_straight_ pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right
nor the left. Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they
are disintegrating elements, which break up the straight line of
effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless. Thoughts of
doubt and fear never accomplished anything, and never can. They
always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong
thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in.
The will to do springs from the knowledge that we _can_ do. Doubt
and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages
them, who does not slay them. thwarts himself at every step.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. His
every, thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are
bravely met and wisely overcome. His purposes are seasonably
planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit, which does not fall
prematurely to the ground.
Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force: he who
_knows_ this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a
mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations; he who
_does _this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his
mental powers.
THE THOUGHT-FACTOR IN ACHIEVEMENT
ALL that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the
direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe,
where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual
responsibility must be absolute. A man's weakness and strength,
purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's; they are
brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be
altered by himself, never by another. His condition is also his own,
and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved
from within. As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he
remains.
A strong man cannot help a weaker unless that weaker is _willing_ to
be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself;
he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires
in another. None but himself can alter his condition.
It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves
because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." Now,
however, there is amongst an increasing few a tendency to reverse
this judgment, and to say, "One man is an oppressor because many are
slaves; let us despise the slaves."
The truth is that oppressor and slave are co-operators in ignorance,
and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting
themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the
weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor;
a perfect Love, seeing the suffering, which both states entail,
condemns neither; a perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and
oppressed.
He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish
thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.
A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his
thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by
refusing to lift up his thoughts.
Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must
lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in
order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any
means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. A man
whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think
clearly nor plan methodically; he could not find and develop his
latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having
commenced to manfully control his thoughts, he is not in a position
to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not
fit to act independently and stand alone. But he is limited only by
the thoughts, which he chooses.
There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice, and a
man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his
confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of
his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and
self-reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly,
upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success,
the more blessed and enduring will be his achievements.
The universe does not favour the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious,
although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so; it
helps the honest, the magnanimous, the virtuous. All the great
Teachers of the ages have declared this in varying forms, and to
prove and know it a man has but to persist in making himself more
and more virtuous by lifting up his thoughts.
Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to
the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and
nature. Such achievements may be sometimes connected with vanity and
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