The Path of Prosperity
In his book, “The Path of Prosperity”, James Allen teaches you how to change your life through the way you think. This book will help you understand how to find peace and prosperity by changing your attitudes and reactions to life’s challenges. In the words of James Allen, “By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe. “
—-Harrison
The Path of Prosperity
By James Allen
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1. The Lesson of Evil
Chapter 2. The World a Reflex of Mental States
Chapter 3. The Way Out of Undesirable Conditions
Chapter 4. The Silent Power of Thought: Controlling and Directing One’s Forces
Chapter 5. The Secret of Health, Success and Power
Chapter 6. The Secret of Abounding Happiness
Chapter 7. The Realization of Prosperity
Foreword
I looked around upon the world, and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering. And I looked for the cause. I looked around, but could not find it; I looked in books, but could not find it; I looked within, and found there both the cause and the self-made nature of that cause. I looked again, and deeper, and found the remedy.
I found one Law, the Law of Love; one Life, the Life of adjustment to that Law; one Truth, the truth of a conquered mind and a quiet and obedient heart. And I dreamed of writing a book which should help men and women, whether rich or poor, learned or unlearned, worldly or unworldly, to find within themselves the source of all success, all happiness, all accomplishment, all truth. And the dream remained with me, and at last became substantial; and now I send it forth into the world on its mission of healing and blessedness, knowing that it cannot fail to reach the homes and hearts of those who are waiting and ready to receive it.
-JAMES ALLEN
Chapter 1
The Lesson of Evil
Unrest and pain and sorrow are the shadows of life. There is no heart in all the world that has not felt the sting of pain, no mind has not been tossed upon the dark waters of trouble, no eye that has not wept the hot blinding tears of unspeakable anguish.
There is no household where the Great Destroyers, disease and death, have not entered, severing heart from heart, and casting over all its inhabitants the dark pall of sorrow.
In the strong, and apparently indestructible meshes of evil all are more or less fast caught, and pain, unhappiness, and misfortune wait upon mankind.
With the object of escaping, or in some way mitigating this overshadowing gloom, men and women rush blindly into innumerable devices, pathways by which they fondly hope to enter into a happiness which will not pass away.
Such are the drunkard and the harlot, who revel in sensual excitements; such is the exclusive aesthete, who shuts himself out from the sorrows of the world, and surrounds himself with enervating luxuries; such is he who thirsts for wealth or fame, and subordinates all things to the achievement of that object; and such are they who seek consolation in the performance of religious rites.
And to all the happiness sought seems to come, and the soul, for a time, is lulled into a sweet security, and an intoxicating forgetfulness of the existence of evil; but the day of disease comes at last, or some great sorrow, temptation, or misfortune breaks suddenly in on the unfortified soul, and the fabric of its fancied happiness is torn to shreds.
So over the head of every personal joy hangs the Damocletian sword of pain, ready, at any moment, to fall and crush the soul of him who is unprotected by knowledge.
The child cries to be a man or woman; the man and woman sigh for the lost felicity of childhood. The poor man chafes under the chains of poverty by which he is bound, and the rich man often lives in fear of poverty, or scours the world in search of an elusive shadow he calls happiness.
Sometimes the soul feels that it has found a secure peace and happiness in adopting a certain religion, in embracing an intellectual philosophy, or in building up an intellectual or artistic ideal; but some overpowering temptation proves the religion to be inadequate or insufficient; the theoretical philosophy is found to be a useless prop; or in a moment, the idealistic statue upon which the devotee has for years been laboring, is shattered into fragments at his feet.
Is there, then, no way of escape from pain and sorrow? Are there no means by which bonds of evil may be broken? Is permanent happiness, secure prosperity, and abiding peace a foolish dream?
No, there is a way, and I speak it with gladness, by which evil can be slain for ever; there is a process by which disease, poverty, or any adverse condition or circumstance can be put on one side never to return; there is a method by which a permanent prosperity can be secured, free from all fear of the return of adversity, and there is a practice by which unbroken and unending peace and bliss can be partaken of and realized.
And the beginning of the way which leads to this glorious realization is the acquirement of a right understanding of the nature of evil.
It is not sufficient to deny or ignore evil; it must be understood. It is not enough to pray to God to remove the evil; you must find out why it is there, and what lesson it has for you.
It is of no avail to fret and fume and chafe at the chains which bind you; you must know why and how you are bound. Therefore, reader, you must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.
You must cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience and must begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your edification and ultimate perfection; for evil, when rightly understood, is found to be, not an unlimited power or principle in the universe, but a passing phase of human experience, and it therefore becomes a teacher to those who are willing to learn.
Evil is not an abstract some thing outside yourself; it is an experience in your own heart, and by patiently examining and rectifying your heart you will be gradually led into the discovery of the origin and nature of evil, which will necessarily be followed by its complete eradication.
All evil is corrective and remedial, and is therefore not permanent. It is rooted in ignorance, ignorance of the true nature and relation of things, and so long as we remain in that state of ignorance, we remain subject to evil.
There is no evil in the universe which is not the result of ignorance, and which would not, if we were ready and willing to learn its lesson, lead us to higher wisdom, and then vanish away. But men remain in evil, and it does not pass away because men are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.
I knew a child who, every night when its mother took it to bed, cried to be allowed to play with the candle; and one night, when the mother was off guard for a moment, the child took hold of the candle; the inevitable result followed, and the child never wished to play with the candle again.
By its one foolish act it learned, and learned perfectly the lesson of obedience, and entered into the knowledge that fire burns. And, this incident is a complete illustration of the nature, meaning, and ultimate result of all sin and evil.
As the child suffered through its own ignorance of the real nature of fire, so older children suffer through their ignorance of the real nature of the things which they weep for and strive after, and which harm them when they are secured; the only difference being that in the latter case the ignorance and evil are more deeply rooted and obscure.
Evil has always been symbolized by darkness, and Good by light, and hidden within the symbol is contained the perfect interpretation, the reality; for, just as light always floods the universe, and darkness is only a mere speck or shadow cast by a small body intercepting a few rays of the illimitable light, so the Light of the Supreme Good is the positive and life-giving power which floods the universe, and evil the insignificant shadow cast by the self that intercepts and shuts off the illuminating rays which strive for entrance.
When night folds the world in its black impenetrable mantle, no matter how dense the darkness, it covers but the small space of half our little planet, while the whole universe is ablaze with living light, and every soul knows that it will awake in the light in the morning.
Know, then, that when the dark night of sorrow, pain, or misfortune settles down upon your soul, and you stumble along with weary and uncertain steps, that you are merely intercepting your own personal desires between yourself and the boundless light of joy and bliss, and the dark shadow that covers you is cast by none and nothing but yourself.
And just as the darkness without is but a negative shadow, an unreality which comes from nowhere, goes to nowhere, and has no abiding dwelling place, so the darkness within is equally a negative shadow passing over the evolving and Light-born soul.
“But,” I fancy I hear someone say, “why pass through the darkness of evil at all?” Because, by ignorance, you have chosen to do so, and because, by doing so, you may understand both good and evil, and may the more appreciate the light by having passed through the darkness.
As evil is the direct outcome of ignorance, so, when the lessons of evil are fully learned, ignorance passes away, and wisdom takes its place. But as a disobedient child refuses to learn its lessons at school, so it is possible to refuse to learn the lessons of experience, and thus to remain in continual darkness, and to suffer continually recurring punishments in the form of disease, disappointment, and sorrow.
He, therefore, who would shake himself free of the evil which encompasses him, must be willing and ready to learn, and must be prepared to undergo that disciplinary process without which no grain of wisdom or abiding happiness and peace can be secured.
A man may shut himself up in a dark room, and deny that the light exists, but it is everywhere without, and darkness exists only in his own little room.
So you may shut out the light of Truth, or you may begin to pull down the walls of prejudice, self-seeking and error which you have built around yourself, and so let in the glorious and omnipresent Light.
Alpha Pygmy Goats, Unreasonably Optimistic Russian Attorneys and Setting High Expectations for Yourself
I used to be a law professor, and I remember in my class there was the nicest kid you can imagine who had immigrated from Russia a few years previously and wanted to be an attorney. He hardly spoke English and had a difficult time putting sentences together, however, none of this appeared to matter. He was always the first guy who arrived in class each day and always stayed after to ask questions. During class, he took notes and wrote furiously. He sat in the front row and appeared to believe that he was going to be the greatest attorney of all time. He wore a suit to class each day and other kids were showing up to class in shorts, tee shirts and flip flops. All of the kids in the class liked him a lot, and they respected him a lot. Each day after class, he would approach me and ask me questions about ridiculously prestigious law firms and whether or not I thought he could get a job with these firms. I never had the heart to tell him that it would be impossible for him to get a job with most of these law firms due to where he was attending law school and his ability to speak English. He did not seem to care, however. For as long as I could take it each day, he would sit there and question me about various law firms and then, from time to time, also ask me questions about the material. When the semester was over, I continued to hear from [Read more]
Nicholas Cage and Personal Leadership
Yesterday I saw the most interesting story about Nicholas Cage. Apparently, he just had a pyramid commissioned and delivered to a Louisiana cemetery for his body to be placed in when he dies. The story also talked about how Cage had recently dyed his hair blonde to ”get in touch with his Celtic roots.” I have been hearing interesting stories about Cage for a long time. A few years ago I was walking on the beach and one of my neighbors was bragging to me that he had recently loaned Cage $1,000,000 against one of his properties and [Read more]
The Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Your Job Search
When I was in my final year of high school, I remember that in English class one day the teacher handed me back a paper I had written and it had a B+ on it. While there were a lot of classes that I would have been incredibly happy if I received this grade in, English was not one of them. In fact, with the exception of a horrible play I had written for one English class, I had not received a grade of less than an A- in any English class for years. I decided that I needed to meet with the English teacher and go over this. After all, I figured that something must be seriously wrong. The teacher asked me to meet him for lunch, and so a few days later, I was sitting there with the teacher having lunch. We spoke for some time before the grade came up and when it did I said, “Listen, I have not received a grade this bad on any paper I have ever written in any English class. There has to be some mistake.” I then proceeded to list [Read more]
Keep it Simple Stupid: Confessions of a Bad Interviewer
When I was in college, I wrote a 500 page book that went into considerable depth evaluating the incredibly complex race relations that existed within the Detroit metropolitan area at the time. Specifically, I was interested in how African-Americans had, in many cases, avoided integrating into the larger society due to a need to strengthen their own society first. The theory I came up with was quite interesting because I noticed (in an exhaustive multi-year study) that the more religious and ethnic groups had historically come together and developed their own customs, unique beliefs and so forth, the [Read more]
Do Not Allow the Past to Limit Your Opportunities Today
My one-year old daughter calls a coffee cup “hot” and avoids coffee cups lest she gets burned. Until she learns that the coffee cup can also contain coffee, milk, and other foods that will not harm her, she is likely to avoid coffee cups for some time. She must have been burned a little by touching a coffee cup at one point and learned to stay away from coffee cups. Until she is able to see the coffee cup for what it is (a cup), and not her past experience (getting burned), she will not be able to experience everything positive that can [Read more]
The Importance of Discipline
One of the most popular misconceptions in the world is that the people who end up being the most successful somehow achieve this success through short cuts, not working hard and other miracles of fate. What I do know is that each time someone is able to achieve incredible success without a lot of work and with some luck, multiple news stories will be generated about this event and the person will become almost legendary for their instant success. Why? Because it is so rare and it gives people an incredible amount of hope. People want to [Read more]
Thought-Force In Business and Everyday Life
“Thought-Force In Business and Everyday Life” by William Atkinson is an extremely interesting book that talks about personal magnetism, the quality of attracting and influencing people around us. Success in life, according to Atkinson, depends largely on the personal magnetism a person exudes.
Read on to learn the secrets of influencing others.
–Harrison
Thought-Force In Business and Everyday Life
By William W. Atkinson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface Chapter 1. Salutatory Chapter 2. The Nature of the Force Chapter 3. How the Thought Force Can Aid You Chapter 4. Direct Psychic Influence Chapter 5. A Little Worldly Wisdom Chapter 6. The Power of the Eye Chapter 7. The Magnetic Gaze [Read more]
How to Talk About Other Interviews in Your Interviews
One of the questions I receive quite often from people I am working with is whether or not they should talk about other interviews while they are interviewing with a potential employer. Let me emphasize one thing: This is one of the more important questions you will ever be asked in an interview. Regardless of your qualifications, how you respond to this question will have a direct bearing on whether or not you receive an offer from the employer asking you this question. Be very careful as to how you answer this question. At the outset, it is important to point out that you do not have to answer this question. This question will also not be asked very often. Indeed, it is my opinion that this question is entirely inappropriate. In no instance should you even volunteer this information unless you are asked. The problem is that if you are asked this question, you will look bad if you refuse to answer it. Not answering the question gives the employer the impression that you will similarly “hide the ball” when you are working for them. It also does not do much to assist you in establishing a bond of [Read more]
Police Chases, Foreclosures and Access to Information
About three years ago my mother’s boyfriend Dave started calling me, threatening to come out to California from Detroit and kill me unless I made my mother sign her house over to him. My mother had moved away from Michigan to be close to my sister in Rochester, New York a few months previously and had left her house vacant back in Michigan. From what I understood at the time, she had stopped speaking with Dave—but I really could not be sure. The messages on my answering machine would ramble on sometimes for several minutes. Dave would call [Read more]
