimistic, hopeful attitude of really expecting that things are going to turn out well with us and not ill, that we are going to succeed and not fail, are going to be happy and not miserable.

      He points out that most people neutralize a large part of their efforts because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that although working for one thing, they are really expecting something else, and what we expect, we tend to get; that there is no philosophy or science by which an individual can arrive at the success goal when they are facing the other way, when every step they take is on the road to failure, when they talk like a failure, act like a failure, for prosperity begins in the mind and is impossible while the mental attitude is hostile to it.

      No one can become prosperous while they really expect or half expect to be always poor, for holding the poverty-thought keeps them in touch with poverty-producing conditions.

      The author tries to show