As A Man Thinketh by James Allen - Visions and Ideals
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Whether with the law of attraction, thru meditation and exercise, or by a willingness to think and act on thought, we make ourselves what we are.
THE dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is
sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins
and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their
solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let
their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as
the realities which it shall one day see and know.
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers
of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful
because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will
one day realize it. Columbus
cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it; Copernicus
fostered
the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he
revealed it; Buddha
beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect
peace, and he entered into it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs
in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that
drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful
conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true
to them, your world will at last be built.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest
desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest
aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a
condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision
is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy
of what you shall at last unveil.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak
sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest
vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of
realities.
Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain
so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot
travel 'within' and stand still 'without.'
Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labour; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop;
unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of
better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and
beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of
life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession
of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time
and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent
powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the
workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with
his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside,
and, with the growth of opportunities, which fit the scope of his
expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.
Years later we
see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master of certain
forces of the mind, which he wields with worldwide influence and almost
unequalled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic
responsibilities; he speaks, and lo, lives are changed; men and women
hang upon his words and remould their characters, and, sunlike, he
becomes the fixed and luminous centre round which innumerable destinies
revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He has become one
with his Ideal.
And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle
wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for
you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love.
Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts;
you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less.
Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall,
remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will
become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant
aspiration: in the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis,
"You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for
so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find
yourself before an audience--the pen still behind your ear, the ink
stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out the torrent of
your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the
city-bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance
of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall
say, 'I have nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the
master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep.
You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the
regeneration of the world."
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the
apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck,
of fortune, and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he
is!" Observing another become intellectual, they exclaim,
"How highly favoured he is!" And noting the saintly character
and wide influence of another, they remark, "How chance aids him at
every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles
which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their
experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the
undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have
exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and
realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and
the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck".
They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the
pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," do not understand the
process, but only perceive the result, and call it chance.
In all human affairs there are 'efforts', and there
are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of
the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material,
intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they
are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone
in your heart--this you will build your life by, this you will become.
If you need more information about how to take control of your life you will find a very informative website at Law of Attraction Articles.
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