Recently a businessman said to me, “I believe that the greatest prosperity law of all is the prosperity law of love and impersonal good will.” He then told me of some of his experiences in business where love, as impersonal good will, had won out in the face of inharmony and apparent failure.
He cited the instance of a wealthy lady customer whom he could always please when her mood was high. But when she was in low spirits, he often received caustic letters or telephone calls, in which she would make caustic, unkind remarks about his mishandling of her business interests.
His antidote for this woman was: Using love as impersonal good will. He stated that when this customer (or any others) “acted up” during the course of his business day, he had developed a special method for “straightening them out.” Instead of retaliating or offering a defense when inharmony, criticism or personality conflicts arose, he would sit quietly for a few minutes, think about the person in question and deliberately think loving thoughts of good will about them. He worked in his own thinking to visualize that person surrounded and infolded with love, a sense of security, calmness, good humor, impersonal good will. The result? He states that the results have been so fast and so pronounced that it has often been breath-taking. For instance, that wealthy, moody woman has often telephoned him long-distance to express her profound apologies within an hour after he has visualized her in a loving, kind way. If a telephone call did not come, then she would usually write a note, dating it and timing it within an hour or so after his thoughts and blessings were realized concerning her.
When inharmony arises in business transactions where several people are involved, this man goes over each one in his mind and blesses each one with impersonal good will. He then mentally sees harmony restored in the situation. Soon tempers cool, misunderstandings fade away, and successful transactions proceed.
It is good to use this method at the beginning and end of each day. As you look back over your day mentally, for all unpleasantness that occurred, dare to mentally recast that experience. See all concerned as loving, understanding and harmonious, and you will be surprised how often those involved will do an “about-face,” and make amends for their previous attitudes.
Dare to begin your day by mentally going over the planned events for that day, visualizing them as pleasant, harmonious and successful. You will begin to experience paths of prosperity, pleasantness and peace, of which Solomon wrote. Usually, if you mentally plan, visualize and expect a successful day in the early morning hours, there will be little to undo mentally at day’s end.
Love Never Fails
No matter how many prosperity laws you know about, if you are not able to live and work harmoniously with others, all else seems of little value. It has been estimated that your financial success is due only to 15% of your technical ability, and 85% to your ability to get along with people.
The talent for getting along with other people through exercising impersonal good will, which is love in action, cannot be over emphasized. Perhaps you may have wondered about the cause of firing most employees–is it due to incompetence, tardiness, dishonesty? Personnel managers seem to agree that more than two-thirds of the people who lose their jobs do so because “they cannot get along with people.” Approximately ten percent are discharged because of inadequate preparation for the skills needed. The rest are discharged because of “personality problems.”
Do you wonder why impersonal good will and the ability to get along with others has such power? Do you wonder why it is that, unless you are able to get along with others in either a business way or at home, all your other training, abilities and efforts are generally futile?
Love has unequaled power, because love is the power that unifies the whole world and everything in it. For instance, the law of gravity is love in action. Love is the equalizing, harmonizing, balancing, adjusting force that is ever at work throughout the universe. Working in these ways, love can do for you what you cannot humanly do for yourself.
At Harvard University, world-renowned sociologists conducted research studies on the power of love. The university established a research center, staffed with serious scientists, who spent their valuable time studying the subject of love. Their findings were that love, like other good things, can be deliberately produced by human beings! According to their findings, there is no reason why we can’t learn to generate love as we do other natural forces.
Love Is Personal and Impersonal
But how do you produce and generate love? First, by realizing that love is both personal and impersonal. On the personal level, you can generate love as the expression of devotion, tenderness, kindness, approval, and appreciation of those in your family and circle of close friends.
Love, on the impersonal level, is the ability to get along with other people, or good will toward all others without personal attachment. For this purpose, affirm often: I love all people and all people love me, without attachment.
A Chinese doctor now living in Malaya is especially interested in helping mankind to realize the impersonal power of love for solving all our ills. He has sent out over 150,000 copies of a statement about the power of love. In this statement he invites people of all races and creeds to simply think about divine love for five minutes every day. He then provides a synchronizing timetable, in case people in various countries wish to meditate upon divine love at the same time. That is one man’s belief in the power of love for harmony, justice, and world peace.
How to Generate Love
If you will analyze this thing called love, you will discover that life is a process of giving and receiving of love in its many phases, and that it is those individuals who are not living in the stream of love that feel its lack as a difficulty in mind, body or affairs. Through the deliberate development of love, you can get into the stream of life’s goodness, as well as help others to experience it.
Is it not wonderful to realize, as did the Harvard scientists, that you no longer have to look outside yourself, waiting and hoping that somehow, at some future time, perhaps love will find you? You can begin now deliberately generating love for God, for yourself and for mankind, from within your own being. By doing so, you will unfailingly draw the perfect expressions of love into your own life.
I have discovered that some people feel guilty about their desire for love in its many phases, thinking they should suppress that desire. The time has come for you to realize that you should express the desire for love–from within out, toward God, yourself, and your fellow man. A loving Father can only do for you what He can do through you. It is through your own thoughts, feelings and expectations that love is born. As you deliberately express love, it comes back to you multiplied.
Take conscious control of your thoughts and feelings, and begin now to develop an impersonal consciousness of love, knowing that it is the quickest way to solve your own problems, as well as a powerful way of helping mankind. You can do this in a very simple way:
Begin spending a few minutes each day deliberately generating love. In those times affirm: With God’s help, I am now deliberately and joyously radiating divine love to myself, my world, and to all mankind. Ask daily that divine love be made alive in you. Form the mental picture of yourself as healthy, prosperous, illumined, harmonized, blessed, unfettered and unbound. Quietly love that mental picture by affirming: I let divine love now be made alive in me.
In these periods when you deliberately bring alive and generate love, do so in this way: Think of love as being a radiant light that unfolds, brightens, illumines and uplifts you. Think of love as permeating, penetrating, and saturating your whole being. If there are dark, troublesome areas in your life, deliberately think of them as coming alive with the light of divine love and being divinely adjusted.
Continue in your meditation period to pour forth the thought, feeling, and enlightened picture of love upon yourself and your world. There is no reason for feeling guilty about loving yourself. You cannot love others or radiate love outward until you love yourself and feel it within. Love begins at home, within you. Psychiatry emphasizes the need for self-love and appreciation.
Dare to consciously love yourself, love your life and affairs, love every little bit of good in all. In your time of generating love, particularly dare to love any part of the body that is crying out for healing. Boldly declare to it, I love you. Dare to direct love to any situation in your life that seems difficult. Think of the situation and affirm: Let divine love be made alive in thee now.
When you have sufficiently gained a mental picture or satisfying feeling of the light of love flooding your whole being, you can know that you have generated and released the greatest power on earth into every phase of your mind, body and affairs. The light of love shall shine forth as new energy, new peace of mind, new power and dominion, new poise, new beauty, new prosperity, new harmony; indeed, as new good in every phase of your life.
Turning on Love Brings Practical Results
The Harvard scientists also discovered that you can actually bombard people, situations, and conditions with love, thereby producing miraculous changes. They predicted that “turning on love” might soon become a universal prescription for healing the world’s ills.
There is practical, result-getting power in generating and turning on love. A friend recently spoke of witnessing her complexion clean up after daily thinking of it in meditation, and gently loving it with the thought of beauty and radiance. Her skin is now radiantly clean and beautiful. A lecturer recently spoke of feeling fatigued during a lecture series. Then he remembers to love his body in his meditation periods, and it quickly responded with new life, energy and vitality.
Not only is it good to meditate upon love, but as you go about daily living, it is good to affirm silently to everything in your world: Let divine love be made alive in thee. To the clothes you wear: the car you drive, the inanimate objects in your home or office, the bills you pay, the income you receive, affirm divine love. Even to the empty spaces in your life, and to the good you seek that has not yet appeared, affirm love.
Everything seems to respond to your thoughts of love. To the people you meet during the day, strangers and friends, as well as to those in your family group, it is good to silently declare: Let divine love be made alive in thee.
Recently I talked with a secretary concerning the friction and jealousy in her office. Because she was “easy-going,” she was being asked to do a large part of the work normally done by two other secretaries, for which they were receiving high praise and pay increases.
She had tried at various times to talk with her boss about the unfairness of her extra work, but he had refused to listen. In desperation she came to me, not knowing whether to quit her job, which was generally pleasant and convenient, or to try to “stick it out,” unjust though it was.
I suggested that she use this affirmation: Let divine love manifest now. I pointed out that it was not necessary to try to appease personalities, or to compromise one’s beliefs to satisfy others; that every sign of weakness and insecurity would only lead to further dissatisfaction and mistreatment. Instead, she should begin radiating peace, power, poise, inner stability, and firmness in what she would and would not do; and as she did, her co-workers would respond with peace, poise and inner stability. Within a week, the situation began to change. Her fellow workers began to respect her new attitude; they stopped imposing on her, and began to do their own work. Their attitude toward her became one of harmony and respect. Her boss began to treat her more kindly. Harmony and good will gradually replaced the former tension, bickering and jealousy.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said that God measures souls by their capacity for entertaining His best angel, Love. Truly, love never fails.
Love Shall Be Victorious
After certain points in a lawsuit were decided against a man, he was faced with financial ruin, and he complained that it was unjust and unlawful. “There is no justice,” he moaned bitterly. He then talked with a spiritual counselor who suggested that he use the power of divine love on the situation, by affirming his own right attitudes and emotional reactions: I live by the law of love, and love shall be victorious. It was suggested that every time he thought of the other party in the lawsuit that he affirm for him: You live by the law of love and love shall be victorious.
After beginning to think in this way, he felt much better about every aspect of the situation. Hostility, resentment, and the desire to get even left him. Suddenly came an unexpected opportunity to do a real favor for his legal opponent. He did it, and immediately he felt better. As his attitude continued to change, he discovered that his opponent’s attitude changed also. Each conceded certain points, and soon the case was settled out of court fairly and happily for all.
A woman in a large city opened a restaurant and candy shop in a place where two owners had failed miserably before her. She was a brilliant success. When asked how she had succeeded in the same location where others had failed, she said, “I just loved and blessed all my customers. When customers leave my place not only do I invite them to come back, but I silently send them a blessing of love, and pray for their prosperity and happiness. When no customers are in the store, I view the people passing by on the streets with love.”
The Healing Power of Love
You can deliberately produce divine love by thinking loving thoughts about yourself and others, and by affirming divine love. But I have also found it a wonderful success secret to speak appreciative, kind, understanding words to people. Kind words produce results after their kind, the kind of results that mean new life, increase, and real happiness for you!
A businessman was hospitalized with a very high fever, which medical remedies did not seem to reduce. This man was reported to have a heart condition of long standing, and it was assumed that it had actively reappeared. A friend who knew of the healing power of love visited him in the hospital. He soon realized that this man felt greatly unloved because of some tangled relationships in his life.
The friend dared to say to this patient: God loves you, God is guiding you, God is showing you the way. You are greatly loved by God and man. Together they affirmed that God’s love was doing its perfect work in this man’s mind, body and affairs. Suddenly an intense feeling of heat passed through the sick man’s body, and then it left him. The high fever was gone. Later, his physician declared that his heart seemed fine again. Today he is in the finest health ever, and the ointment of love has smoothed out his previously tangled family relationships as well.
A nurse was assigned to a case in which the patient had been suffering from mental illness for a number of months. Shock treatments and drugs had been administered, but had not cleared up her condition. Finally, it was suggested that perhaps a complete rest might be helpful. The patient was taken to her summer home on the coast.
The private nurse assigned to her case had learned about generating love to others. Immediately this nurse began daily meditating upon her patient as loving, kind, whole, well and completely happy again. When she accompanied the patient to the beach and into the water, she would think of her as being immersed in God’s healing love. As the patient played in the water, the nurse would go off a distance on the beach, and silently surround the patient with the thought of love and its healing power.
Often the patient pathetically asked this nurse, “Do you think I really can get well? Is there any hope for my condition?” Always the nurse, who knew the power of speaking words of love, declared, “My dear, you are getting well. God’s love is doing its perfect work in your mind, body and affairs now, and you are being healed.” Over and over daily she reassured the patient in this way. Within six weeks the nurse was dismissed from the case because the patient had responded so beautifully to love’s healing power.
It is easy to speak words of love, or to meditate lovingly upon those people with whom you are in harmony. But it is those people who seem most difficult, who may even seem hostile, that need your radiation of love most. Their very hostility is but their soul’s cry for loving recognition. When you generate sufficient love to them, the discord will fade away.
Shoot Them in the Back - with Love!
A businessman told me that he has a special way of radiating love. In his work as a government employee, his job is to meet the public, handle their complaints, and make things right for them and for his employer, Uncle Sam. The only thing he has to do is to keep everybody satisfied! For anyone else it might seem impossible.
But this man has learned that “love never fails.” He meets the public with a smile, no matter what they do. He continues to be courteous and kind, no matter what they say. All the time he silently affirms: Divine love is in control and all is well. When people with problems leave him, he says that is when he really “lets them have it.” He declares, “I shoot them in the back–with love!”
Does it pay to shoot people in the back with love? This man claims that the attitude and behavior of many complainants who came to his office seemed to change markedly as he affirmed divine love.
I can vouch that this government employee must be successful, because recently a businessman came to me and said, “I would surely like to know Mr. Black’s success secret. He always seems so happy and calm, and yet he has one of the most difficult jobs in this town.” He was delighted when I told him that I knew this man’s success secret was to shoot people in the back with love! I had the feeling, from the look in his eye, that he went forth to do likewise.
Love Protects
A woman in Kansas City protected herself from assault by speaking loving words. One night she was walking down a dark street near the old Unity Society building on Tracy Avenue, when a man stepped out of the shadows and put a gun in her ribs, saying, “Give me your purse or I’ll plug you!” She turned and looked him right in the face, and said, “You can’t harm me, because you are God’s child and I love you.” After twice repeating his threat, each time getting the same reply, he finally shook his head, mumbled something about “this crazy woman,” dropped his gun, and fled. This woman met an extreme situation in an extreme way–through the expression of love.
Invoke Love Impersonally
But you should not go around saying to people outside your family group, “I love you!” Most people would think you meant it in a personal manner, and it could cause embarrassment and misinterpretation. I know of a professional man who made the mistake of telling a number of his lady clients, “I love you,” and he is still trying to explain what he meant to their husbands.
In less personal terms, you can assure people of your interest, approval, and sincere appreciation of them. Kindness and courtesy are always in good taste; in such impersonal ways, you can radiate love as good will to others.
A public relations director for a worldwide insurance company recently told me that, in his work with hundreds of employees, he had found that their greatest need is kindness. He believes that you can satisfy the need for kindness in others just by being “decent to them.”
Write Out Statements of Love
Along with meditation upon love, affirming love, and speaking words of love, it is good to write out statements of love, as a method of generating it. A lady once heard that a former friend was viciously gossiping about her. The criticism was severe and unwarranted. A number of people were being telephoned and visited in an effort to cause this lady to lose her job. When she learned of the negative activities which were spreading, she began to affirm that divine love was at work in the situation. Soon a friend, who had just learned of further critical comments, insisted to her, “This situation must be stopped. You must take action!” All afternoon, this lady sat quietly and wrote over and over: Divine love is doing its perfect work in this situation now, and all is well. That was the only action she took.
Within a few days she received a gift from the woman who had severely criticized her, along with a note expressing words of love and appreciation for her. Divine love had turned the tide. The deliberate radiating of divine love is especially helpful concerning the “little things” in life that can be quite irritating. A series of little things, little events, little changes often mold your day and your world. When you master them, you are approaching mastery of your life.
Personal Expressions of Love Are Important
We have mentioned a number of ways to generate and radiate love in the impersonal phases of life, but let us not overlook the fact that the personal aspects of love need to be expressed regularly in every family. Psychologists tell us that everyone needs to feel loved, appreciated and important; it is a basic need of all mankind. Often those troublesome situations at home, in the family group, result from lack of love being expressed on a personal basis.
For instance, I recently asked a lady who was having trouble in her marriage, “When was the last time you looked your husband straight in the eye and sincerely declared to him, ‘I love you and I think you’re wonderful!’ Startled, she replied, “You mean I have to talk like that to save my marriage?” I found myself saying, “Well, isn’t that the way you got your husband in the first place?” Wives should make their husbands feel important and needed. I have counseled with businessmen who were involved with “other women.” To my question, “Why are you seeing another woman, since you have a lovely wife and a wonderful home?” the usual reply was, “The other woman makes me feel important and needed, but my wife doesn’t.”
Sex, an Important Expression of Love
The sexual relationship in marriage is also an important way of expressing love. Indeed, when rightly understood, sex is a vital part of the holy sacrament of marriage. In its fullest meaning, sex is beautiful beyond compare. The expression of sex in marriage can deeply enhance the bond of love.
Express Love to Children
Children as well as adults need to feel wanted and appreciated. Recently a seventh grade science teacher made an interesting experiment with the 12- and 13-year-old students in her classes. She gave 190 boys and girls slips of paper on which she asked them anonymously to write out their greatest problems in life. She read most of their answers to me. One 12-year-old-boy wrote:
My brother is a teenager and all of his friends are teenagers who constantly pick on me. My problem is that I am allergic to teenagers. What can I do about it? Another student wrote:
My mother and father give me everything I want in the way of clothes, money and gifts. But they never have time to talk or visit with me. My friends say that I am very fortunate to have such generous parents. But I would much rather have more of their time and less of their money.
In counseling parents about their so-called “problem children” one quickly discovers that often the parent’s attitude toward the child is the problem. A change of attitude on the part of the parent toward the child is often all that is needed to bring about a happy relationship. In recent conversation, a very successful businessman seemed quite troubled about his non-conformist teenage son. This man had two sons, one of whom had grown up to be all that his father had desired as a loving, obedient individual. The other son had simply refused to be molded to his father’s opinion of the type of person he should be.
This younger son possessed a highly creative nature, and was interested in the world of art, music and writing. However, the father had condemned these artistic talents in his son, rather than recognizing that they were God-given. When the father realized that there was nothing “wrong” with this son, that he was simply a different type from the older son or from anyone else in the family, the father seemed relieved and agreed to praise his son’s creative abilities. Later he encouraged his young son to take the art courses he had always wanted.
One of the most loving things you can do for children, your own or another’s, who seems to be having difficulties, is to affirm often for them: I behold you with the eyes of love, and I glory in your God-given perfection. You are God’s child and He loves you. It is also good to affirm: Divine Love, manifest thyself for this child now.
Children Thrive on Encouragement
Children, as well as adults, especially thrive on sincere appreciation, praise and encouragement; it is a tonic to them. I know of an instance of a little boy who was not responding in school at all. His mother became disgusted with him and made an appointment with a psychiatrist, which was scheduled some weeks later. In casual conversation she mentioned her son to me, and I pointed out his sensitivity and his creative abilities. I explained that his differentness, which had so greatly disturbed her, was his potential power for success. I suggested that she take time from her crowded business schedule to daily sit down and talk with him about anything that was on his mind, and especially that she praise his every improvement and his every good attitude.
She immediately began praising him sincerely and daily, and his schoolwork immediately responded. His musical ability also blossomed forth. Soon he was selected as one of six children in his age group from the entire city to perform at a special band concert. The previously planned psychiatric treatment was canceled.
Discipline with Love
This does not mean you should not work to correct negative behavior or to discipline children. You should be firm but loving in your discipline. The word discipline in its root meaning signifies “to perfect.” Your methods of correction and discipline should lead to perfection rather than to rebellion, resistance, or further negative behavior. I have found it best to pray for divine guidance concerning each child, rather than to seek advice from other people, or to clutter the mind with too much theory on the subject.
Parents have long believed that they personally had the difficult task of training their children by in grafting knowledge onto them from the outside, which they felt would equip their children for adult living. When you attempt to rear children from this standpoint alone, it can prove difficult and disappointing for all concerned.
Intellectual education has its place, but it is only a part of a child’s real education and development. The word “educate” truly means to “draw out” that which innately exists within. Dr. Emilie Cady has written, “God as infinite love lies within every human being, only waiting to be led forth into manifestation. This is true education.”
Another way to love children is to teach them that God never intended them to fail or to be in lack. I know of one family group in which the children are developing real self-confidence because their parents constantly tell them they can succeed, and that failure is not necessary. These children are gathered together at bedtime for their prayers. Along with the usual prayers for children, these parents also affirm prosperity statements with their children. They are absorbing the idea of wealth and prosperity as their natural right. Every gift that comes to them is received as a “prosperity gift”; every item of clothing becomes their “prosperity clothes.” Small wonder that these children are constantly attracting gifts and prosperity to them.
Begin Where You Are, Expressing Love
Remember that love functions on both the personal and impersonal phases of life. If there seems to be a lack of love in your personal life, you can be assured that you will experience love in that department, when you persevere in rendering love impersonally as service and good will. If love seems to be missing in the impersonal phases of your life, you can be assured that you will experience understanding, happiness and success there, when you persevere in using God’s love in your personal life and relationships.
Begin where you are, with the love now operating in your life. Bless it, give thanks for it in either the personal department of your life as happy family relationships, or in the impersonal phases of your life as job success. As you give thanks for every small and large expression of love in your life, you release its multiplying power which can fill every void.
Charles Fillmore commented on the power of love as follows: You may trust love to get you out of your difficulties. There is nothing too hard for it to accomplish for you, if you put your confidence in it.
Promise yourself now that you will also begin to deliberately generate God’s love to yourself, to family, and to all mankind. As you do, your problems will turn into solutions, and your prosperity will multiply. You can bring this to pass by affirming often: Divine Love foresees everything and richly provides everything now. The perfect results of Divine Love now appear.