CHAPTER 1

In Bondage

One of the darkest clouds that oppresses the divinely illuminated and universal hope of the race is poverty.

And poverty is born of two misconceptions: first, man does not know that opulence is universal, awaiting only the opening of his own mentality to give of itself freely in every manner of uses and luxuries; and second, that he has not the faintest conception of his own power to command it.

That poverty is innate in man I am convinced by my own experience. It manifests itself first in fear. Fear is at the bottom of all poverty; fear of others, and distrust of self which is another form of fear, and the most deadly form of all. I am convinced that every shade and degree of opulence depends upon a man’s valuation of his own powers; opulence is not limited: it is we who are limited in our demand for it, and more especially in our expectation of it after we have sent out some feeble, half-fledged demand.

I have known poverty most thoroughly. I was held in a belief of its power all through the earlier part of my life; not during my childhood, however, but beginning when I was a very young woman and continuing until I found there was a Law that could command opulence, which by slow degrees I put in operation and became free.

In looking back upon my experience it does not seem that the hard work I had to do wore on my strength so bitterly as the feelings engendered by the situation. I was crushed. I looked up to others as my superiors, and was ready to take my place beneath them. This is always a pitiful thing, and a thing that leads constantly downward in the scale of being. Its effect upon one’s womanhood or manhood is as demoralizing as the disintegrating effect of alcohol on the moral character of the inebriate.

Nor was this all. I was tortured day and night by fear of actual want. Where the next dollar was to come from was my continual thought. It was the last thing in my thought at night; it haunted my dreams, and in the morning—mornings made dark and dreadful by the same gaunt phantom—I would be awakened by becoming gradually conscious of a weight at my heart. Arising and sitting on the side of my bed the day would face me with threats that I had no courage to meet. A thousand times in my weakness and inability to resist the present, my tears would fall all the minutes I was hastening to clothe myself.

The weight at my heart was not imaginary; it was a palpable thing and did not entirely disappear for years after I began to conquer poverty and was on the upgrade to splendid success.

There was no valid reason for all this torture except that which existed in my mind. I had been so unappreciated that I had come to regard myself as an inferior creature, and to look upon all successful persons as being more happily endowed by nature than I. I accepted this as an actual fact and did not reason upon it. Indeed it was the unawakened condition of the power within me that was responsible for the whole situation.

Fear was at the bottom of it all. A natural timidity that my education increased instead of overcoming, and the constant distrust of myself, my own powers—these two conditions shut out the light of life for me and left me in the dark and the cold where the sunshine of truth was slow in reaching me.

But at last my reasoning powers showed signs of awakening; first on the subject of religion; then on other things, and my mind broke its fetters so that I began to see light. I threw off a hundred beliefs that were considered essential to man’s salvation; and, as I kept on reasoning and my reason justified me in clinging fast to my own opinions, I slowly acquired a measure of individuality that enabled me to stand alone.

No, not alone; but to approach the place in the understanding of myself where I saw that it would be possible for me to stand alone, sometime.

My fears abated as I gradually perceived within myself a will that I argued would not be there unless it was meant for use. Previous to this I had supposed this will—when I caught sight of it at long intervals—was the Devil, and stood as the living opponent to God’s will, which I tried, strenuously, to follow by crushing my own will.

But I shall not follow the course of reasoning I adopted at this period of my growth. It did pull me through every difficulty and changed me from the most despondent, hopeless, poverty-stricken person to the most hopeful and opulent one I know in all the world. I will give the course of reasoning I followed later on in this book; but now I will continue with my experiences, all of which constitute a perfect illustration of the ideas I mean to show forth as having the power in every instance, without fail, to cure poverty and establish wealth.

I consider that person wealthy who has enough and who spends fearlessly what he has. This is my condition, and while, since I came to the plane of conscious growth, I have expended money for anything I desired, it has come to me in greater abundance than the amount necessary to satisfy all immediate desires, the natural result being accumulation, which, to me, represents the over-plus of strength. I would not be afraid to spend the last dollar I possess in property or money, for I know that more would come to me. I know that a certain mental attitude, a certain quality of thought generated by the brain will put me in the way of getting what I want. Having mastered this quality of thought and come understandingly into the use of it, the supply is bound to be equal to my demand.

To describe the mental attitude or the quality of thought may prove rather difficult since it rests on a deep understanding of man and his powers. Perhaps I had better let my further experience demonstrate the idea, and after that give the necessary explanation. I may have to go into this experience at a tiresome length, but if the reader learns the secret from it he will be repaid for the reading.