NUGGETS OF THE NEW THOUGHT/PART 11
AIM STRAIGHT.
Fear attracts, as well as Desire—Learn to aim straight and aim at the
right thing—Examples—The bowler—The bicyclist and the car—The bicyclist and the
post—The boy and the marbles—Wisdom from the babe—Look straight; Think
straight; Shoot straight.
A strong
Desire or a strong Fearthought is an aim at the thing desired or feared. And in
proportion to the degree of Desire or Fear, will we be carried toward the thing
at which we aim. Confident Expectation is manifested in a Fearthought as well
as in an earnest Desire, and when we confidently expect a thing to happen we
are carried toward it by an irresistible force. It may seem strange to you to
hear that Fear is akin to Desire, but this is the truth. It matters not whether
we call it Desire or Fear, the gist of the matter lies in the Confident
Expectation. A faint Hope and a lurking Fear have about the same attractive
force—a Desire coupled with a firm belief in its realization attracts strongly,
but no more strongly than does a Fear coupled with a feeling of certainty of
its realization. The thing upon which your Thought is firmly fixed or drawn
toward, will be the thing you will realize. Therefore Aim Straight.
We have
heard much of the Attractive Power of Thought as applied to Desire. I will now
say something to you about the same force called into operation by Fearthought.
It is far more pleasant for me to speak of the bright side of the question, but
I would be neglecting my duty toward you if I failed to direct your attention
to the reverse of the shield. When you thoroughly realize that Thought-force
works both ways, you will know how to handle it, and will understand many
things that have heretofore been dark to you. You will learn to AIM STRAIGHT,
but will also learn to be careful at what you aim. You will learn to avoid the
aim inspired by Fear, and will hereafter use all your energies to pointing your
mental arrow at the bull's-eye of Happiness and Success.
Let us
take a few facts from the physical plane in order to illustrate things as they
are on the mental plane of effort. Life has its correspondences on all its
planes, and by taking examples from one plane, we will be able to more readily
understand the workings of the Law on other planes.
Some time
ago, I was talking to a number of people about this subject, and gleaned from
each an illustration of the workings of the Law of Attraction on the physical
plane. And each example although on the physical plane, showed the power of
Mind behind it. I will tell you what some of these people said, and you can see
for yourself just what I mean.
The first
man was a printer, who after hours spent much time in bowling, and who was
looked upon as an expert in that game. He said that some time before he was
playing a game, and at a critical point when he was taking aim and endeavoring
to put the ball in between the 1 and 2 pins (a specially advantageous shot),
his opponent spoke up and said "Just watch him hit the 4 pin." I do
not know anything about bowling, but it seems that to hit the 4 pin is about
the worst thing that can happen to a bowler, outside of missing the pins
altogether. Well, to go on with the story, with the remark of his rival,
Fearthought entered the mind of the printer, and he couldn't get the 4 pin out
of his mind. He kept on looking at the place he wanted to hit, but his mind was
on the 4 pin, and he feared that he would hit it. To use his own words, he
"got rattled," and away went the ball striking the 4 pin fair and
square. He concluded the story by saying: "And so instead of making a 'ten
strike' I got only a 'split.'" Maybe you understand those terms better
than do I, but at any rate you will see what a Fearthought brought to this
typographical bowler in his little game of ten-pins. Moral: When you wish to
place the ball Energy between the 1 and 2 pins of Life, don't allow Fearthoughts
to switch you off to the 4 pin, thereby giving you a "split" instead
of the coveted "ten-strike."
Another
friend told me that, a few days before, he had been riding on the front bench
of a grip-car on a Chicago cable-line. Hearing the gripman break into the
vernacular in a vigorous style, he looked up, and saw a colored man on a
bicycle trying to cross the track "on the bias," as the girls say,
just ahead of the car. There was plenty of time—plenty of room—for the man to
get across, but when he reached the middle of the track Fearthought got hold of
him, and in spite of himself his wheel turned and he headed straight for the
car. He headed straight for the gripcar, just as if he had aimed at it, and the
next moment he went "bang" right into it. He escaped injury, but his
wheel was wrecked. When asked about it, he said that from the moment he got
afraid of the car his wheel "ran away with him," right into the thing
he Feared. Moral: Keep your mind fixed on the thing you want—not on the thing
you don't want.
Another
man, to whom I related the story of the man on the wheel, said that he had the
same trouble when he was learning to ride the wheel. He was getting along
pretty well and could manage to steer half-way straight, although in a wobbly
manner, until one day he happened to see a certain telegraph pole in front of
the place where he was learning to ride. The pole seemed to hypnotize him, and
from that day he couldn't keep his front wheel away from it. He couldn't keep
away from that pole—he was afraid of it. The pole seemed to have magnetic
qualities and the result was "Bump." He remounted, over and over
again, but the result was the same. At last he made up his mind that he was
going to get ahead of that pole somehow, and he mounted the wheel with his back
toward the pole (but his Mind was still on it) and lo! the front wheel
described a semi-circle, and back to the pole he went. Moral: Don't let a pole
hypnotize you with Fearthought—keep your Mind on the place to which you wish to
go.
But the
best example was given by a boy who had kept his eyes open and his thinker
working. Maybe I had better tell you in his own words. This is what he said,
just as he said it:
"Oh,
pshaw!" said the Boy, "you're making a big fuss over nothing. Every
feller knows that you've got to think about a thing if you
want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you'll hit the
wrong thing. If I fire a stone at a tin can, why, I just look square at the can
and think about the can for all I'm worth, and the can's a dead one, sure. If I
happen to let my mind wander to the cat what's on the shed over to the left of
the can—well, so much the worse for the cat, that's all. To shoot
straight, you've got to aim straight; and to aim straight you've got to look
straight; and to look straight you've got to think straight. Every kid
knows that, or he couldn't even play marbles. If I get my heart set on a beauty
marble in the ring, I just want it the worst way and says I to myself, 'You're
my marble.' Then I look at him strong and steady-like and don't think about
nothing else in the world but that beauty. Maybe I'm late for school, but I
clean forget it. I don't see nothing—nor think nothing—but that there marble
what I want. As the piece in my reader says, it's my 'Heart's Desire,' and I
don't care whether school keeps or not, just so as I get it. Then I shoot, and
the marble's mine. And, at school, when our drawing teacher tells us how to
draw a straight line, she makes two dots, several inches away from each other.
Then she makes us put our pencils on the first dot and look steady at the other
and move our pencil towards it. The more you keep thinking about the far off
dot, and the less you think about the starting dot or your hand, the straighter
you're going to get your line. Wonst I looked straight at the far-off dot with
my eyes, but I kept thinking about a red-headed girl on the other side of the
room, and what do you think, the line I was drawing slanted away off in her
direction, although I had kept my eyes glued on the far-away dot and never even
peeped in the kid's direction. That shows, sure, that it's the thinking as well
as the looking. See?"
All of the
examples above given contain within them the principles of a mighty truth—a
working illustration of a great law of Life. If we are wise we will profit by
them. Many things are happening around us every day, from which we might gain
lessons if we would only think a little, instead of playing "follow my
leader" and accepting other people's thought, ready made. We have gotten
so accustomed to these "hand-me-down" thoughts, that we have almost
forgotten how to turn out thoughts for ourselves. The day has come when we are
required to do a little thinking on our own account, instead of humbly bowing
before moth-eaten Authority perched upon a crumbling base. The time has arrived
when we must strike out for ourselves, instead of following a musty Precedent
which has "seen better days." This is the age of the Individual. This
the time for the "I" to assert itself.
I wish you
would pay attention to what the Boy said. It is not the first time that we have
gone to the babe for wisdom. Although a child has an imagination beyond our
comprehension, he, at the same time, is painfully and even brutally, matter of
fact. He is continually asking: "Why," and when we grown-ups are
unable to answer him he answers the question himself, often better than we
could have done. He doesn't theorize, but gets down to business, and works
things out for himself. This boy knew all about the Thinking part of the
problems, and had put it into practical application, while we were theorizing
about it. He had discovered that in order to get things we must first earnestly
Desire them; then Confidently Expect that we would get them; then go to work to
procure them. That's the true philosophy of getting things. He tells us, about
the marble, that he first "wanted it the worst way" and "didn't
care whether school kept or not" just so he got the marble. Then he
"looked strong and steady-like" at the marble, saying: "You're
my marble." Then he shot, and the marble was his. Can any of you describe
the process of getting things better than this? If we grown-ups would only put
into our daily tasks the interest and attention that the boy put into his game
of marbles, we would "get the marble" oftener than we have been
doing.
Of course,
it may be true, that the principal joy is in the getting of things rather than
in the possession of them—that the Game of Life is like the game of marbles in
that respect, but what of that? That needn't spoil the game. The boy knows
enough to enjoy playing for a few marbles that may be obtained for a
penny-a-fistful at the corner store—but that fact doesn't bother him at all. He
knows that when he gets the marble it will not seem half so beautiful in the
hand as it did in the ring—but he gets ready to shoot for the next one with
just as much zest and enjoyment. He finds a joy in Living; Acting; Doing;
Expressing; Growing and Outgrowing, Gaining Experiences. Take a lesson from the
Boy—while you are in the Great Game, take a boy's interest in it; play with a
zest; play your level best, and get the marble. The Boy
instinctively knows that the joy of life consists of Living, while we poor
grown-ups vainly imagine that our pleasure will come only in the trophies of
the game—the glass-marbles of Life—and look upon the playing of the game as
drudgery and work imposed upon us as a punishment of the sins of our
forefathers. The boy lives in the Now, and enjoys every moment of his
existence—his winnings, his losings, his victories, his defeats, while we, his
elders and superiors in wisdom groan at the heat of the day and the rigor of
the game and are only reconciled to our tasks by the thought of how we will
enjoy the possession of the marbles, when we get them at the end of the game.
The Boy sucks his orange and extracts every particle of its sweet contents,
while we throw away the juicy meat and aim only to secure the pips. Oh, yes!
the boy not only knows how to "get there," but he has also a sane
philosophy of Life. Many of us grown-ups are now re-learning that which we lost
with our youth.
You will
notice that the bowler, the bicyclists and the others, got what they didn't
want, because they were afraid of it, and allowed it to distract their thoughts
from the object of their Desire. To Fear a thing is akin to Desiring it—in
either case you are attracted toward it, or it to you. It's a rule that works
both ways. You must think about the Thing you Want—not about the Thing you
Don't Want, for the thoughts you are thinking are the ones that are going to
take form in action, as the Boy said: "You've got to think about a
thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why,
you're going to hit the wrong thing." Watch your Ideal, not your
Bugbear. Concentrate on your Ideal—fix your thought and gaze upon it, like the
boy upon his marble—and don't allow Fearthought to sidetrack you. Select the
thing you want to be, and then grow steadily into it. Pick out the thing you
want, and then go straight and steadily to it. Replace your old whine: "I
Fear," with the New Thought shout: "I Can, and I Will." Then you
will experience an illustration of "Thought taking form in Action."
Look
Straight; Think Straight; Shoot Straight; in these three things lie the secret
of Success.
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