How To Attract Success

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The lily never throws up its hands nor says, Oh, dear me! Theres no use of me trying to get any life or sustenance where all these other things, bigger and stronger and more powerful than I, are calling for it; it never says that the big trees the trusts of the vegetable kingdom have gobbled up everything and we little fellows do not have any chance any more; it never says, I have done this all my life and still I am only a lily instead of a rose; but holding continuously and persistently to the vision of the thing it wants to be, its call goes out morning, noon, and night, persistently and everlastingly for the thing it wants, and in response to its call the tiny rootlet creeps down into the earth and the stem peeps up into the sunshine from out the clods, and little by little, day by day, does the thing for which it continuously calls materialize in form.

When we learn to have the faith of the mustard seed, the lily, etc., that is when we have established in our lives the fixed habit of filling out thought world with the thought, the vision, the image of the thing we want, then that thing will begin to materialize in form around us like the lily and the mustard seed materialize their conscious call. This faith this consciousness can be developed in every life, and somewhere down the line of our cosmic journey we one and all will develop it.

Some will succeed in doing so in this incarnation, perhaps in a few days, a few weeks, or a few months, while others may take many incarnations in which to develop it. It is for each life to say how quickly the work will be accomplished for itself.

CHAPTER 8

Every day we meet persons who, upon being taught these things, will say that they have all this great faith; that they believe all these wonderful truths and practice them, yet they do not achieve success. Why? In all such cases I have found one of two things to be true, either their understanding of faith was like that of the old woman who prayed long and earnestly one night that God might remove the high hill at the back of her house in order that she might have a better view; upon arising the next morning she looked out of the window and finding the hill still there exclaimed, Just as I expected!

Occasionally, however, we do find those who undoubtedly have the faith and belief, and practice them with great understanding, and yet do not succeed. In such cases I have always found that an interior in harmony existed.

Sometimes it had existed for so long and the persons had gotten so used to it that at first they honestly denied its existence, but a deeper study into their consciousness told the story of their interior in harmony, through which they generated the negative energy that prevented them from materializing the thing they wanted. I have had many cases of patients and students who were strong, powerful creators, but who had reached of period in their existence where it seemed impossible for them to materialize any of their constructive creations; they materialized their destructive ones fast enough, but their constructive creations seemed impossible of actualization.

An examination into the consciousness and habits of such persons showed that their work was done under more or less of a strain; that they were invariably anxious or tense, rarely ever relaxing, with the result that they generated an inharmonious energy, constructed an inharmonious wall around them in which they were enclosed like a shell; this prevented the things that they had created, and which stood just outside of this wall or shell, from entering their atmosphere and materializing in form.

Just as soon as this wall of in harmony could be dissipated and dissolved, through treatments for harmony, and the patients taught how to relate with the harmonious currents through deep breathing and proper affirmations, the things which had been created before in their thought world began to materialize in form around them. A woman came to me once who said that for six months she had been answering an average of twenty advertisements a week for a position as stenographer but had failed to receive one reply to all her applications. Just think of the kind of a consciousness which could send out over 500 letters to people who wanted a stenographer (the kind of services she had to give) but yet could not relate with one reply, and was not even given an opportunity to demonstrate her ability.