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There is no
need to be unhappy. There is no need to be sad. There is no need
to be disappointed, or oppressed, or aggrieved. There is no need
for illness or failure or discouragement. There is no necessity
for anything but success, good health, prosperity, and an
abounding interest and joy in life.
That the lives
of many people are full of dreary things is unfortunately only
too true; but there is no necessity for them to be there.
They are there only because their victims suppose them to be
inevitable, not because they are so. As long as you accept a
negative condition at its own valuation, so long will you remain
in bondage to it; but you have only to assert your birthright as
a free man or woman and you will be free.
Success and
happiness are the natural condition of humankind. It is actually
easier for us to demonstrate these things than the reverse. Bad
habits of thinking and acting may obscure this fact for a time,
just as a wrong way of walking or sitting, or holding a pen or a
musical instrument may seem to be easier than the proper way,
because we have accustomed ourselves to it; but the proper way
is the easier nevertheless.
Unhappiness,
frustration, poverty, loneliness are really bad habits that
their victims have become accustomed to bear with more or less
fortitude, believing that there is no way out, whereas there is
a way; and that way is simply to acquire good habits of mind
instead of bad ones--habits of working with the Law instead of
against it.
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You should
never "put up" with anything. You should never be
willing to accept less than Health, Harmony, and Happiness.
These things are your Divine Right as the sons and daughters of
God, and it is only a bad habit, unconscious, as a rule, that
causes you to be satisfied with less. In the depths of our being
people always feel intuitively that there is a way out of our
difficulties if only we can find it, and our natural instincts
all point in the same direction.
The infant, as
yet uncontaminated by the defeatist suggestions of his or her
elders, simply refuses to tolerate inharmony on any terms, and
therefore demonstrates over it. When the infant is hungry he or
she tells the world with a confident insistence that commands
attention, while many sophisticated adults go without. Does the
infant find a pin sticking in some part of his or her anatomy?
Not for him or her a sigh of resignation to the supposed
"will of God" (it is really blasphemy to say that evil
or suffering could ever be the will of God, All Good), or a
whine about never having any luck, or a sigh that what cannot be
cured must be endured. No, the defeatist view of life has not
yet touched the babies; their instincts tell them that life and
harmony are inseparable. And sure enough, that pin is located
and removed even if everything else has to come to a stop until
it is done.
But
"shades of the prison-house begin to close about the
growing boy," and by the time the child is old enough to
think rationally, the Race habit will have trained the child to
use reason largely in the inverted way.
Refuse to
tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no
matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have
health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous
life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have
congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free,
joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your
own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must
definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly
and firmly for the port that you intend to make.
What are you
doing about your future? Are you content to let things just
drift along as they are, hoping, like Mr. Micawber, for
something to "turn up"? If you are, be assured that
there is no escape in that way. Nothing ever will turn up unless
you exercise your Free Will and go out and turn it up for
yourself by becoming acquainted with the Laws of Life, and
applying them to your own individual conditions. That is the
only way. Otherwise the years will pass all too swiftly, leaving
you just where you are now, if not worse off, for there is no
limit to the result of thought either for good or evil.
People have
dominion over all things when they know the Law of Being, and
obey it. The Law gives you power to bring any condition into
your life that is not harmful. The Law gives you power to
overcome your own weaknesses and faults of character, no matter
how often you may have failed in the past or how tenacious they
may have seemed to be. The Law gives you power to attain
prosperity and position without infringing the rights and
opportunities of anyone else in the world. The Law gives you
Freedom; freedom of soul, and body, and environment.
The law gives
you Independence so that you can build your own life in your own
way, in accordance with your own ideas and ideals; and plan out
your future along the lines that you yourself desire. If you do
not know what you really want to make you happy, then the Law
will tell you what you want, and get it for you, too. And the
Law rightly understood and applied will save you from the danger
of what is called "outlining" with all its risks and
limitations.
The Law will
endow you with the gift of what is called Originality;
Originality is the doing of things in a new way which is a
better way, and different from anyone else's way.
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