How Your Thoughts Shape Your Circumstances

Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education so that you can create your ultimate destiny. Today we're going to continue our series of reading, As a Man Thinketh, with Chapter 2. Chapter 2, Effect of Thought on Circumstances. Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild, but whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruit which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating towards perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals within himself the laws of thought and understands that ever-increasing accuracy how the thought, forces, and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny. Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer condition of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state This does not mean that a man circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within himself that for the time being they are indispensable to his development. Every man is where he is by law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who feel out of harmony with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them. As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow, and as he learns the spiritual lessons which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. But when he realizes that he is a creative power and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practiced self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been an exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So true is this that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects in his character and make swift and marked progress, he passes rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors that which it loves and also that which it fears It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations It falls to the level of its unchastened desires, and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own. Every thought seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind and to take root there produces its own blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit. Bad thoughts, bad fruit. The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors which make for the ultimate good of the individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss. Following the inmost desires, aspirations, thoughts by which he allows himself to be dominated, pursuing the will of the wisp of impure imaginings or steadfastly walking the highway of strong and high endeavor, a man at last arrives at their fruitful and fulfillment in the outer conditions of his life. The laws of growth and adjustment wherever obtains. A man does not come to the alms or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress or any mere external force. The criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in his heart and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power Circumstance does not make the man it reveals him to himself No such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its attendant sufferings, apart from the vicious inclinations, or ascending into virtue and its pure happiness, without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations. And man, therefore, as the Lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself, the shaper and author of environment. Even at birth, the soul continues to its own, and through every step of its earthly pilgrimage, it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflection of its own purity and impurity, its strength and weakness. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our every very self. Only himself manages man. Thought and actions are the goals of fate. They imprison, being base. They are also the angels of freedom. They liberate, being noble. Now what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. So that's our message for today. My name is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind, and I look forward to talking with you some more tomorrow. Have a great day.