The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. ~James Allen, As A Man Thinketh The world you live in arises from the world within. As you think and feel, you create your outer circumstances, relationships, and choices. Your thoughts determine the home you live in, the automobile you drive, the avenues you walk on, the buildings you work in, the people in your life, and your health and bank account. Your mental view of life is expressed as tangible substance and experience. This is the truth about reality. Yet for centuries humankind has believed the opposite. People believe that they can be happy when things go well for them. Yet it is their mood that determines how well or ill things will go for them. People believe that all sorts of trouble come to them. Yet it is their agitated thoughts that have attracted trouble to them. People believe that they have to react to the world and survive in it. Yet it is their reactions to the world and their insecurity that created the conditions that they struggle in. Some people live like kings and others like paupers. A king will associate with other kings and play on golf courses and vacation in exclusive resorts. He will create wealth building enterprises and invent massive economic machines. And when he has something to say, television cameras and periodicals will broadcast his opinions. As far as a king can tell, it is an abundant world. His experience of it is constantly expanding and he has visions of what else is possible. The pauper will associate with other paupers. He will visit pawn shops with his television on his shoulders to pay the rent for his dilapidated housing. Hell create elaborate schemes to stretch his dollar because he makes precious little from his workalthough his labor produces wealth for his master. He will live his life in obscurity. If he has something to say, he shares it with his faithful dog. As far as he can tell, it is a world of lack, limitation, negativity, and scarcity. His experience of it is constantly bitter. He shirks contact with the world of hope and possibility. The king and the pauper may pass each other in the streets but do not even exchange glances for each is enveloped in his own view of the world. What creates these worlds and the millions of variations? It is thought and feeling alone. These thoughts create behaviors and effects, knowledge and skills, and associations and choices. Sometimes the pauper may change his thoughts, ascend to greater knowledge and enterprise and move into the world of a king. And sometimes a king may change his thoughts, descend in mood, become careless of his stewardship, and lose his empire and tumble into the world of a pauper. To say that the world creates us is like saying that the cart is pulling the horse. We choose the world we live in out of all possible worlds. |
