The Science of Getting Rich: CHAPTER IX



How To Use The Will


TO SET ABOUT GETTING RICH IN A SCIENTIFIC WAY, you do not try to apply your will power to anything outside of yourself. You have no right to do so, anyway. It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women in order to get them to do what you wish done. It is as flagrantly wrong to coerce people by mental power as it is to coerce them by physical power.
If compelling people by physical force to do things for you reduces them to slavery, compelling them by mental means accomplishes exactly the same thing; the only difference is in methods. If taking things from people by physical force is robbery, them taking things by mental force is robbery also. There is no difference in principle.
You have no right to use your will power upon another person, even “for his own good,” for you do not know what is for his good. The science of getting rich does not require you to apply power or force to any other person, in any way whatsoever. There is not the slightest necessity for doing so. Indeed, any attempt to use your will upon others will only tend to defeat your purpose.
You do not need to apply your will to things in order to compel them to come to you. That would simply be trying to coerce God and would be foolish and useless.
You do not have to try to compel God to give you good things, any more than you have to use your will power to make the sun rise.
You do not have to use your will power to conquer an unfriendly Deity, or to make stubborn and rebellious forces do your bidding. Substance is friendly to you, and is more anxious to give you what you want than you are to get it.
To get rich, you need only to use your will power upon yourself.
When you know what to think and do, then you must use your will to compel yourself to think and do the right things. That is the legitimate use of the will in getting what you want — to use it in holding yourself to the right course.
Use your will to keep yourself thinking and acting in the certain way.
Do not try to project your will, or your thoughts, or your mind out into space to “act” on things or people. Keep your mind at home. It can accomplish more there than elsewhere.
Use your mind to form a mental image of what you want and to hold that vision with faith and purpose. And use your will to keep your mind working in the right way.
The more steady and continuous your faith and purpose, the more rapidly you will get rich because you will make only POSITIVE impressions upon substance, and you will not neutralize or offset them by negative impressions.
The picture of your desires, held with faith and purpose, is taken up by the formless, and permeates it to great distances — throughout the universe, for all we know.
As this impression spreads, all things are set moving toward its realization. Every living thing, every inanimate thing, and the things yet uncreated are stirred toward bringing into being that which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direction. All things begin to move toward you. The minds of people everywhere are influenced toward doing the things necessary to the fulfilling of your desires, and they work for you, unconsciously. But you can check all this by starting a negative impression in the formless substance. Doubt or unbelief is as certain to start a movement away from you as faith and purpose are to start one toward you. It is by not understanding this that most people make their failure. Every hour and moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is possessed by unbelief, sets a current away from you in the whole domain of intelligent substance. All the promises are unto them that believe, and unto them only. Since belief is all important, it behooves you to guard your thoughts, and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things you observe and think about, it is important that you should carefully govern to what you give your attention.
And here the will comes into use, for it is by your will that you determine upon what things your attention shall be fixed. If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites. Health is never to be attained by studying disease and thinking about disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and thinking about sin; and no one ever got rich by studying poverty and thinking about poverty. Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease; religion as a science of sin has promoted sin, and economics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.
Do not talk about poverty, do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with them. What concerns you is the cure. Do not spend your time in so-called charitable work or charity movements; most charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate. I do not say that you should be hard-hearted or unkind and refuse to hear the cry of need, but you must not try to eradicate poverty in any of the conventional ways. Put poverty behind you, and put all that pertains to it behind you, and “make good.” Get rich. That is the best way you can help the poor.
And you cannot hold the mental image which is to make you rich if you fill your mind with pictures of poverty and all its attendant ills. Do not read books or papers which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness of the tenement dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on. Do not read anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.
You cannot help the poor in the least by knowing about these things, and the wide-spread knowledge of them does not tend at all to do away with poverty.
What tends to do away with poverty is not the getting of pictures of poverty into your mind, but getting pictures of wealth, abundance, and possibility into the minds of the poor.