Lesson Fourteen - Your Mental Attitude
As a being of thought, your dominant mental attitude will determine
your condition in life. It will also be the gauge of your knowledge and
the measures of your attainment. The so-called limitations of your nature
are the boundary lines of your thoughts; they are self-erected fences,
and can be drawn to a narrower circle, extended to a wider, or be
allowed to remain.
You are the thinker of your thoughts and as such you are the maker of
yourself and condition. Thought is causal and creative, and appears in
your character and life in the form of results. There are no accidents
in your life. Both its harmonies and antagonisms are the responsive
echoes of your thoughts. A man thinks, and his life appears.
If your dominant mental attitude is peaceable and lovable, bliss and
blessedness will follow you; if it be resistant and hateful, trouble and
distress will cloud your pathway. Out of ill-will will come grief and
disaster; out of good-will, healing and reparation.
You imagine your circumstances as being separate from yourself, but
they are intimately related to your thought world. Nothing appears without
an adequate cause. Everything that happens is just. Nothing is fated,
everything is formed.
As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract. You are today where
your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your
thoughts take you. You cannot escape the result of your thoughts, but you can
endure and learn, can accept and be glad.
You will always come to the place where your love (your most abiding
and intense thought) can receive its measure of gratification. If your
love be base, you will come to a base place; if it be beautiful, you will
come to a beautiful place.
You can alter your thoughts, and so alter your condition. Strive to
perceive the vastness and grandeur of your responsibility. You are
powerful, not powerless. You are as powerful to obey as you are to disobey; as
strong to be pure as to be impure; as ready for wisdom as for
ignorance. You can learn what you will, can remain as ignorant as you choose.
If you love knowledge you will obtain it; if you love wisdom you will
secure it; if you love purity you will realise it. All things await your
acceptance, and you choose by the thoughts which you entertain.
A person remains ignorant because they love ignorance, and choose
ignorant thoughts; a person becomes wise because they love wisdom and choose
wise thoughts. No one is hindered by another; a person is only
hindered by themselves. No one suffers because of another; they suffer only
because of themselves. By the noble Gateway of Pure Thought you can enter
the highest Heaven; by the ignoble doorway of impure thought you can
descend into the lowest hell.
Your mental attitude towards others will faithfully react upon
yourself, and will manifest itself in every relation of your life. Every impure
and selfish thought that you send out comes back to you in your
circumstances in some form of suffering; every pure and unselfish thought
returns to you in some form of blessedness. Your circumstances are effects
of which the cause is inward and invisible. As the father-mother of
your thoughts you are the maker of your state and condition. When you
know yourself, you will perceive, that every event in your life is weighed
in the faultless balance of equity. When you understand the law within
your mind you will cease to regard yourself as the impotent and blind
tool of circumstances, and will become the strong and seeing master.
The fact that every mental state will express its nature in body, mind
and character, proves that we can, through the intelligent use of
mental action, cause the body to become more beautiful, the mind more
brilliant, character more powerful and the soul-life more ideal. To
accomplish these things, however, it is necessary to apply the law continuously
in that direction where we desire to secure results.
There are many laws to apply in the beginning of a great life, but the
law that lies at the foundation of them all is the law of love. It is
love that determines what we are to think, what we are to work for,
where we are to go, and what we are to accomplish. Therefore, among all
great essentials, the principal one is to know how to love.
To apply this essential for all practical purposes, the secret is to
love the great, the beautiful, and the ideal in everybody and in
everything; and to love with such a strong, passionate love that its ascending
power becomes irresistible. The whole of life will thus change and go
up with the power of love into the great, the superior and the ideal;
everything, both in your being and in your environment will advance and
change accordingly, and the dreams of the soul will come true. The ideal
will become real, the desires of the heart will be granted, and what
you have hoped to make your own will be absent no more.