Prosperity, by Charles Fillmore, [1936], at sacred-texts.com
Prosperity, by Charles Fillmore, [1936], at sacred-texts.com
THE POSSESSIONS of the Father are not in stocks and bonds but in the divine possibilities implanted in the mind and soul of every man. Through the mind of man ideas are brought into being. Through the soul of man God's wealth of love finds its expression.
It is well said that the mind is the crucible in which the ideal is transmuted into the real. This process of transformation is the spiritual chemistry we must learn before we are ready to work intelligently in the great laboratory of the Father's substance. There is no lack of material there to form what we will, and we can all draw on it as a resource according to our purpose. Wealth of consciousness will express itself in wealth of manifestation.
One who knows Principle has a certain inner security given him by the understanding of God-Mind. Our affirmations are for the purpose of establishing in our consciousness a broad understanding of the principles on which all life and existence depend. Our religion is based on a science in which
ideas are related to Principle and to other ideas in a great universal Mind that works under mental laws. It is not a new religion nor a religious fad but points out the real and the true in any religion. If you know Principle, you are able to know at once whether a religion is founded on facts or has a basis of man-made ideas.
In order to demonstrate Principle we must keep establishing ourselves in certain statements of the law. The more often you present to your mind a proposition that is logical and true the stronger becomes that inner feeling of security to you. The mind of man is built on Truth and the clearer your understanding of Truth is the more substantial your mind becomes. There is a definite and intimate relation between what we call Truth and this universal substance of Being. When the one Mind is called into action in your mind by your thinking about it, it lays hold of the substance by the law of attraction or sympathy of thought. Thus the more you know about God the more successful you will be in handling your body and all your affairs. The more you know about God the healthier you will be, and of course the healthier you are the happier, more beautiful, and better you will be in every way. If you know how to take hold of the universal substance and mold it to your uses, you will be prosperous. Mind substance enters into every little detail of your daily life whether you realize the Truth or not. However, to establish yourself in a certain security in the possession and use of universal life, love, intelligence, and
substance, you must get a consciousness of it by first mentally seeing the Truth.
All true action is governed by law. Nothing just happens. There are no miracles. There is no such thing as luck. Nothing comes by chance. All happenings are the result of cause and can be explained under the law of cause and effect. This is a teaching that appeals to the innate logic of our mind, yet we sometimes feel like doubting it when we see things happen that have no apparent cause. These happenings that seem miraculous are controlled by laws that we have not yet learned and result from causes that we have not been able to understand. Man does not demonstrate according to the law but according to his knowledge of the law, and that is why we must seek to learn more of it. God is law and God is changeless. If we would bring forth the perfect creation, we must conform to law and unfold in our mind, body, and affairs as a flower unfolds by the principle of innate life, intelligence, and substance.
The United States Congress establishes laws that rule the acts of all American citizens. Those who keep the laws are rewarded by the protection of the law. Congress does not see to it that men obey the laws. That is left to the executive department of the government. The same thing is true of the universal law. God has ordained the law but does not compel us to follow it. We have free will, and the manner of our doing is left entirely to us. When we know the law and work with it, we are rewarded by its protection and use it to our good. If we break the
universal law, we suffer limitations, just as a convicted lawbreaker is limited to a cell or prison. The Holy Spirit is the executive official through whom Divine Mind enforces its laws.
You can see from this consideration that God has bestowed the power of Divine Mind on every man. You are using your organism, body, mind, and soul, to carry out a law that God established as a guide for all creation. If you righteously fulfill this mission, you cannot fail to get the righteous results. If you fail to live in accordance with the law--well, that is your affair. God cannot help it if you are not following the law and by it demonstrating health, happiness, prosperity, and all good. Blackstone said that law is a rule of action. So with God's law: if you follow the rules of action, you will demonstrate Truth. You will have all that God has prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
What are the rules of the law? First, God is good and all His creations are good. When you get that firmly fixed in your mind, you are bound to demonstrate good and nothing but good can come into your world. If you let in the thought that there is such a thing as evil and that you are as liable to evil as to good, then you may have conditions that conform to your idea of evil. But remember, evil and evil conditions are not recognized by Divine Mind. If you have thought of evil as a reality or as having any power over you, change your thought at once and begin to build up good brain cells that never heard about anything but good. Pray thus: I am a
child of the absolute good. God is good, and I am good. Everything that comes into my life is good, and I am going to have only the good. Establish this consciousness and only the good will be attracted to you and your life will be a perpetual joy. I cannot tell you why this is true but I know that it is and that you can prove it for yourself to your satisfaction.
If you will start right now with the idea of universal and eternal goodness uppermost in your mind, talk only about the good, and see with the mind's eye everything and everybody as good, then you will soon be demonstrating all kinds of good. Good thoughts will become a habit, and good will manifest itself to you. You will see it everywhere. And people will be saying of you, "I know that that man is good and true. I have confidence in him. He makes me feel the innate goodness of all men." That is the way in which the one Mind expresses itself through man. It is the law. Those who live in accordance with the law will get the desired results. Those who fail to do so will get the opposite results.
The law also applies to our demonstrations of prosperity. We cannot be very happy if we are poor, and nobody needs to be poor. It is a sin to be poor. You may ask whether Jesus cited any example of poverty's being a sin? Yes. You will find it in the story of the prodigal son. That is often used as a text to preach to moral sinners, but a close study of it shows that Jesus was teaching the sin of lack and how to gain plenty. It is a wonderful prosperity lesson.
The prodigal son took his inheritance and went
into a far country, where he spent it in riotous living and came to want. When he returned to his father's house he was not accused of moral shortcoming, as we should expect. Instead the father said, "Bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him." That was a lesson in good apparel. It is a sin to wear poor clothes. This may seem to some to be rather a sordid way of looking at the teaching of Jesus, but we must be honest. We must interpret it as He gave it, not as we think it ought to be.
The next act of the father was to put a gold ring on the prodigal's finger, another evidence of prosperity. The Father's desire for us is unlimited good, not merely the means of a meager existence. The ring symbolizes the unlimited, that to which there is no end. It also represents omnipresence and omnipotence in the manifest world. When the father gave that ring to the son, he gave him the key to all life activity. It was the symbol of his being a son and heir to all that the father had. "All that is mine is thine." The Father gives us all that He has and is, omnipotence, omniscience, all love, and all substance when we return to the consciousness of His house of plenty.
"Put ... shoes on his feet" was the father's next command to the servants. Feet represent that part of our understanding that comes into contact with earthly conditions. In the head or "upper room" we have the understanding that contacts spiritual conditions, but when we read in Scripture anything about the feet, we may know that it refers to our
understanding of things of the material world.
The next thing the father did for his returned son was to proclaim a feast for him. That is not the way we treat moral sinners. We decree punishment for them; we send them to jail. But the Father gives a feast to those who come to Him for supply. He does not dole out only a necessary ration but serves the "fatted calf," universal substance and life in its fullness and richness.
The parable is a great lesson on prosperity, for it shows us that people who are dissipating their substance in sense ways are sinners and eventually fall into a consciousness of lack. It also proves that they may become lawful and prosperous again by returning to the Father-Mind. When there are so many lessons in the Bible for moral delinquents, there is no need to twist the meaning of this parable to that purpose. It is so plainly a lesson on the cause of lack and want. Jesus expressly states that the youth wasted his substance in a "far country," a place where the divine law of plenty was not realized. There is a very close relation between riotous living and want. Persons who waste their substance in sensation come to want in both physical and financial ways. If we would make the right use of the divine substance and the divine law, we must come back to the consciousness of the Father and conserve our body substance. Then health and prosperity will become naturally manifest. If we are not resourceful or secure in our use of the one divine substance, we are not secure in anything. Substance is a very important
thing in our world, in fact the foundation of it. Therefore we should be secure in our understanding of it and use it according to God's law.
Then let us enter into the very Truth of Being and observe the divine law. Let us realize that our Father is always here and that we are in a "far country" only when we forget His presence. He is constantly giving us just what we will acknowledge and accept under His law. We can take our inheritance and divorce ourselves in consciousness from the Father, but we shall suffer the results, for then we shall not do things in divine wisdom and divine order, and there will be a "famine" in that land. Let us rather seek the divine wisdom to know how to handle our substance and the law of prosperity will be revealed to us. To come into this realization, declare with faith and all assurance: The all-providing Mind is my resource, and I am secure in my prosperity.
Primitive men did not contend for the products of nature so long as they could easily pick the fruits from the trees and sleep beneath the branches. When they began to live in caves contention arose over the best places, and the strongest were usually the victors. "Success leads to success." Those who were able to take the best did so and proved the law that "whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance." This seems at first thought to be an unjust law, but it has always prevailed in the affairs of the world. Jesus, the greatest of metaphysicians, taught it as a divine law and gave it His
commendation. He could not have done otherwise, for it is a righteous law that man shall have what he earns, that industry, effort, and ability be rewarded and laziness discouraged.
This law operates in every department of being. Those who seek the things that the material realm has to offer usually find them. Those who strive for moral excellence usually attain that goal. Those who aspire to spiritual rewards are also rewarded. The law is that we get what we want and work for, and all experience and history have proved it a good law. If this law were removed, world progress would cease and the race become extinct. Where there is no reward for effort, there will be no effort and society will degenerate. We may talk wisely about the inner urge, but when it has no outer field of action it eventually becomes discouraged and ceases to act.
When men evolve spiritually to a certain degree, they open up inner faculties that connect them with cosmic Mind, and attain results that are sometimes so startling that they seem to be miracle workers. What seems miraculous is the action of forces on planes of consciousness not previously understood. When a man releases the powers of his soul, he does marvels in the sight of the material-minded, but he has not departed from the law. He is merely functioning in a consciousness that has been sporadically manifested by great men in all ages. Man is greater than all the other creations of God-Mind because he has the ability to perceive and to lay hold of the ideas inherent in God-Mind and through faith bring
them into manifestation. Thus evolution proceeds by man's laying hold of primal spiritual ideas and expressing them in and through his consciousness.
In the exercise of his I AM identity man needs to develop certain stabilizing ideas. One of them is continuity or loyalty to Truth. In the Scriptures and in life we have many examples of how love sticks to the thing on which it has set its mind. Nothing so tends to stabilize and unify all the other faculties of mind as love. That is why Jesus gave as the greatest commandment that we love God.
When you first begin to think of God as everywhere present substance, your mind will not adhere continuously to the idea. You will drop your attention after a while and think, "I haven't enough to meet all our bills." There you have made a break and have lost momentum in your ongoing, and you must patch it up quickly. Affirm, "I am not going to be led astray. The old ideas are error and they are nothing. They have no power over me. I am going to stick to this proposition. God is love, the substance of my supply."
Ruth, the Moabitish woman, became so attached to Naomi (spiritual thought) that she would not leave her but accompanied her back to Palestine. She was loyal and steadfast because of her love. What was the result of her stick-to-itiveness? She was at first a gleaner; then became the wife of a very rich man and was immortalized as one of the ancestresses of David. This lesson of abiding in our highest ideals is one that we must understand. Nothing
is so important as sticking to the ideal and never giving up the work we have set out to accomplish. Affirm the law continuously and be loyal to it and you will become successful in its demonstration.
You have doubtless found that there is a spiritual law that brings into manifestation the thoughts we concentrate our attention on, a divine universal law of mind activity that is unfailing. Some adverse condition of your own thought has prevented a full demonstration. Do not let this swerve you from your loyalty to the law. You may seem to attain results very slowly, but that is the best reason for sticking closely to your ideal and not changing your mind. Be loyal to Principle and the adverse condition will break up. Then the true light will come and the invisible substance you have been faithfully affirming will begin to reveal itself to you in all its fullness of good.
Jesus stressed the idea that God has made abundant provision for all His children, even to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. The Lord has clothed you with soul substance as gloriously as He did Solomon. But you must have faith in this all-providing substance of good and by your continuity of imagination set it to forming the things you desire. If you are persistent in working this idea in your conscious mind, it will eventually drop down into your subconscious mind and continue to work there where things take form and become manifest. Invisible substance, when your subconsciousness becomes filled with it to the overflowing point, will
ooze out, as it were, into all your affairs. You will become more prosperous and successful so gradually, simply, and naturally that you will not realize that it derives from a divine source and in answer to your prayers. We must realize all the while however that whatever we put as seed into the subconscious soil will eventually bring forth after its kind and we must exercise the greatest caution so that we do not think or talk about insufficiency or allow others to talk to us about it. As we sow in mind so shall we reap in manifestation.
Some of our well-meaning friends have a way of loading us up with "hard-times" ideas that disperse this prosperity substance that we have accumulated. Sometimes even one adverse thought will cause it to escape; then we must go back and patch up the broken reservoir of substance thinking. We have to hold it in our mind in all its fullness and we should not let go of it for a minute lest the work of demonstration be delayed. When you retire at night, let your last thought be about the abundance of spiritual substance. See it filling all the house and the minds of all the people in the house. That potent thought will then sink into your subconsciousness and continue to work whether you are asleep or awake.
The law of supply is a divine law. This means that it is a law of mind and must work through mind. God will not go to the grocery and bring food to your table. But when you continue to think about God as your real supply, everything in your mind begins to awaken and to contact the divine substance,
and as you mold it in your consciousness, ideas begin to come which will connect you with the visible manifestation. You first get the ideas in consciousness direct from their divine source, and then you begin to demonstrate in the outer. It is an exact law and it is scientific and unfailing. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear."
When you work in harmony with this universal law, every needed thing is abundantly supplied. Your part is simply to fulfill the law; that is, to keep your mind filled with mind substance, to store up spiritual substance until the mind is filled with it and it cannot help but manifest in your affairs in obedience to the law "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given." But you are not fulfilling the law when you allow poverty-stricken thoughts to dwell in your mind. They draw other like thoughts, and your consciousness will have no room for the truth that prosperity is for you. Poverty or prosperity, it all depends on you. All that the Father has is yours, but you alone are responsible for the relationship of the Father's good to your life. Through conscious recognition of your oneness with the Father and His abundance you draw the living substance into visible supply.
Do not hesitate to think that prosperity is for you. Do not feel unworthy. Banish all thoughts of being a martyr to poverty. No one enjoys poverty, but some people seem to enjoy the sympathy and compassion they can excite because of it. Overcome any leaning in that direction and every belief that you were meant to be poor. No one is ever hopeless
until he is resigned to his imagined fate. Think prosperity, talk prosperity, not in general but in specific terms, not as something for the other fellow but as your very own right. Deny every appearance of failure. Stand by your guns and affirm supply, support, and success in the very face of question and doubt, then give thanks for plenty in all your affairs, knowing for a certainty that your good is now being fulfilled in Spirit, in mind, and in manifestation.
A Prosperity Treatment
Twenty-Third Psalm
(Revised)
The Lord is my banker; my credit is good.
He maketh me to lie down in the consciousness of omnipresent abundance;
He giveth me the key to His strongbox.
He restoreth my faith in His riches;
He guideth me in the paths of prosperity for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the very shadow of debt,
I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me;
Thy silver and Thy gold, they secure me.
Thou preparest a way for me in the presence of the collector;
Thou fillest my wallet with plenty; my measure runneth over.
Surely goodness and plenty will follow me all the days of my life,
And I shall do business in the name of the Lord forever.