Above Life’s Turmoil

Above Life’s Turmoil by James Allen is an excellent book that will help you confront the truth of who you are. The message of the book is timeless and asks you to look inside of yourself and change instead of trying to change external conditions around you. This is a classic in self-improvement literature that I am sure you will enjoy.

–Harrison

Above Life’s Turmoil

by James Allen

Foreword

True Happiness

The Immortal Man

The Overcoming of Self

The Uses of Temptation

The Man of Integrity

Discrimination

Belief, the Basis of Action

Belief that Saves

Thought and Action

Your Mental Attitude

Sowing and Reaping

The Reign of Law

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We Create Problems So That We Can Grow and Be Happy

When I was 15 years old, my grandmother took me to a Honda motorcycle dealership one day and bought me a moped. I believe it was called an Aero 50. That was one of the greatest days of my life at the time because, for at least the previous few years, I had been lobbying my parents for a moped and they had never gotten me one. Then, one Friday, my grandmother came over and I tried the same lobbying approach on her, and by Saturday afternoon, I was riding a new moped. When I got [Read more]

Charlemagne, the Roman Empire, and the Importance of Good Leadership

Over the past several years I have become fascinated with leaders and entrepreneurs and what makes them successful. The power of an entrepreneur or leader — to take an idea, unite people around it, and create a long-functioning and successful organization — is profound. When organizations are experiencing a decline, a good leader can turn things around. When a company is starting up, a good leader can make it successful. In fact, the leader of a nation can profoundly shape its outcome. I have no doubt that many large companies and other organizations have been saved by the [Read more]

Induction, Deduction, and Your Career

When you look at the way something has been in the past to draw conclusions about the way something always will be, or always is, you are using inductive reasoning. A standard example of induction would be: All grass examined thus far is green. This leads us to conclude (using induction) that all future grass we see will be green and every piece of green grass we see in the future will strengthen this belief. For example, you likely believe that a flame will burn you if you touch it. Similarly, just about everyone believes that if [Read more]

Career Advice from Aristotle

Aristotle loved studying argumentation and the methods of appeal used to convince someone of a given idea. Aristotle believed that people can be persuaded by the following means:

• Ethos (an appeal to credibility)
• Pathos (an appeal to emotions)
• Logos (an appeal to logic)

Each of these three methods of appeal is useful for you in your job search. In fact, if you use each of these means of persuasion effectively in your search, you should be very successful in getting a job. Ethos involves convincing someone that you have credibility. Ethos refers to your reputation independently of what you are saying—such as your [Read more]

Prank Phone Calls, Accountability and Your Career

When I was growing up, like many kids my age, my friends and I discovered the joys of making prank phone calls.  We never did anything all that serious.  We might call a girl from our class and talk in a funny voice, for example. The most serious phone call we ever made was ordering a pizza for our neighbor and watching the pizza man argue with him when he arrived.  That was funny.  When the neighbor refused the pizza, we went and bought it from the pizza man when he was getting in his car—so the [Read more]

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.

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Have Trust in Others and Be Ready to Seize Opportunity However it Presents Itself

Trusting people and being ready to take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself are two of the greatest skills anyone can have.  My life has been enriched in so many ways by often trusting people I should not have and by being aware of opportunities.  I have always been eager to trust people who do not appear to be trustworthy, because I know that in the act of trusting them I can allow them to see themselves as better people.  It also feels good to show people that you trust them.  Fundamentally, I have a belief that deep down all people [Read more]

Within You is the Power

Within You is the Power

By Henry Thomas Hamblin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Chapter 1. Infinite Life and Power Chapter 2. The Overcoming of Life’s Difficulties Chapter 3. Fate or Free-Will? Chapter 4. Cause and Effect Chapter 5. Success Chapter 6. Health Chapter 7. The Secret of Abundant Supply Chapter 8. The Power and Limitations of the Sub-conscious Mind Chapter 9. The Use of the Spiritual or Super-conscious Mind Chapter 10 Character Building and the Overcoming of Habit Chapter 11. Happiness and Joy Chapter 12. The Use and Mis-Use of Mental and Spiritual Powers Chapter 13. Overcoming Limitations and Awakening Inward Powers

Preface

There is a power lying hidden in man, by the use of which he can rise to higher and better things. There is in man a greater Self, that transcends the finite self of the sense-man, even as the mountain towers above the plain. The object of this little book is to help men and women to bring their inward powers of mind and spirit into expression, wisely and in harmony with universal law; to build up character, and to find within themselves that wondrous Self, which is their [Read more]

The Kick-Ass Marketing Secret of the Most Successful Job Applicants and Employees

I have been going to conferences about one thing or another at least a couple times a year for the past several years. I have spent thousands of dollars attending marketing-related conferences. If I go to one more conference where someone talks about USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) I will probably get up and leave. I am going to teach you in the next few minutes what the best marketing minds in the world would charge you thousands of dollars to tell you about how to market yourself. You are going to know how to position yourself for incredible success—in life and in your [Read more]

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