Book Description
Fresh with contemporary relevance, this classic of positive
thinking
from one of the world's great motivational writers offers galvanizing
insights on self-transformation. Based on Emmet Fox's simple message
that "thoughts are things" and all potential lies in their creative and
constructive use, these thirty-one inspiring essays how to have it all
-- health, healing, happiness, and a liberated spirit -- through the
power of constructive though. First published in 1940, Power
Through Constructive Thinking has been a never-failing source of
strength and renewal for generations of readers.
"This book shows that your destiny is really in your own
hands,
because it is impossible to think one ting and produce another, and
that by selection of correct thought a harmonious and happy life is
produced."
Strange as it may seem to you, there exists a mystic power
that is
able to transform your life so thoroughly, so radically, so completely,
that when the process is completed your own friends would hardly
recognize you, and, in fact, you would scarcely be able to recognize
yourself. You would sit down and ask yourself: "Can I really be the man
or woman that I vaguely remember, who went about under my name six
months or six years ago? Was I really that person? Could that person
have possibly been me?" And the truth will be that while in one sense
you are indeed the same person, yet in another sense you will be
someone utterly different.
This mystic but intensely real force can pick you up today,
now,
from the midst of failure, ruin, misery, despair – and in the twinkling
of an eye, as Paul said, solve your problems, smooth out your
difficulties, cut you free from any entanglements, and place you clear,
safe, and happy upon the highroad of freedom and opportunity.
It can lift you out of an invalid’s bed, make you sound and
well
once more, and free to go out into the world to shape your life as you
will. It can throw open the prison door and liberate the captive. It
has a magical healing balm for the bruised or broken heart.
This mystic Power can teach you all things that you need to
know, if
only you are receptive and teachable. It can inspire you with new
thoughts and ideas, so that your work may be truly original. It can
impart new and wonderful kinds of knowledge as soon as you really want
such knowledge – glorious knowledge – strange things not taught in
schools or written in books. It can do for you that which is probably
the most important thing of all in your present stage: it can find your
true place in life for you, and put you into it too. It can find the
right friends for you, kindred spirits who are interested in the same
ideas and want the same things that you do. It can provide you with an
ideal home. It can furnish you with the prosperity that means freedom,
freedom to be and to do and to go as your soul calls.
This extraordinary Power, mystic though I have rightly called
it, is
nevertheless very real, no mere imaginary abstraction, but actually the
most practical thing there is. The existence of this Power is already
well known to thousands of people in the world today, and has been
known to certain enlightened souls for tens of thousands of years. This
Power is really no less than the primal Power of Being, and to discover
that Power is the Divine birthright of all men. It is your right and
your privilege to make your contact with this Power, and to allow it to
work through your body, mind, and estate, so that you need no longer
grovel upon the ground amid limitations and difficulties, but can soar
up on wings like an eagle to the realm of dominion and joy.
But where, it will naturally be asked, is this wonderful,
mystic
Power to be contacted? Where may we find it? And how is it brought into
action? The answer is perfectly simple – This Power is to be found
within your own consciousness, the last place that most people would
look for it. Right within your own mentality there lies a source of
energy stronger than electricity, more potent than high explosive;
unlimited and inexhaustible. You only need to make conscious contact
with this Power to set it working in your affairs; and all the
marvelous results enumerated can be yours. This is the real meaning of
such sayings in the Bible as "The Kingdom of God is within you"; and
"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all the rest shall be added."
This Indwelling Power, the Inner Light, or Spiritual Idea, is
spoken
of in the Bible as a child, and throughout the Scriptures the child
symbolically always stands for this. Bible symbolism has its own
beautiful logic, and just as the soul is always spoken of as a woman,
so this, the Spiritual Idea that is born to the soul, is described as a
child.
The conscious discovery by you that you have this Power within
you,
and your determination to make use of it, is the birth of the child.
And it is easy to see how very apt the symbol is, for the infant that
is born in consciousness is just such a weak, feeble entity as any
new-born child, and it calls for the same careful nursing and guarding
that any infant does in its earliest days. After a time, however, as
the weeks go by, the child grows stronger and bigger, until a time
comes when it can well take care of itself; and then it grows and grows
in wisdom and stature until, no longer leaning on the mother’s care,
the child, now arrived at man’s estate, turns the tables, and repays
its debt by taking over the care of its mother. So your ability to
contact the mystic Power within yourself, frail and feeble at first,
will gradually develop until you find yourself permitting that Power to
take your whole life into its care.
The life story of Jesus, the central figure of the Bible,
perfectly
dramatizes this truth. He is described as being born of a virgin, and
in a poor stable, and we know how he grew up to be the Savior of the
world. Now, in Bible symbolism, the virgin soul means the soul that
looks to God alone, and it is this condition of soul in which the
child, or Spiritual Idea, comes to birth. It is when we have reached
that stage, the stage where, either through wisdom or because of
suffering, we are prepared to put God really first, that the thing
happens.