[119] No man has the slightest
conception of the Law of Attraction
abstracted from the living organisms
in which it is manifested. We can
only perceive it by that which
recognizes it. It is growth in the
tree; it is development in the
animal; it is evolution in all
nature; and in all things, from low
to high, evolution is prompted by the
desire of the organized creature
pushing forth to its own
accomplishment. Then all we can know
of the Law is made manifest through
desire. We cannot do otherwise than
believe in the law. Therefore, we
cannot do otherwise than believe in
desire. To throw ourselves upon our
desires and trust them is to throw
ourselves upon the Law and trust its
absolute infallibility.
In spite of the manner in which we
have crucified our desires, they have
still operated to work all the
benefit the world has ever received.
Look back to the cave dwellers, and
farther, and see that the course of
the race has been progressive and not
retrogressive. Is not this so? And
what influence has operated to
produce this constant improvement;
this greater and still greater
manifestation of the Law? I answer,
it has all been unfolded from the
actualization of the desires of man.
Every change in government, from the
nomadic tribes up through kingcraft
to our democracy, has been the
growing desires of man acting upon
the negative creations about him.
The world exists for the
unfoldment of man’s desires.
The unfoldment of man’s desires
is the unfoldment of the man. The
unfoldment of the man is the making
of the latent possibilities of the
Law manifest in the world of effects,
and the multiplying a thousand-fold
the new uses by which the whole race
shall climb the ladder of
civilization to higher heights than
any previous civilization has ever
attained, or ever dreamed possible of
attainment.
I am my own eternal “want
to.” I want to do this, and I
want to do that, and every
“want to” is the impulse
of the Law of Life which I do but
embody for the purpose of showing it
forth. The Law of Attraction, or the
Life Principle--which is the Law or
organization by which atoms cohere in
the myriad of forms we see in
nature--pushes through my “want
to.” Shall I believe in the
law, and execute this “want
to,” or shall I say, “The
Law is all wrong; it is a sinful,
wretched affair,” and so turn
aside and drift with the inorganic
negatives which my “want
to” could control if I could
but trust it?
My “want to” is my
immortal self-hood. It points forever
in the direction of happiness; and I
have but one object in life--that of
being happy. That my “want
to” may lead me in the wrong
direction is not to be considered for
a moment. It is sure to do so,
because we are but children in the
dark groping toward the light, and
[120] we hurt ourselves and others in
the effort. But with happiness as the
goal of every effort--the one eternal
enticement--“all roads lead to
Rome.” The lode-star of the
spirit’s everlasting yearning
is always shining fair and clear, and
our eyes never waver in the
intentness with which we regard it,
even though our feet may be the
brambles in the path, and our bodies
bruised all over in blind collision
with our struggling bodies on the
same journey. As the star becomes
brighter and the light clearer, there
will be fewer mistakes. And
eventually, in the broad light of
splendid day, we will perceive that
the desirable is the attainable, not
only for ourselves, but for all; that
the supply is equal to the demand;
and then competition will have
developed into emulation, where each
one, instead of striving to
get the most good, will strive
to do the most good.
I find myself quoting a good deal
from the Bible, and yet I have none
of that superstitious clinging to the
Bible that marks the theologian. I
have been a student of it, and it
contains some remarkable things that
have been quite overlooked by the
clergy--one of which is that there is
no special reference made to the
future state of life after death. All
the promises refer to a fulfillment
in this world. In fact, everything
points to a time when death should be
overcome right here, and when the
“Lord’s chosen”
should inhabit the earth forever. The
two factors that were to bring about
this condition were expressed in the
words “believe” and
“overcome.”
To Him Who Conquers
Every promise in the Bible is to
him who conquers. Belief comes
first, and then conquest.
“To him that overcometh
will I give to eat of the tree of
life, which is in the paradise of
God.”
“He that overcometh shall
not be hurt of the second
death.”
“To him that overcometh
will I give of the hidden manna,
and I will give him a white stone,
and on that stone a name written
which no man knoweth but he that
receiveth it.”
“And he that overcometh,
and he that keepeth my works unto
the end (works out my desires), to
him I give authority over the
nations.”
“He that overcometh shall
be arrayed in white garments, and I
will in no wise blot his name out
of the Book of Life; and I will
confess his name before my Father
and before the angels.”
“He that overcometh, I
will make him a pillar in the
temple of my God, and he shall go
out no more.”
“To him that overcometh I
will give to sit down with me in my
throne, as I also overcame and sat
down with the Father on His
throne.”
To him that overcomes is every
promise made. And what is it that is
to be overcome? The religion of the
world says that it is our desires
that are to be overcome.
I say that if desire could be
overcome (which it cannot be, though
the pressure upon it has forced it
into a great variety of dreadful
expressions) the Life Principle would
be overcome; and nature--which is the
visible and audible manifestation of
the Life Principle--would be wiped
out.
To overcome presupposes that which
is to overcome, and that which is to
be overcome. That which is to
overcome is the Life Principle in
man, as expressed in desire. That
which is to be overcome is all that
stands in the way of the fullest
expansion and operation of
man’s desires.
And what is it that stands most in
the way of the expansion and
operation of man’s desire? It
is the thousand and one ignorant
beliefs into which the race is born;
beliefs that hedge our desire at
every step; that press in on us more
and more, making us reflections of
themselves instead of reflections of
Life, thus marring and maiming, and
finally killing us.
These beliefs are real conditions.
Everything being mind, all conditions
are beliefs and all beliefs are
conditions. [121] These beliefs or
conditions, then, are the crude
surroundings which await us at birth,
and which are our tools and servants,
to be used by us in working out our
desires to larger ends than we have
yet dreamed of, thus making them our
allies in the more perfect
manifestation of the Life Principle
in the world.
It has been said that a man is a
bundle of beliefs; and so he is after
being pressed into conformity with
the world’s beliefs; but in his
primordial essence he is not a bundle
of beliefs, but a bundle of desires.
As spoken from out of that unexplored
void from whence all life issues, he
is an aggravating spark of pure sex
fire, to grow and grow forever
through his loves or desires--these
loves, or desires, stretching forth
all the time and crying, “More,
more!” And he entered this
world of negative beliefs, not to
conform to these beliefs, but to
shape them to his own liking. There
is a life of perpetual conquest
before him; perpetual overcoming.
And does man conquer? No, not yet.
He conforms to the negative beliefs
into which he was born. Now and then
he presents a weak face of
semi-resistance to them, always to
back down from the contest, defeated.
Indeed, he is defeated before he
begins the contest--defeated by the
belief that even his God is against
him; for he has been educated to
believe this. And yet, being a bundle
of desires, he attempts to actualize
them in spite of his belief that they
are of the devil. He temporizes with
his conscience on this point to a
certain extent, and in the meantime
builds ramparts, as it were, for his
own protection against the
overwhelming and constantly
encroaching negatives; not knowing
that his desires are meant for his
guides; not knowing that desire is
the heaven-born master of belief, and
that he, as the incarnation of
desire, has only to announce his
mastery in order to see belief give
way before him until it is utterly
routed and destroyed.
When the full understanding of
this great truth--that desire is the
master of those conditions or beliefs
that have so long mastered us--first
burst upon me, I was as one reborn.
The very moment this great truth
worked its slow way through my
thought, and at last banished every
cobweb of doubt, I stood revealed to
myself as a babe just come into a new
world. And, indeed, it was so. I was
born out of earth beliefs, into the
heaven of unlimited aspiration and
unlimited fruition.
Forever in search of truth and
never before satisfied to rest one
moment, I yet knew, at this point,
that I had found a resting place; a
place not on the incline where I
might slip back again, but on the
summit where it was safe to rest. And
for several days I did rest just like
a sleeping infant who has passed
safely from its dark, narrow,
embryonic home into the world of air
and light and freedom. I knew that I
was safe; I knew that my feet had
been placed on the right road, and
all I had to do was to push forward;
to push forward to overcome those
negatives which had so long been my
master. Being born into the truth, I
felt that I had nothing to do but to
grow in it.
After a few days, I began to
question myself whether I was really
growing or not. I went over the old
ground. “I am reborn,” I
said, “into the true life of
love, whose manifestation is
aspiration, but why do I still remain
so weak?” The answer came. I
had crushed my desires so long they
were almost dead. I recalled the
time, and almost the hour, when I
could look into the shop windows upon
the splendid array of velvets and
laces and jewels without wishing any
for myself. I recalled how, at that
time, I had congratulated myself on
the self-conquest this fact showed
forth. I did not know that the amount
of self-conquest the circumstance
registered, also registered the
amount of deadness that had come to
me as the result of my supposed
victory. I remembered how (long ago)
any little disappointment nearly
[122] broke my heart, and how glad I
was, as time passed, to be able to
have my desires crushed without such
keen suffering. But every bit of
palliation brought by the years was
evidence of the amount of death each
crushed desire had left; until at
last, when the great truth for which
I had been so long searching burst
upon me, I seemed already dead in the
death of every hope my nature had
ever given birth to. I was in that
fearful and most irreclaimable
condition called
“content.” I was fast
becoming an old woman--something I
never intended to be. I saw the whole
situation. If I intended to live and
grow in the new life to which I had
been born through my intelligence, I
must, indeed, become again as a
little child.
And what is it to become again as
a little child? It is to be one
continual incarnation of
“want,” and to want not
only with my soul, but with my body,
for body and soul are one. A child is
all want; and the moment its thought
goes after a new want, its hands
reach for it. Of course, the child
and its wants are but the type of the
man and his wants.
Then, in trying to gain strength
after my new birth, my first denial
was this: “No, I am not dead in
negation.” (This being dead in
negation of life is what the Bible
calls being “dead in trespasses
and sins against God”--as
manifested in our natural
desires.)
This was the death that I denied.
“I am not dead, but only
sleeping. I will awake. I will
sedulously affirm the existence of
all those pure and harmless desires I
once tried to overcome” (too
successfully). And so I tried to make
myself believe that new dresses and
new rings were desirable; and, above
all things, that the desire for
anything whatever that would quicken
the expiring vitality was desirable.
For vitality, which is Life, is born
of desire--the child of love.
To overcome our doubts of the
divinity of our own desires is now in
order. How are we to do this?
We are to do it first of all by a
calm, clear conviction that desire is
the spirit of growth in man, as in
all things. We can only get this
conviction by much thought and
introspection. Look within yourself
fearlessly, and in utter disregard of
the opinions of the churches and of
all your friends and acquaintances
for demonstration of this truth.
Cultivate your own powers of analysis
by the closest observation, and turn
a deaf ear to everything that does
not conform to the conclusion you
come to.
