The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford - Prentice Mulford

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of the Supreme Power, builds up for itself an armour of thought positive to this current, and one which will deny it access. You can commence this building in saying, whenever you are affected in the way above mentioned, or in any disagreeable fashion, "I refuse to accept this thought and the mental condition it has brought on me which affects my body." You commence then to turn aside the thought current of evil.

      Everyone has some pet fear--some disease they may never have had, but always dreaded-- something they are in special fear of losing. Some trifle, even but a word or sentence uttered by another, brings this pet fear to the mind. Instantly through long habit the minds reverts to this fear. Instantly it opens to it, and the whole thought, volume and current rushes to and acts on them. It acts and vibrates on that particular chord of your nature, which for years has sounded your pet weakness.

      Then in some way the body is affected disagreeably. There are myriads of different symptoms. The body may become weak and tremulous. There may be loss of appetite, tremulousness, a dry tongue, a bad taste in the mouth, weakness in the joints, drowsiness, difficulty of concentrating the mind on your business and many other disagreeable sensations.

      Such symptoms are often classed as "malaria." In a sense the name is a correct one. Only in very many of these cases it is a bad atmosphere or current of thought which is acting on our minds instead of the fancied bad material atmosphere. Unquestionably an atmosphere full of vegetable or animal decomposition will affect many people. But some live for years in the midst of stagnant pools and swamps who never have malaria. Others far removed from such locations on high and dry ground do have it. They hare taken on a thought current of fear.

      Place yourself in a house where there has recently been a panic or scare, though you may know nothing of it. You were well and strong the day before. You arise in the morning, and soon this whole train of disagreeable sensations affects you, because the house or place is saturated with a thought current of fear. Put a fear on city, town or country of some deadly epidemic or some great calamity, and hundreds of the more sensitive who may have no fear of that epidemic or calamity are still affected by it disagreeably. That thought current affects them in their particular a weak spot. A fanatic predicts some great catastrophe. The sensational newspapers take up the topic, ventilate it, affect to ridicule, but still write about it. This sets more minds to thinking and more people to talking. The more talk the more of this injurious force is generated. As a result thousands of people are affected by it unpleasantly, some in one way, some in another, because the whole force of that volume of fear is let loose upon them. Some are killed outright. Entirely unaware of the cause, they open their minds more and more to it, dwell on it in secret, put out no resisting thought until at last the spirit, unable longer to carry such a load, snaps the link which connects it with the body.

      The more impressionable you are to the thought about you the more are you liable to be thus affected. But you can train your mind to shut out this thought. You can gradually train it to bar tightly this door to weakness, and keep open only the one to strength. You can do this by cultivating the mood of drawing to yourself and keeping in the mood and current of thought coming of God or the Supreme Power for good.

      Impressionability or capacity to receive thought is source either of strength or weakness. Fine-grained, sensitive, highly developed minds today often carry the weakest bodies, because through ignorance they are always inviting some of these currents of evil without any knowledge of their existence or the means of throwing them off. They are ignorantly either courting or exposing themselves to such current. Improper individual association is one chief source of such exposure.

      The finer feminine organization is more sensitive to every shade and ray of thought about it, good or bad. Men absorbed in their business generate for a time a certain positiveness which throws off the fear current. But this positiveness cannot always last.

      Women from this cause often suffer a thousandfold more in the privacy of their homes than men are aware of. The average man defines it as "woman's way," and wonders why she is so full of "nervousness," "vapours," "notions," and ill-health.

      As you place your reliance on the Infinite Mind to bring you out of all these agencies for ill, that mind in some way will bring many material aids to help you out. That mind will suggest medicines and foods and surroundings and changes, not only to help you temporarily, but permanently, so that when you are cured you are cured for all time. A cheerful, buoyant, hopeful mind (and no mind is cheerful, hopeful and buoyant without being nearer the Infinite than one that is depressed, sour and gloomy), be that the mind of your doctor, or your friend, will help you to get out of the injurious thought current. Regard such mind as a help from the Infinite. But don't put your whole trust in that individual. Put the great trust in the Supreme Power which has sent to you the individual as a temporary aid or crutch until your spiritual limbs are strong enough to bear you.

      The more you get into the thought current coming from the Infinite Mind, making yourself more and more a part of that mind (exactly as you may become a part of any vein of low, morbid, unhealthy mind in opening yourself to that current), the quicker are you freshened, and renewed physically and mentally. You become continually a newer being. Changes for the better come quicker and quicker. Your power increases to bring results. You lose gradually all fear as it is proven more and more to you that when you are in the thought current of Infinite good there is nothing to fear. You realize more and more clearly that there is a great power and force which cares for you. You are wonderstruck at the fact that when your mind is set in the right direction all material things come to you with very little physical or external effort. You wonder then at man's toiling and striving, fagging himself literally to death, when through such excess of effort he actually drives from him the rounded-out good of health, happiness and material prosperity all combined.

      You will see in this demand for the highest good that you are growing to power greater than you ever dreamed of. It will dawn on you that the real life destined for the awakened few now, and the many in the future is a dazzling dream--a permanent realization that it is a happiness to exist--a serenity and contentment without abatement--a transition from pleasure to pleasure, and from the great to the greater pleasure. You find as you get more and more into the current of the Infinite Mind that exhausting toil is not required of you, but that when you commit yourself in trust to this current and let it bear you where it will, all things needful will come to you.

      When you are getting into the right thought current, you may for a time experience more of uneasiness, physical and mental than ever. This is because the new element acting on you makes you more sensitive to the presence of evil. The new is driving the old out. The new thought current searches and detects every little error in your mind before unnoticed, and repels it. This causes a struggle, and mind and body are for a time unpleasantly affected by it. It is like house-cleaning, a process usually involving a good deal of dust and disturbance. The new spirit you call to you is cleaning your spiritual house.

      There is no limit to the power of the thought current you can attract to you nor limit to the things that can he done through the individual by it. In the future some people will draw so much of the higher quality of thought to them, that by it they will accomplish what some would call miracles. In this capacity of the human mind for drawing a thought current ever increasing in fineness of quality and power lies the secret of what has been called "magic."

      Chapter Four

       ONE WAY TO CULTIVATE COURAGE

       Table of Contents

       COURAGE and presence of mind mean the same thing. Presence of mind implies command of mind. Cowardice and lack of mental control mean about the same thing. Cowardice is rooted in hurry, the habit of hurry or lack of repose. All degrees of success are based on courage-mental or physical. All degrees of failure are based on timidity.

      You can cultivate courage and increase it at every minute and hour of the day. You can have the satisfaction of knowing that in everything you do you have accomplished two things--namely, the doing of the thing itself and by the manner of its doing, adding eternally to yourself another atom of the quality of courage. You can do this by the cultivation of deliberation--deliberation of

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