As A Man Thinketh Summary - EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES

Chapter 2

EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES

 

The human Will, that force unseen,
The offspring of a deathless Soul
Can hew a way to any goal,
Though walls of granite intervene. 


A man's mind may be likened to a garden – cultivated or uncultivated. The cultivated produces flowers & fruit, while the uncultivated produces weeds. A man must continually weed-out all wrong, useless, and impure thoughts and deliberately cultivate right, useful, and pure thoughts.
Thought and character are one, and character has a profound influence on the circumstances of one's life. If a man learns the spiritual lesson of his current circumstances they will give way to other circumstances.
As long as a man believes he is a creature of external conditions he will be buffeted by those conditions. When he practices self-control and self-purification of thought, and remedies his defects of character, he finds that his circumstances will change.
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors -- its loves and fears. The soul reaches the height of its cherished aspirations and the depth of its unchastened desires. Every thought-seed allowed to take root in a man's mind will eventually produce the fruit of character and opportunity and circumstance.
Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.

 
Let a man cease from his sinful thoughts, and all the world will soften towards him, and be ready to help him; let him put away his weakly and sickly thoughts, and lo, opportunities will spring up on every hand to aid his strong resolves; let him encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame. The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.

“So You will be what you will to be; Let failure find its false content In that poor word, ‘environment,’ But spirit scorns it, and is free.

“It masters time, it conquers space; It cowes that boastful trickster, Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown, and fill a servant’s place.

“The human Will, that force unseen, The offspring of a deathless Soul, Can hew a way to any goal, Though walls of granite intervene.

“Be not impatient in delays But wait as one who understands; When spirit rises and commands The gods are ready to obey.”

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