Emmet Fox - Power Through Constructive Thinking

T HIS book is designed to teach the principles of life building through constructive thought. All power lies in creative thought. Thought is the key to life; for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. People are beginning to understand today something of the power of thought to shape the individuals destinythey know vaguely that thoughts are thingsbut how the Great Law of thought is to be applied they do not know.

This book shows that your destiny is really in your own hands, because it is impossible to think one thing and produce another, and that by the selection of correct thought a harmonious and happy life is produced. It shows that weak and fickle thinking produces a drifting and wasted life, and that positive thinking produces success and happiness. It shows that fear is the ultimate cause or Tap-Root of all sickness, failure, and disappointment. And it shows the only possible method of overcoming fear.

What you really think about any person or any situation is your treatment of that condition, and if you wish the condition to change you must know how to treat it differently by a change in thought.

But it is also true that the fixed general convictions of your life, as distinct from your current thinking, make you what you are. Your Mental Conduct, your hour-by-hour thinking, produces specific conditions, and may be thought of as the weather of your soul. Your fixed convictions concerning the things that really matter are seldom changed and may be called the climate of the soul, and it is these that mold your destiny.

What do you really believe about the great problems of life? What do you think about your relationship to God? What sort of God do you worship? Do you think that prayer really makes any difference? Are you merely praying to a magnified edition of yourself; or are you worshipping the true God in spirit and in truth? What do you think about life after death? Do you think that you have ever lived before? Are you nourishing a grievance at the bottom of your heart because you think you were born into unfavorable conditions?

Why is one man sick and another man well? Why does one man live in a happy, comfortable home and another drag out a meager existence in a slum? Why is one man popular and respected and another man disliked, or at least ignored? Why does one man produce a great work while another falters through life without ever doing anything worth while? Why are so many sincerely religious people unhappy and frustrated? Why are many earnest Bible students unable to solve a single one of their own problems? Why is it that learned men and philosophers are notoriously unsuccessful in the business of personal living, if it is really true that knowledge is power?

It is necessary for you to realize that it is your considered attitude to such questions as these that ultimately determines everything in your life from the state of your body to the daily work that you do and the kind of people that you meet.

This book is intended to help people to clarify their thinking on these important points. It is an attempt to explain the fundamental Truth of Being in the simple language of everyday life. The author has always believed that it must be possible to explain the most profound truths of religion and philosophy in the simplest language; and he has made it a rule both in his writings and on the platform never to employ any word that is not in common use in offices, workshops, street cars, and so forth.

Some knowledge of metaphysics or spiritual truth is absolutely essential if you are to understand yourself and to take over effectual control of your life, and this book deals with the subject from several different angles.

The teaching in this book is founded on the Bible. The Bible is not like any other book; it is a spiritual vortex through which spiritual power pours from heaven to earth, and the reason why most people derive comparatively little profit from its study is that they lack the spiritual key.

You can have power to make your life healthy, happy, useful, and outstandingly successful, if you will study the laws of life, and apply them faithfully.

All the essays in this book have previously been published as separate pamphlets and are still obtainable in that form. This collected edition is put out in response to very many requests from all over the world.

S TRANGE as it may seem to you, there exists a mystic power that is able to transform your life so thoroughly, so radically, so completely, that when the process is completed your own friends would hardly recognize you, and, in fact, you would scarcely be able to recognize yourself. You would sit down and ask yourself: Can I really be the man or woman that I vaguely remember, who went about under my name six months or six years ago? Was I really that person? Could that person possibly have been I? And the truth will be that while in one sense you are indeed the same person, yet in another sense you will be someone utterly different. This mystic but intensely real force can pick you up today, now , from the midst of failure, ruin, misery, despairand in the twinkling of an eye, as Paul said, solve your problems, smooth out your difficulties, cut you free from any entanglements, and place you clear, safe, and happy upon the highroad of freedom and opportunity.

It can lift you out of an invalids bed, make you sound and well once more, and free to go out into the world to shape your life as you will. It can throw open the prison door and liberate the captive. It has a magical healing balm for the bruised or broken heart.

This mystic Power can teach you all things that you need to know, if only you are receptive and teachable. It can inspire you with new thoughts and ideas, so that your work may be truly original. It can impart new and wonderful kinds of knowledge as soon as you really want such knowledgeglorious knowledgestrange things not taught in schools or written in books. It can do for you that which is probably the most important thing of all in your present stage: it can find your true place in life for you, and put you into it too. It can find the right friends for you, kindred spirits who are interested in the same ideas and want the same things that you do. It can provide you with an ideal home. It can furnish you with the prosperity that means freedom, freedom to be and to do and to go as your soul calls.

This extraordinary Power, mystic though I have rightly called it, is nevertheless very real, no mere imaginary abstraction, but actually the most practical thing there is. The existence of this Power is already well known to thousands of people in the world today, and has been known to certain enlightened souls for tens of thousands of years. This Power is really no less than the primal Power of Being, and to discover that Power is the Divine birthright of all men. It is your right and your privilege to make your contact with this Power, and to allow it to work through your body, mind, and estate, so that you need no longer grovel upon the ground amid limitations and difficulties, but can soar up on wings like an eagle to the realm of dominion and joy.

But where, it will naturally be asked, is the wonderful, mystic Power to be contacted? Where may we find it? and how is it brought into action? The answer is perfectly simpleThis Power is to be found within your own consciousness, the last place that most people would look for it. Right within your own mentality there lies a source of energy stronger than electricity, more potent than high explosive; unlimited and inexhaustible. You only need to make conscious contact with this Power to set it working in your affairs; and all the marvelous results enumerated can be yours. This is the real meaning of such sayings in the Bible as The Kingdom of God is within you and Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all the rest shall be added.