I knew two men who, at an early age, lost the hard-earned savings of years. One was very deeply troubled, and gave way to worry, and despondency.

The other, on reading in his morning paper that the bank in which his money was deposited had hopelessly failed, and that he had lost all, quietly and firmly remarked,

‘’Well, it’s gone, and trouble and worry won’t bring it back, but hard work will.”

He went to work with renewed vigor, and rapidly became prosperous, while the former man, continuing to mourn the loss of his money, and to grumble at his ‘’bad luck,” remained the sport and tool of adverse circumstances, in reality of his own weak and slavish thoughts.

The loss of money was a curse to the one because he clothed the event with dark and dreary thoughts; it was a blessing to the other, because he threw around it thoughts of strength, of hope, and renewed endeavor.

If circumstances had the power to bless or harm, they would bless and harm all people alike, but the fact that the same circumstances will be alike good and bad to different people proves that the good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind of the person that encounters it.

When you begin to realize this you will begin to control your thoughts, to regulate and discipline your mind, and to rebuild the inward temple of your soul, eliminating all useless and superfluous material, and incorporating into your being thoughts alone of joy and serenity, of strength and life, of compassion and love, of beauty and immortality; and as you do this you will become joyful and serene, strong and healthy, compassionate and loving, and beautiful with the beauty of immortality.

And as we clothe events with the drapery of our own thoughts, so likewise do we clothe the objects of the visible world around us, and where one sees discord and ugliness, another sees harmony and beauty …

Everything in the universe is resolved into your own inward experience. It matters little what is without, for it is all a reflection of your own state of consciousness … what you are, so is your world.

It matters everything what you are within, for everything without will be mirrored accordingly.

All that you positively know is contained in your own experience; all that you ever will know must pass through the gateway of experience, and so become part of yourself.

Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty and joy and bliss, or of ugliness and sorrow and pain, is contained within yourself.
By your own thoughts you make your life, your world and your universe. As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly.

Whatsoever you harbor in the inmost chambers of your heart will, sooner or later by the inevitable law of attraction, shape itself in your outward life.

The soul that is impure and selfish is gravitating with pinpoint precision towards misfortune and catastrophe; the soul that is pure, unselfish, and noble is gravitating with equal precision toward happiness and prosperity.

Every soul attracts its own and nothing can possibly come to it that does not belong to it. To realize this is to recognize Divine Law.

The incidents of every human life are drawn to it by the quality and power of its own inner thought-life. Every soul is a complex combination of gathered experiences and thoughts, and the body is but a vehicle for its manifestation.

What, therefore, your thoughts are, that is your real self; and the world around, both animate and inanimate, wears the aspect with which your thoughts clothe it.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts.” Thus said Buddha, and it therefore follows that if a person is happy, it is because they dwell in happy thoughts; if miserable, because he or she dwells on unhappy and debilitating thoughts.

“But do you really mean to say that outward circumstances do not affect our minds?”

I do not say that, but I say this, and know it to be an infallible truth, that circumstances can only affect you in so far as you allow them to do so.

We are swayed by circumstances because we have not a right understanding of the nature, use, and power of thought.

If we believe (and upon this little word belief hang all our sorrows and joys) that outward things have the power to make or mar our life; by so doing we submit to those outward things, confess that we are their slave, and they our unconditional master.

By doing this, we invest them with a power which they do not, of themselves, possess, and we succumb, in reality, not to the mere circumstances, but to the gloom or gladness, the fear or hope, the strength or weakness, which our thought-sphere has thrown around them …