CHAPTER 17
The Secret of Power
“The great were once as you.
They whom men magnify today
Once groped and blundered on life’s way
Were fearful of themselves, and thought
By magic was men’s greatness wrought.
They feared to try what they could do;
Yet Fame hath crowned with her success
The selfsame gifts that you possess.”
There is a woman in one of the big eastern cities whose husband died a year or two ago and left her nearly $100,000,000. She has unlimited power in her hands—yet she uses none of it. She has unlimited wealth—yet she gets no more from it than if it were in the thousands instead of millions. She knows nothing of her power, of her wealth. She is insane.
You have just as great power in your hands—without this poor woman’s excuse for not using it.
You have access to unlimited ideas, unlimited energy, unlimited wealth. The “Open, Sesame!” is through your subconscious mind.
So long as you limit yourself to superficial conditions, so long as you are a mere “hewer of wood or carrier of water” for those around you who do use their minds, you are in no better position than the beasts of burden.
The secret of power is in understanding the infinite resources of your own mind. When you begin to realize that the power to do anything, to be anything, to have anything, is within yourself, then and then only will you take your proper place in the world.
As Bruce Barton has it in “The Man Whom Nobody Knows”—
“Somewhere, at some unforgettable hour, the daring filled His (Jesus) heart. He knew that He was bigger than Nazareth.”
Again in speaking of Abraham Lincoln, Barton says—“Inside himself he felt his power, but where and when would opportunity come?” And later in the book—
“But to every man of vision the clear voice speaks. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.”
No doubt Jesus’ friends and neighbors all ridiculed the idea of any such power within Him. Just as most people today laugh at the thought of a power such as that within themselves.
So they go on with their daily grind, with the gaunt spectres of sickness and need ever by their side, until death comes as a welcome relief. Are you going to be one of those? Or will you listen to that inner consciousness of power and find the “Kingdom of Heaven that is within you”? For whatever you become conscious of will be quickly brought forth into tangible form.
Don’t judge your ability by what you have done in the past. Your work heretofore has been done with the help of your conscious mind alone. Add to that the infinite knowledge at the disposal of your subconscious mind, and what you have done is as nothing to what you will do in the future.
For knowledge does not apply itself. It is merely so much static energy. You must convert it into dynamic energy by the power of your thought. The difference between the $25-a-week clerk and the $25,000-a-year executive is solely one of thought. The clerk may have more brains than the executive—frequently has in actual weight of gray matter. He may even have a far better education. But he doesn’t know how to apply his thought to get the greatest good from it.
If you have brains, use them. If you have skill, apply it. The world must profit by it, and therefore you.
We all have inspired moments when we see clearly how we may do great things, how we may accomplish wonderful undertakings. But we do not believe in them enough to make them come true. An imagination which begins and ends in day-dreaming is weakening to character.
Make the day-dreams come true. Make them so clear and distinct that they impress themselves upon your subconscious mind. There’s nothing wrong with day-dreaming, except that most of us stop there. We don’t try to make the dreams come true. The great inventor, Tesla, “dreams” every new machine complete and perfect in every particular before ever he begins his model for it. Mozart “dreamed” each of his wonderful symphonies complete before ever he put a note on paper. But they didn’t stop with the dreaming. They visualized those dreams, and then brought them into actuality.
We lose our capacity to have visions if we do not take steps to realize them.
Power implies service, so concentrate all your thought on making your visions of great deeds come true. Thinking is the current that runs the dynamo of power. To connect up this current so that you can draw upon universal supply through your subconscious mind is to become a Super-man. Do this, and you will have found the key to the solution of every problem of life.