Florence Scovel Shinn - The Secret Door to Success: Your Guide to Miraculous Living

Florence Scovel Shinn was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1871. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she met her husband, the realist painter Everett Shinn. She worked for many years as an artist and illustrator of childrens literature in New York City before writing her New Thought landmark, The Game of Life and How to Play It. Unable to interest New York presses, Shinn published the book herself in 1925. She went on to write three more books: Your Word is Your Wand, published in 1928; The Secret Door to Success, published in 1940; and The Power of the Spoken Word, published posthumously in 1944. Shinn was also a sought-after spiritual lecturer and counselor. She died in New York City in 1940.

Mitch Horowitz, who abridged and introduced this volume, is the PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. He has written on alternative spirituality for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Visit him at MitchHorowitz.com.

Also available in a Gildan Audio edition.

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets; and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Joshua 6:20

A successful man is always askedWhat is the secret of your success?

People never ask a man who is a failure, What is the secret of your failure? It is quite easy to see and they are not interested.

People all want to know how to open the secret door to success.

For each man there is success, but it seems to be behind a door or wall. In the Bible reading, we have heard the wonderful story of the falling of the walls of Jericho.

Of course all biblical stories have a metaphysical interpretation.

We will talk now about your wall of Jericho: the wall separating you from success. Nearly everyone has built a wall around his own Jericho.

This city you are not able to enter, contains great treasures; your divinely designed success, your heart's desire!

What kind of wall have you built around your Jericho? Often, it is a wall of resentmentresenting someone, or resenting a situation, shuts off your good.

If you are a failure and resent the success of someone else, you are keeping away your own success.

I have given the following statement to neutralize envy and resentment: What God has done for others, He now does for me and more.

I gave the following statement to a woman: The walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace. She had a vivid picture of stepping over a fallen wall, and received the demonstration of her good, almost immediately.

It is the word of realization that brings about a change in your affairs; for words and thoughts are a form of radioactivity.

Taking an interest in your work, enjoying what you are doing opens the secret door of success.

The Secret of Success is to make what you are doing interesting to other people. Be interested yourself, and others will find you interesting.

A good disposition, a smile, often opens the secret door; the Chinese say, A man without a smiling face, must not open a shop.

Living in the past, complaining of your misfortunes, builds a thick wall around your Jericho.

Talking too much about your affairs, scattering your forces, brings you up against a high wall. I knew a man of brains and ability, who was a complete failure.

He lived with his mother and aunt, and I found that every night when he went home to dinner, he told them all that had taken place during the day at the office; he discussed his hopes, his fears, and his failures.

I said to him, You scatter your forces by talking about your affairs. Don't discuss your business with your family. Silence is golden!

Success is not a secret, it is a System.

Many people are up against the wall of discouragement. Courage and endurance are part of the system. We read this in lives of all successful men and women.

Only twice is the word success mentioned in the Bibleboth times in the Book of Joshua.

Only be strong and very courageous to observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded thee: turn not from it to the right nor to the left, that thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart from thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do all that is written therein, for then shalt thou make thy way prosperous and thou shalt have good success. Turn not to the right nor to the left.

The road to success is a straight and narrow path; it is a road of loving absorption, of undivided attention.

You attract the things you give a great deal of thought to.

So if you give a great deal of thought to lack, you attract lack, if you give a great deal of thought to injustice, you attract more injustice.

Joshua said, And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout: and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up, every man straight before him.

The inner meaning of this story is the power of the word, your word, which dissolves obstacles and removes barriers.

When the people shouted the walls fell down.

We find in folklore and fairy stories, which come down from legends founded on Truth, the same ideaa word opens a door or cleaves a rock.

So let us now take the statementThe walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace.