KNOW THYSELF

THE building of a beautiful perfected self-hood is the work of every life; no matter what he or she does, whether we call it good, bad or indifferent, it is all directed towards this purpose.

Every inaction or action pushes them on into finer selection of material which will serve to perfect themselves.

Everything which one contacts becomes legitimate material from which he or she can select or reject.

There is nothing which can be eternally rejected, whatever is passed up at any place in our unfoldment becomes material to use at another place on the path. There is only one substance and man, the master builder, can insert just what he sees fit at any place in the construction of his plan.

In this building man has decided that he must select so that the results of his selection will be continuous and whatever takes on permanency he has called success, and whatever takes on the expression of change he has called failure; throughout the old civilization he has lost the recognition of the truth that failure is only one part of the great law of success and is success manifesting negatively.

You can ask a thousand people what they call success and they will give you a thousand different answers. One calls money success and the ways and methods which will unite them with money, the power to manipulate these laws and to select and retain all the material which produces a continued expression of opulence, they do not seek to select or unite with anything else in the self because this is the lesson their soul has come to include. There are others who count health and the power to manifest their consciousness through a perfect physical medium, success - they give their whole time to selecting the time, the place, the methods and materials which will build for them normal, physical and mental conditions and allow them the unlimited action of a body that is free from pain. They select or reject one thing after another and call themselves successful in the degree that they secure this fulfillment and they weep and complain when they do not accomplish it, not knowing that disease is just as great a factor in the production of God-consciousness as health is.

There are many who call human love success, and they keep their human senses drugged with the narcotic of this race belief: they count themselves successful and go on each day rejoicing in their idol, and in just the degree that they demonstrate human love they feel they have made a success of their lives. When they fail in this and have to walk the pathway of life alone, uncompanioned, save by the crowd, they send forth a cry of sorrow and of failure, and do not understand that to be alone and not lonely is a part of the law of The One.

There are others who hold success to be such material and methods as will link them in a great law of service to the race, they count the opportunity to give of their time and supply to others as the greatest success possible for them, and in the degree that they can select place and opportunity to serve the world they feel they are successful, but if they have to stand idle while every pulse is

throbbing to serve, they again, send out the cry of failure and feel like a cast off atom and they join the mighty army of complaint that they are wasting their time, they never realize that one of the highest laws of consciousness is that "he also serves who only stands and waits."

New Thought looks at all these evolving degrees of race consciousness and strikes for it a higher note of understanding, it answers the question of "What is success?" in a way that it was never answered before then it follows this with scientific instructions of how to attain that thing which the mind designates as success.

We see clearly that everyone in the world is doing just the thing they should do and that when they have gotten enough of the old thing and include all its laws in their consciousness they will quit and naturally pass on into the inclusion of something else.

Everyone in the world is doing the very best they know how to do with their time opportunity, and their materials. If they knew better they would do better, and New Thought seeks only to increase their "know how." It does not condemn, it does not control, it does not punish, it only points the way to larger powers and privileges and better materials from which the individual may select or reject and through which he or she may express a higher self-hood.

The New Thought answer to "what is success" is: Success is the power in the individual to get the thing he or she wants, when they want it, in the way they want it, to keep it as long as they want it and when they have included it, let go of it, and pass on to the fulfillment of a new desire.

There are those who have the power to get the thing they want and after they have quite outgrown the desire and included all that it can bring them, they are obliged to go on day after day, clinging to the dead body of their old desire. This is not success - this is failure; it takes its part indirectly in the fashioning of success, for on every step of their pathway they are learning in this way, the higher mastery and control that is necessary for them to know, and every ounce of power generated on this plane of failure, takes its place in the constructive work of the next step.

The power to get what we want when we want it, to keep it as long as we want it and then pass it up constructively, and go on to another want, is not won by a moment's contact with people, conditions or things, but it comes as the result of slow self mastery and comradeship with all forms of human experience.

Success is not a mysterious, metaphysical thing that waits around and then rushes unannounced in to a life, but it is a sane, sensible entity, born from the consciousness of high power.

Success is the product of success methods and recognition of universal laws and it comes and abides with an individual in just that hour when he or she compels it.

There is no such thing as good or bad luck. The individual themselves creates these conditions within their own consciousness and develops them into form by their thoughts and actions.

There are thousands of well defined success methods and the one who possesses the greatest number of these methods and uses them will be the greatest success.

The first success method includes all success but only a few people are clever enough to manifest this success method without further interpretation.

This first success method is: "Know Thyself." The one who knows himself and all that the self means, is straight in the middle of the divine channel of life, and he can steer his bark from end to end of the channel without fear of shipwreck, but among the great failure multitude there is only one in a thousand who has any idea of this law.

You can ask the vast multitude of the unemployed or you can ask anyone who tells you a story of bad luck and who is weeping and moaning over their failure, and they have no idea of their place or use in the universal plan.

The old civilization lumped the whole race off in one confused bundle of states of mind and never gave it an idea of the legitimate plan of universal progress, or what part they must individually bear in the responsibility of this plan.

New Thought divides humanity into four planes of expression, namely, Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit. We function through the body in instinct, through the mind in reason, through the soul in emotion, and the Spirit in intuition, revelation and prophecy.

Men as we know them have one or two and sometimes all of these planes in expression and they have success or failure in just the degree that they know themselves and contact consciousness from their own plane of power.

A plane of consciousness is only a state of being in which man lives, and through which he has his own individual law of transference; and a complete understanding of these planes of consciousness and their laws, makes man master of himself and of life in all its forms. It has taken generations of thinking to at last evolve this truth that every life is named, numbered, chorded and placed in its own natural law of attraction, and when it works in unison with this law it has success, when it works in opposition it has failure.

When an individual has found themselves and their natural contact, they are straight in the middle of the Divine channel of success and rowing with the full force of the tide in their favor; but where one does not know themselves, he or she is rowing against the tide or drifting idly and at every moment they are dashed against the rocks of error in their channel.

It has been written "God has provided some better things for us, that they without us cannot be made perfect." This is true. " Know thyself" is the first step toward becoming one with the things provided - then life will ask and answer its own questions.

PLANES OF EXPRESSION

We divide people into four planes of expression, namely: body, mind, soul and spirit, and they function through these in instinct, reason, inspiration and intuition.

BODY PLANE. Purely physical men are found among farmers, laborers, peddlers, section men, miners; also any crowd of men that work under a foreman. Arrangement and order are not necessary.

Purely physical women are simply working women; wash women, scrub women, household drudges; also those who simply love the creature comforts, and who want all sense satisfaction, but do not want to go to any exertion to get it. They are found among the women who are supported and will marry any kind of a man so as to be taken care of and have a home of ease and luxury.

MIND PLANE. Purely mental men, of the lower mental plane, are the foremen, the section bosses, carpenters, contractors, streetcar men, mail men, little store keepers, and any type of men who work at physical labor that has some little show of order, adjustment and creative ability.

Higher mental plane men are the type of men who are professors; men who educate other men; chemists, lawyers, essayists, astrologists, socialistic organizers, the higher class of mercantile men and all men who plot, scheme, deal and make big trades, and have skill and management which make for success in material things.

Purely mental women of the lower plane are those in the trades: dressmakers, milliners, trades women, forewomen in stores, cooks, heads of departments in stores.

Purely mental women of the higher plane are those who have great intellectuality and are not contented with the physical and lower expression of mentality. They want education, finish and culture, and are among the school teachers, stenographers, kindergarten teachers, are often piano players or instrumental musicians, singers who have cultivated voices but with no evidence of soul.

SOUL PLANE. The soul plane is divided into two expressions, higher and lower. On the lower soul plane we have the professors, doctors, teachers, organizers, dentists, lawyers and people of mild inspiration, with ordinary ideality and imagination.

Women of the lower soul plane are nurses, managers of institutions, matrons in jails, the heads of sanitariums, the leaders of philanthropic movements. They organize training schools and hospitals and are found in many humanitarian expressions of life.

The higher soul plane, in both men and women, is characterized by high ideality, vivid imagination and extraordinary inspiration. Here we find artists, writers, authors, composers, singers, elocutionists, and writers of drama.

SPIRIT PLANE. Here we get into the world of religion. Preachers, evangelists, great philanthropic leaders, religious organizers, higher educational workers, the inventor, the great composer, improvisers and the tragedians of the drama. People on this plane see everything by faith. Their intuition is their guide, and they find it hard to materialize all their ideas and visions into material expressIOn.

UNION OF PLANES. This is the creative-positive life. It expresses itself in instinct, reason, inspiration and intuition. It is usually found to have a fixed point of attachment on one plane, but it passes to the others at will. We have in this plane the statesman, the great leaders of social and religious science; also the masters of physical expression, such as contortionists, equilibrists, investigators, and organizers of great companies of men. Also landscape gardeners. This latter class know beauty, art, arrangement and physical laws.

This Union of all Planes makes the plane of Equalization, and through the perfect understanding of the laws of being, every life may control its development and make for unqualified success.

Anyone who hopes for success in all their undertakings, must have their whole understanding founded upon the full power of their own genius in the line of least resistance. A business man hoping for success could not afford to send an intuitional man to buy real estate for him, and take his opinion on trust as to the likely value; the judgment of such a man would not be reliable in material things. Anyone in business who does these things courts failure, and not success. Again, if someone contemplating a vacational tour desires to go to the most beautiful and wonderful scenery and to a place which would mean rest, inspiration and healing, they would not send as their advance agent one who was purely on the mental plane. Such a person would bring them time­tables, hotel facilities and locations, but nothing of the things which they really should know. Mental things demand mental recognition, and soul and spirit things demand their own cognizance. Flesh and blood only reveal physical and mental things; the great subjective things remain obscure until revealed by subjective consciousness.

The reason so many are seeking success, fame, money, love and recognition and not finding it, is because they have never learned the first necessary lesson of knowing themselves. First, they do not know what they want to do, and secondly, they do not know how to do what they want to do. They go on in aimless drifting and come at last to be some of the driftwood of life which is washed up onto the shore as the stream of success and failure flows on.

There is work and pay for all, success for all, in just the hour we know ourselves and connect with it. When one wants to be a farmer he goes among farmers; musician, among musicians; commercial, he hunts the marts of trade, and so on; and if one has in themselves a fully fledged consciousness of their own indwelling power, nothing can keep them from dragging out from the Universal Supply Company the things which belong to their own life.

The first true law for success is, know to what part of the mighty system of the universe you belong, and then strike boldly out in that current of life. If you find that you respond to all that, physically, mentally, emotionally and intuitionally, you are vibrant with life, then choose the things which you like best.

The creative life can do more than one thing at a time and do them all well. Just keep inside your own power of concentration; the creative life does not think in time, it thinks in eternities; it does not think in states, it thinks in continents; it does not think in dollars, it thinks in millions, and as long as it holds its mental mastery all things fall before its power.

If you are only developed in one direction and in one plane of consciousness, then plunge your desire in that direction; get the work that fills your whole heart and stick to it, and put into operation every day all the fundamentals of New Thought, and if you do this, you will not be a failure, for you can think yourself straight into the very center of supply, and whatever you command to become your own will come and manifest for you. With the knowledge of what you really can do, of just where you belong in the divine plan, and a consciousness of your latent energy and ability, you are straight in the middle of the road of success and it will never turn you a single step out of the way of peace, power and plenty.