The Soul of Things

The power of words is magical, spiritual, incredible. Nothing is more powerful than words. Use them well in your life. —Kristen Houghton Words are important, but action is definitive. Remember that.

Always remember that cheerful thought is what renews your poise.

Never brood over disaster.

Forget it as rapidly as possible and begin to make prosperous pictures of your future.

Always picture the future, whether tomorrow, next year—or after death, as happy, as full of pleasant possibilities and happy incidents.

You thus ensure your future against evil happenings.

Nothing just happens.

Planning your future is not an empty pastime.

Dream dreams and build castles.

Build the blueprint of your future happiness.

Make plans, look forward joyfully to good times, and you will then be well on your way to materialise and help construct the thing into visible form.

Individual achievement is nothing—

Universal service is the insignia of the master.

Only give—

You must give that which you cherish most—you, your ideas, your privacy, your sacred reserves, all with love.

There is a centre in you, which if perceived will be a sure guide to your best development.

Like a magnet, it will draw to you all the requisite tools—or conditions, for the performance of your necessary work.

It is the Voice of God, and it comes only from within.

Listen to that inner voice.

It is there if you only knew—or had faith to believe.

A shadow of regret renders worthless—remember that.

The whole great secret of Jesus lay in the fact of his clear vision, his love, his honest life.

He lived what he believed, and his life is still doing its work.

A personal plan—or vision of the desired future is a visible, concrete thing, holding solidly together so long as its creator holds it firmly in his brain.

More than this, the vision has the power to build by a process of magnetic attraction.

The law is one of the basic ones and never fails unless the person is vacillating—or weak.

Look into your own heart and note your wares.

Try out each thing you see there.

See if it has real value—is made of eternal stuff.

Get a line on true values and what in life is of vital importance.

The test is always—

Can you take the thing with you out of life?

A hasty glance seems to show that one can take nothing.

Look again.

One takes patience, charity, unselfishness and another's gratitude, which is a blessing, too.

One may take the result of kindness and help, which expanded and lifted another human pilgrim.

The (wo)man who lays aside a business problem to care for the distress—or perplexity of a little child has chosen the real and laid by the unimportant thing.

Any help to a soul in trouble is a vital service, which registers in the Spirit world and helps determine what class you enter.

God is Life. God is the Creator, and He creates constantly, continuously, throughout the universe. That is the secret of life. God is behind and through everything, from a rock to a (hu)man, planet—or the sun. All have life. All vibrate. All move. Law is the will of God. It is the fundamental impulse of living—the push from within.

We prattle a lot about God, but how many realise for a moment that it is the personal presence of God at the centre of each, which enables him to exist?

Picture a certain form of disaster and you create it just as certainly as a stone falls through the air when dropped from a height.

The law is that you create by your own thought your future environment.

The swiftness of the actual materialisation depends upon the concentration of your thought and the distinct quality of your vision, as well as whether you build it while feeling happy.

Happy, cheerful states are splendid creators.

Live the good your head knows and try to qualify for immortality.

Speak less and do more.

Forgive your enemy.

It is the only way to help him learn his lesson.

Serve him.

Be patient.

Forgive seventy times seven.

Your progress is neverending, but is continuous toward Godhood.

Love, not hate, conquers.

With confidence comes fair weather, and the mind, which includes feeling governs the planet in all its details.

As a (hu)man thinketh, so is he.

As the world feeleth, so is it.

The Light of Faith held by a few souls has more than once illumined the path of escape when world disaster threatened.

The greatest thing you can conceive is a soul, which has the capacity for achievement, and with it humility, sympathy and love.

This seems to be the mark of the perfected human soul.

Mind and heart should be kept expectant, ready to see the next lesson God presents.

What people need is hope and comfort and the conviction that life is continuous before and after death.

The more people who believe this, the sooner the age of brotherhood will arrive.

One's ambition must be transferred from material success to spiritual insight.

Work to get must be altered into effort to become.

Happiness follows the one who is on the upward path of becoming.

Throughout all life, all work, runs a golden thread of eternal truth—through each task be it duty—or art, a mere livelihood—or a love.

The things you do are just differently-coloured and variously-shaped beads on the same string.

The Creator cares as much for the bead of clay—or glass, as the jewel of gold, but each must be strung on the thread of honest desire and unselfish devotion.

Each soul must be left to work out its own future.

Love is about the only thing one is allowed to give without limit.

Advice should never be offered until asked, as it is useless until desired.

No one ever wins an easy victory.

It takes his utmost effortm and the result rests upon a hair's breadth, so no one can feel superior to his neighbour.

If the integrity of a single atom can affect a universe then imagine what damage a selfish, disordered, gloomy mind can do.

You belong to the brotherhood of (hu)man.

Be sure that you can qualify for that fraternity.

Only what is within can hurt you.

No danger—no harm comes from without.

Everything, good—or bad, comes first from within your own nature.

This attracts to itself either good—or bad.

Like seeks like.

This is the law.

Never say a word again in criticism.

Keep still and pray for more love.

See how much it will improve the situation.

It is the only way out.

Do try.

Buck up!

Give each struggling soul the helping hand of kind sympathy.

He needs all he can get, and then may fail.

Do you care to be the one who helped his failure?

Are you in a position to cast the first stone?

You gain by giving, not by grasping.

Each harsh thought you indulge in is a drag on the soul who is battling for his eternal life.

How cowardly in anyone to cripple another either before—or during his conscientious struggle to master his inner enemy.

How dare we when we know we shall reap what we sow?

How dare we throw that boomerang?

No one who knows oppresses in any way the weak—

I hate to appeal to your desire for self-preservation, but I can.

See to it that you guard carefully your every thought that you may do your part in the enlightening of the world.

Each must use whatever he is—or has in as many ways and for the benefit of as many people as possible.

I do not mean to say one should crowd one's talents—or attentions on outsiders, but that the personal gifts—or possessions you enjoy must be cultivated and divided—or shared with those whose lives touch yours, and whose need seems to require what you can give.

A mastering ambition—or desire—carries all before it.

Apparent obstructions crumble at its confident approach and melt away.

Nothing can withstand the determined march of the Spirit toward its own.

You can never fail because of outside obstacles.

The real and only obstacles lie within yourself.

Never forget that.

Make definite plans and see how easily material things obey the command of the soul.

Hoarding is criminal as well as stupid.

It is a sort of colossal selfishness no one can afford to indulge in.

Do you not realise the truth of that statement?

The miser is the greatest pauper of them all.

Do not hoard anything, from furniture to ideas.

The real things are free.

Love, service, ideas, landscapes, God—all are—or should be common to all.

Enthusiasm is a life-giver.

It means a speeded—or lifted vibration, and that means more life current and power.

It is as though you sit in the dark with an electric switch within arm's reach, which when touched would send a flood of light about you.

The energetic, curious person sitting so would feel about, expecting to find the means of light, while the inert would sit quietly, accepting the dark as inevitable—or lamenting loudly about his desolate condition.

Expect the best—then hunt for it with vigour.

One must play the game.

The child who hugs his ball within his pocket's shelter, fearing he may lose it if he plays the game, you know is silly.

Worse!

He robs himself of not only the health exercise brings, but the joy of the game, the exhilaration of the contest.

He is stupid in the extreme who is unwilling to risk his possession by throwing it into the open, letting someone else share the game his treasure has the power to launch.

Be simple, and enjoy playing life's game, regardless of the possible loss of your ball.

The real treasure is what your soul can extract from the play.

When you see things beginning to drag, do something new.

Keep your life current at its best and the good of all sorts will come.

See that your charity is always alert and your eyes keen to see another's need.

The impulse of growth is desire, life, aspiration—what you will.

When the desire is intense enough, it will create conditions.

Creation comes from within you.

The desire and the impulse to open come from within and must be strong at the centre of your being.

Success in any work depends upon how much you really love that thing.

The more strongly you feel, the surer you are of success—or achievement.

Impediments are the crosscurrents of mental attitudes, which will deflect the general direction and retard results.

One's eye must be single to any success.

Not so selfishly single, as worldly success demands, but single, as to the sweeping aside of all personal vanity—or petty feeling.

This one thing stands out as if written in lines of fire—

You are your own, and what is more, your only destruction.

God lies within you, waiting until you discover His presence, then like the small child who discovers his father in hiding, with a glad cry, you clasp your own.

You, too, are god, which means that within your heart there lies the power to do and be all that you desire.

An open mind and a hospitable heart are what you must have to secure more than you have of anything.

Follow your own inner light and work on your personal defects with the idea of getting your whole mental and spiritual system loosened up, just as you would work on a stiff muscle.

Look deep within and see what you really love most, then go after it.

The primal impulse must be strong to push through obstructions.

The obstructions are there merely to test its strength.

Do you know what you really desire?

When you do, you arrive because desire is the great creator.

Desire and love.

There is nothing on earth as strong as these.

All bend before and beneath them.

Unselfishness is the key to unlocking every closed door.

Unselfishness is only another name for love.

You cower before a shadow, the shadow of your own doubt.

Get more vibrant with life and you will sweep everything before you.

People will be glad to give you all you want—or need.

There is nothing so hypnotic as joy.

Get and give all you can.

Limit your possessions to your ability to use them actively.

Live in a place where what is about you is in active service.

What cannot be enjoyed daily should be passed on.

The same is true about your jewellery and clothes—pass them on.

Keep things circulating and they do not die.

This is a great truth.

Things live—they absorb your personality and give off your atmosphere and feeling.

That is why you can feel immediately whether the people who live in a place are fine and hospitable—or selfish and cold.

Your things talk.