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Prosperity
Chapter 6
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[Prosperity]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Lesson Six
Wealth of Mind Expresses Itself in Riches
PROSPERITY, according to Webster, is an advance or gain in
anything good or desirable, successful progress toward, or
attainment of a desired object. Prosperity does not mean
the same thing to any two persons. To the wage earner an
increase of a few dollars in the weekly income may seem
like wonderful prosperity, for it means an increase in the
comfort and welfare of his family. The man who engages in
vast enterprises reckons prosperity in larger terms, and
does not consider himself prosperous unless things are
coming to him in a big way. Between these extremes are many
ideas of prosperity, which shows quite plainly that
prosperity is not in the possession of things but in the
recognition of supply and in the knowledge of free and open
access to an inexhaustible storehouse of all that is good
or desirable.
In the great Mind of God there is no thought of lack, and
such a thought has no rightful place in your mind. It is
your birthright to be prosperous, regardless of who you are
or where you may be.
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Jesus said to all men, "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you." This does not mean that if you belong to a certain
church you will be prospered, for "righteousness" is not
conforming to some particular religious belief but to the
law of right thinking, regardless of creed, dogma, or
religious form. Get into the prosperity thought and you
will demonstrate prosperity. Cultivate the habit of
thinking about abundance everywhere present, not only in
the forms of imagination but in forms without. Jesus did
not make a separation between the two as though they were
at enmity. He said, "Render therefore unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are
God's." Put things in their right relation, the spiritual
first and the material following, each where it belongs,
and render to each its own.
Realize first of all that prosperity is not wholly a matter
of capital or environment but a condition brought about by
certain ideas that have been allowed to rule in the
consciousness. When these ideas are changed the conditions
are changed in spite of environment and all appearances,
which must also change to conform to the new ideas. People
who come into riches suddenly without building up a
consciousness of prosperity soon part from their money.
Those who are born and bred to riches usually have plenty
all their life even though they never make the effort to
earn a dollar for themselves. This is because the ideas of
plenty are so interwoven
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into their thought atmosphere that they are a very part of
themselves. They have the prosperity consciousness, in
which there is no idea of any condition under which the
necessities of life could be lacking.
We are sometimes asked whether we advocate the accumulation
of riches. No. The accumulation of riches, as has been
explained, is futile unless it is the outgrowth of a rich
consciousness. We advocate the accumulation rather of rich
ideas, ideas that are useful, constructive, and of service
to the well-being of all mankind. The outer manifestation
of riches may follow or it may not, but the supply for
every need will be forthcoming because the man of rich
ideas has confidence in an all-providing power that never
fails. He may not have an extra dollar, but his ideas have
merit and he has confidence, a combination that cannot fail
to attract the money to carry him forward. This is true
riches, not an accumulation of money, but access to an
inexhaustible resource that can be drawn on at any time to
meet any righteous demand. When a person has this rich
consciousness there is no necessity for laying up gold or
accumulating stocks and bonds or other property to ensure
future supply. Such a one may be most generous with his
wealth without fear of depletion, because his rich ideas
will keep him in constant touch with abundance. Those who
have the thought of accumulating material wealth, a thought
that is dominant in the world today, are unbalanced. They
have a fear of the loss of riches
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that makes their tenure insecure. Their prosperity is based
on a wrong idea of the source of riches and eventually
means disaster. The sin of riches is not in the possession
but in the love of money, a material selfishness that leads
to soul starvation.
It is not a crime to be rich nor a virtue to be poor, as
certain reformers would have us think. The sin lies in
hoarding wealth and keeping it from circulating freely to
all who need it. Those who put wealth into useful work that
contributes to the welfare of the masses are the salvation
of the country. Fortunately, there are many in this country
who have the prosperity consciousness. If we were all in a
poverty consciousness, famines would be as common here as
they are in India or China. Millions in those lands are
held in the perpetual thought of poverty and they suffer
want in all its forms from the cradle to the grave. The
burden of the poverty thought reacts on the earth so that
year after year it withholds its products and many people
starve.
Universal Mind controls all nature and is in possession of
all its products. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness
thereof" is a great Truth. Puny, personal man uses all his
craft to get control of the products of nature but is
always defeated in the end. Only the universal man of
Spirit is in indisputed possession, and to him the Father
says, "All that is mine is thine." Jesus did not have title
to a foot of land and evidently had no money, for the
apostles carried whatever funds the company had.
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He did not even burden Himself with a tub, as did Diogenes,
and "had not where to lay his head." Yet He was always
provided with entertainment of the best. He took it for
granted that whatever He needed was His. The fish carried
His pocketbook, and the invisible ethers furnished the
sideboard from which He handed out food for thousands. He
was rich in every way for He had the prosperity
consciousness and proved that the earth with all its
fullness does belong to the Lord, whose righteous sons are
heirs to and in possession of all things.
The anxious thought must be eliminated and the perfect
abandon of the child of nature assumed, and when to this
attitude you add the realization of unlimited resources,
you have fulfilled the divine law of prosperity.
The imagination is a wonderful creative power. It builds
all things out of the one substance. When you associate it
with faith, you make things just as real as those that God
makes, for man is a co-creator with God. Whatever you form
in the mind and have faith in will become substantial. Then
you should be on guard as regards what you put your faith
in. If it is material forms, shadows that cease to be as
soon as your supporting thought is withdrawn from them, you
are building temporary substance that will pass away and
leave you nothing. Put your faith in the real or, as Jesus
told His disciples, "have faith in God."
The real search of all people is for God. They may think
they are looking for other things, but
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they must eventually admit that it is God they seek. Having
once felt His presence within them, they are keenly
conscious that only God can satisfy. The place where we
meet God should be made so sure and so pure that we can
never mistake His voice or be hidden from His face. This
place we know as the mind, the inmost recess of the soul,
the kingdom of the heavens within us.
It is not sufficient however to sit down and hold thoughts
of abundance without further effort. That is limiting the
law to thought alone, and we want it to be fulfilled in
manifestation as well. Cultivating ideas of abundance is
the first step in the process. The ideas that come must be
used. Be alert in doing whatever comes to you to do,
cheerful and competent in the doing, sure of the results,
for it is the second step in the fulfilling of the law.
You can do anything with the thoughts of your mind. They
are yours and under your control. You can direct them,
coerce them, hush them, or crush them. You can dissolve one
thought and put another in its stead. There is no other
place in the universe where you are the absolute master.
The dominion given you as your divine right is over your
own thoughts only. When you fully apprehend this and begin
to exercise your God-given dominion, you begin to find the
way to God, the only door to God, the door of mind and
thought.
If you are fearful that you will not be provided with the
necessities of life for tomorrow, next week, or next year,
or for your old age, or that your children
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will be left in want, deny the thought. Do not allow
yourself for a moment to think of something that must be
outside the realm of all-careful, all-providing good. You
know even from your outer experience that the universe is
self-sustaining and that its equilibrium is established by
law. The same law that sustains all sustains you as a part.
Claim your identity under that law, your oneness with the
all, and rest in the everlasting arms of Cause, which knows
nothing of lack. If you are in a condition of poverty, this
attitude of mind will attract to you opportunities to
better your condition. Insulate your mind from the
destructive thoughts of all those who labor under the
belief in hard times. If your associates talk about the
financial stringency, affirm all the more persistently your
dependence on the abundance of God.
By doing this you place yourself under a divine law of
demand and supply that is never influenced by the
fluctuations of the market or the opinions of men. Every
time you send out a thought of wholehearted faith in the I
AM part of yourself, you set in motion a chain of causes
that must bring the results you seek. Ask whatsoever you
will in the name of the Christ, the I AM, the divine
within, and your demands will be fulfilled; both heaven and
earth will hasten to do your bidding. But when you have
asked for something, be on the alert to receive it when it
comes. People complain that their prayers are not answered
when, if we knew the truth, they are not awake to receive
the answer when it comes.
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If you ask for money, do not look for an angel from the
skies to bring it on a golden platter, but keep your eyes
open for some fresh opportunity to make money, an
opportunity that will come as sure as you live.
These are some tangible steps along the way to the larger
manifestation you desire. No one is ever given the keys to
the Father's storehouse of wealth until he has proved his
faith and his reliability. Then he may go in and pass out
the goods freely. If the men of the world, with their
selfish ideas of "mine and thine," were given the power,
without a thorough mental cleansing, of instantly producing
whatever they desire, they would undoubtedly practice still
greater oppressions on their fellows, and existing
conditions would not be improved.
A stonecutter sees a block of marble as so many hours work,
while Michelangelo sees it as an angel that it is his
privilege to bring forth. This is the difference between
those who see the material world as so much matter and
those who look on it with the eyes of mind and the
imagination that works toward perfection. One who paints a
picture or makes a piece of sculpture first sees it in his
mind. He first imagines or images it. If he wants a strong
picture he makes force one of the elements of his image. If
he wants beauty and character, he puts love into it. He may
not see the perfect picture until all these elements are
combined, then it requires but little effort to transfer it
from his mind to the canvas or to the marble.
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On the sixth day of creation, we are told, God "imaged" His
man, made him in His image and likeness. This does not mean
that God looks like man, a personal being with manlike
form. We make a thing in our own image, the image we have
in mind for the thing, and our creation does not resemble
us in any way. God is without form, for He is Spirit. God
is an idea that man has tried to objectify in various
forms. He is the universal substance, the life that
animates the substance, and the love that binds it
together. Man just naturally gives some form to every idea
he has, even the idea of God, for the formative faculty of
the mind is always at work whether we are awake or asleep.
We get material for forming mental pictures from without
and from within.
This imaging or formative power of the mind could not make
anything unless it had the substance out of which to form
it. One could not make a loaf of bread without the flour
and other ingredients. Yet with all the ingredients at hand
one could not make a loaf unless one had the power of
imaging the loaf in one's mind. This seems simple, but the
fact is that the power to form the loaf is less common than
the available material for the loaf. Flour and water are
abundant, but only certain people can use them in the right
way to form a palatable loaf of bread. So with this subject
of prosperity. Substance is everywhere, filling all the
universe. There is no lack. If we have not been successful
in forming it into the things we have needed and
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wished for, it is not because of lack of substance but of
lack of understanding how to use our imaging power.
The world goes through periods of seeming lack because the
people have refused to build their prosperity on the inner,
omnipresent, enduring substance, and on the contrary have
tried to base it on the substance that they see in the
outer. This outer substance, formed by the imaging power of
men in past ages, seems to be limited, and men struggle for
it, forgetting their own divine power to form their own
substance from the limitless supply within. The lesson for
all of us should be to build our prosperity on the inner
substance.
Those who do demonstrate prosperity through the law of men
have nothing permanent. All their possessions may be swept
away in a moment. They have not built on the orderly law of
God, and without the rich thoughts of God's bounteousness
no one can have an enduring consciousness of supply.
No disease, poverty, or any other negative condition can
enter into our domain unless we invite it. Nor can it
remain with us unless we entertain it. Conscious power over
all such conditions is one of our greatest delights and a
part of our divine inheritance, but we must learn the law
and apply the power in the right way.
Men have a consciousness of lack because they let Satan,
the serpent of sense, tempt them. The Garden of Eden is
within us here and now, and the
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subtle temptation to eat of the tree of sensation is also
still with us. We have been given dominion over the animal
forces of the body, the "beasts of the field," and must
tame them, making them servants instead of masters of the
body. Instead of feeding them we must make them feed us.
When we overcome the animals within, it will be easy to
train them in the without. This truth of overcoming is
taught all through the Scriptures, and we can demonstrate
it in our life, for God has endowed us with the power to
overcome. We must lay hold of that inherent power and begin
to use it constructively.
The whole human family seems to be sensation mad. All our
economic and social troubles can be traced right back to
the selfishness of the sense man. We can never overcome
these conditions in the outer until we overcome their
causes in the inner soul of ourselves. There is sure to be
repetition of war and peace, plenty and famine, good times
and depressions until we take the control of mind substance
away from the sense man and give it to the spiritual man.
We know that there is a spiritual man and we look forward
in some ideal way to his coming, but he will never come
until we bring him. We hope and pray for the coming of
better things; but as Mark Twain said about the weather,
"no one does anything about it." We can do something about
the matter of self-control and each of us must if we are
ever to improve our condition physically and financially as
well as morally and spiritually.
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We must lift up this serpent of sense, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, and control it in the name
of Christ.
Eliminate all negative thoughts that come into your mind.
Yet do not spend all your time in denials but give much of
it to the clear realization of the everywhere present and
waiting substance and life. Some of us have in a measure
inherited "hard times" by entertaining the race thought so
prevalent around us. Do not allow yourself to do this.
Remember your identity, that you are a son of God and that
your inheritance is from Him. You are the heir to all that
the Father has. Let the I AM save you from every negative
thought. The arrows that fly by day and the pestilence that
threatens are these negative race thoughts in the mental
atmosphere. The I AM consciousness, your Saviour, will lead
you out of the desert of negation and into the Promised
Land of plenty that flows with milk and honey.
Deny that you can lose anything. Let go of negative
thoughts of financial loss or any other kind of loss and
realize that nothing is ever lost in all the universe.
There are opportunities everywhere, just as there have
always been, to produce all that you need financially, or
otherwise. God wants you to be a producer of new ideas. New
ideas come to you from within. Do not think for a moment
that you are limited to the ideas that come from without.
Many of those ideas are outgrown anyway and have outlived
their usefulness. That is why we go through periods of
change; so that old outworn ideas
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can be discarded and replaced with new and better ones.
There have been more inventions since the beginning of the
so-called depression than in any previous similar period of
American history. This shows that new ideas are within man,
just waiting to be called out and put into expression. We
can find new ways of living and new methods of work; we are
not confined to the ways and methods of the past. When we
commune with the Spirit within and ask for new ideas, they
are always forthcoming. When these ideas from within us are
recognized, they go to work and come to the surface. Then
all the thoughts we have ever had, as well as the thoughts
of other people, are added to them and new things are
quickly produced. Let us quit slavishly depending on
someone else for everything and become producers, for only
in that direction lies happiness and success. Let us begin
to concentrate on this inner man, this powerful man who
produces things, who gets his ideas from a
higher-dimensional realm, who brings ideas from a new
territory, the land of Canaan.
What kind of character are you giving to this inner
substance by your thoughts? Change your thought and
increase your substance in the mind, as Elisha increased
the oil for the widow. Get larger receptacles and plenty of
them. Even a very small idea of substance may be added to
and increased. The widow had a very small amount of oil,
but as the prophet blessed it it increased until it filled
every vessel she could borrow from the neighbors. We should
form the habit of blessing
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everything that we have. It may seem foolish to some
persons that we bless our nickels, dimes, and dollars, but
we know that we are setting the law of increase into
operation. All substance is one and connected, whether in
the visible or the invisible. The mind likes something that
is already formed and tangible for a suggestion to take
hold of. With this image the mind sets to work to draw like
substance from the invisible realm and thus increase what
we have in hand. Jesus used the small quantity of loaves
and fishes to produce a great quantity of--loaves and
fishes. Elisha used a small amount of oil to produce a
great amount of--oil. So when we bless our money or other
goods, we are complying with a divine law of increase that
has been demonstrated many times.
Another step in the demonstration of prosperity is the
preparation of the consciousness to receive the increase.
If we pray for rain, we should be sure that we have our
umbrellas with us. You read in the 3d chapter of II Kings
how Elisha caused the water to come from the invisible and
fill trenches in the desert. But first the trenches had to
be dug in the dry ground. That required faith, but the
kings had it, and they dug trenches all over a large
valley, just as Elisha had commanded. It was through the
understanding of Elisha, who knew the truth about the
invisible substance, that this seeming miracle was
accomplished. Yet the trenches had to be prepared, and you
must prepare your consciousness for the inflow of the
universal substance.
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It obeys the law of nature, just as does water or any other
visible thing, and flows into the place prepared for it. It
fills everything you hold in your mind, whether vessels,
trenches, or your purse.
It is not advisable to hold for too specific a demand. You
might visualize a hundred dollars and get it when a
thousand was coming your way. Do not limit the substance,
to what you think you need or want; rather broaden your
consciousness and give infinite Mind freedom to work, and
every good and needful thing will be provided you. Make
your statements broad and comprehensive so that your mind
may expand to the Infinite rather than trying to cram the
Infinite into your mind.
Statements To Broaden The Mind And Fill It With The
Richness Of Substance
Infinite wisdom guides me, divine love prospers me, and I
am successful in everything I undertake.
In quietness and confidence I affirm the drawing power of
divine love as my magnet of constantly increasing supply.
I have unbounded faith in the omnipresent substance
increasing and multiplying at my word of plenty, plenty,
plenty.
Father, I thank Thee for unlimited increase in mind, money,
and affairs.
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[Prosperity]
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