Effect Of Thought On Circumstances

Effect Of Thought On Circumstances
by James A Allen

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently
cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or
neglected, it must, and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put
into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein,
and will continue to produce their kind.

Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds,
and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires so may a man
tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless and
impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and
fruits of right, useful and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process,
a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his
soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the
flaws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how
the thought-forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of
character, circumstances, and destiny.

Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and
discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer
conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously
related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's
circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire
character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected
with some vital thought-element within himself that, for the time
being, they are indispensable to his development.

Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which
he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the
arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the
result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who
feel "out of harmony" with their surroundings as of those who are
contented with them.

As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may
learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which
any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to
other circumstances.

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be
the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a
creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of
his being out of which circumstances grow;
he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for
any length of time practiced self-control and self-purification, for
he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has
been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So true is
this that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects
in his character, and makes swift and marked progress, he passes
rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes.

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it
loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its
cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened
desires, and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives
it own.

Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take
root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act,
and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good
thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit. The outer world of
circumstances shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both
pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors which make
for the ultimate good of the
individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both of
suffering and bliss.

Following the inmost desires, aspirations, thoughts, by which he
allows himself to be dominated (pursuing the will-o'-the wisps of
impure imaginings or steadfastly walking the highway of strong and
high endeavor), a man at last arrives at their fruition and
fulfillment in the outer conditions of his life.

The laws of growth and adjustment everywhere obtain. A man does not
come to the alms-house or the jail by the tyranny of fate or
circumstance, but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base
desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by
stress of any mere external force. The criminal thought had long been
secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed
its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals
him to himself. No such conditions can exist as descending into vice
and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious inclinations, or
ascending into virtue and its pure happiness without the continued
cultivation of virtuous aspirations; and man, therefore, as the lord
and master of thought, is the maker of himself and the shaper of and
author of environment. Even at birth the soul comes of its own and
through every step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those
combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the
reflections of its own purity and impurity, its strength and weakness.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but
their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it
foul or clean. Man is manacled only by himself; thought and action
are the jailors of Fate--they imprison, being base; they are also the
angels of Freedom--they liberate, being noble.

Not what he wished and prays for does a man get, but what he justly
earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when
they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.

In the light of this truth what, then, is the meaning of "fighting
against circumstances?" It means that a man is continually revolting
against an effect without, while all the time he is nourishing and
preserving its cause in his heart.

That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious
weakness; but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of it
possessor, and thus calls aloud for remedy.

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to
improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. The man who does not
shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object
upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly as of
heavenly things. Even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth
must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can
accomplish his object; and how much more so he who would realize a
strong and well-poised life?

Here is a man who is wretchedly poor. He is extremely anxious that
his surroundings and home comforts should improve, yet all the time
he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to
deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his
wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those
principles which are the basis of true prosperity, and is not only
totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually
attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and
acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts.

Here is a rich man who is the victim of a painful and persistent
disease as the result of gluttony. He is willing to give large sums
of money to get rid of it, but he will not sacrifice his gluttonous
desires. He wants to gratify his taste for rich and unnatural foods
and have his health as well. Such a man is totally unfit to have
health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a
healthy life.

Here is an employer of labor who adopts crooked measures to avoid
paying the regulation wage, and, in the hope of making larger
profits, reduces the wages of his workpeople. Such a man is
altogether unfitted for prosperity. And when he finds himself
bankrupt, both as regards reputation and riches, he blames
circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his
condition.

I have introduced these three cases merely as illustrative of the
truth that man is the causer (though nearly always unconsciously) of
his circumstances, and that, whilst aiming at the good end, he is
continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging thoughts
and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end. Such cases
could be multiplied and varied almost indefinitely, but this is not
necessary. The reader can, if he so resolves, trace the action of the
laws of thought in his own mind and life, and until this is done,
mere external facts cannot serve as a ground of reasoning.

Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply
rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so vastly with
individuals, that a man's entire soul condition (although it may be
known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external
aspect of his life alone.

A man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations. A
man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth. But
the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails because of his
particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his
particular dishonesty, is the result of a superficial judgment, which
assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and honest
man almost entirely virtuous. In the light of a deeper knowledge and
wider experience, such judgment is found to be erroneous. The
dishonest man may have some admirable virtues which the other does
not possess; and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in
the other. The honest man reaps the good results of his honest
thoughts and acts; he also brings upon himself the sufferings which
his vices produce.

The dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness.
It is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because of
one's virtue; but not until a man has extirpated every sickly,
bitter, and impure thought from his soul, can he be in a position to
know and declare that his sufferings are the result of his good, and
not of his bad qualities; and on the way to, yet long before he has
reached that supreme perfection , he will have found, working in his
mind and life, the great law which is absolutely just, and which
cannot, therefore, give good for evil, evil for good.

Possessed of such knowledge, he will then know, looking back upon his
past ignorance and blindness, that his life is, and always was,
justly ordered, and that all his past experiences, good and bad, were
the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self. Good
thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and
actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that
nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but
nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with
it; but few understand it in the mental and moral
world (though its operation there is just as simple and undeviating),
and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.

Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It
is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself,
with the law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is
to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure.

Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be no object in
burning gold after the dross had been removed, and a perfectly pure
and enlightened being could not suffer.

The circumstances which a man encounters with suffering are the
result of his own mental inharmony. The circumstances which a man
encounters with blessedness are the result of his own mental harmony.
Blessedness, not material possessions, is the measure of right
thought; wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the
measure of wrong thought. A man may be cursed and rich; he may be
blessed and poor. Blessedness and riches are only joined together
when the riches are rightly and wisely used. And the poor man only
descends into wretchedness when he regards his lot as a
burden unjustly imposed.

Indigence and indulgence are the two extremes of wretchedness. They
are both equally unnatural and the result of mental disorder. A man
is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and
prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the
result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the
man with his surroundings.

A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and
commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life.
And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse
others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong
and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins
to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of
discovering the hidden powers and
possibilities within himself.

Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe;
justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life.
Righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the
spiritual government of the world.
This being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe
is right. And during the process of putting himself right, he will
find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people,
things and other people will alter towards him.
The proof of this truth is in every person, and it therefore admits
of easy investigation by systematic introspection and self-analysis.
Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at
the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of
his life.

Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot. It
rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into
circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness
and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and
disease. Impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating
and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse
circumstances. Thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize
into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into
circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence.

Lazy thoughts crystallize into weak, habits of uncleanliness and
dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and
beggary. Hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of
accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury
and persecution. Selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into
habits of self-seeking, which solidify into distressful
circumstances.

On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into
habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny
circumstances. Pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance
and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and
peace. Thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize
into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success,
plenty, and freedom. Energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of
cleanliness and industry, which solidify into
circumstances of pleasantness. Gentle and forgiving thoughts
crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective
and preservative circumstances. Loving and unselfish thoughts which
solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true
riches.

A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot
fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man
cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his
thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.

Nature helps every man to gratification of the thoughts which he most
encourages, and opportunities are presented which will most speedily
bring to the surface both the good and the evil thoughts.

Let a man cease from his sinful thoughts, and all the world will
soften towards him, and be ready to help him. Let him put away his
weakly and sickly thoughts, and the opportunities will spring up on
every hand to aid his strong resolves. Let him encourage good
thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and
shame. The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations
of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the
exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.
You will be what you will to be;

Let failure find its false content In that poor word, "environment,"
But spirit scorns it, and is free.
It masters time, it conquers space;
It cows that boastful trickster, Chance, And bids the tyrant
Circumstance
Uncrown, and fill a servant's place.
The human Will, that force unseen, The offspring of deathless Soul,
Can hew a way to any goal, Though walls of granite intervene.
Be not impatient in delay, But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands, The gods are ready to obey.
 
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