The most common, yet most unknown, form of slavery is that
where you are ruled by the thought about you. You may be in the employ of
another person. You do your best to earn your money. You are conscientious, and
desire to earn your wages. Yet you are troubled by a continual fear, that you
do not give full satisfaction, or that you may be discharged. You live in continual fear of coming to
want, if so discharged, or of being obliged to continue this mere struggle for
the body’s existence under still harder conditions.
The reason for these unpleasant thoughts is, that some other
mind is acting on your own. Some one is hostile to you. You feel that hostile
thought. It is not on your part a “notion.” There are many persons to‑day,
living under control of undecided minds, and dependent on them, as they think,
for a livelihood. They may give that undecided mind much of their own
inspiration, plan device, invention, and fertility of thought. They may give
this unconsciously. Because, it is worth repeating many times, “Thought is substance, and is absorbed by
one mind from another.”
The person so ruled may have the superior mind. Such a
person may be indispensable to the fickle, and possibly unjust and tyrannical
employer. If taken away, that employer would feel that a prop had been removed.
Yet that superior mind may go on, year after year, in slavery; giving to the
other idea, and seeing it but half carried out, or imperfectly carried out.
No shackles are so heavy as these. They fetter the spirit.
In such position you are not doing your own work. You are not carrying out your
own design. You may be trying to do the work of another, when that other person
has no clear idea of the work he wants done for himself.
This is one of the heavy prices paid for dependency. If you have no other view in life, save
that of being a servant, or an assistant on wages, you must pay more or less of
this penalty. You will find it really less costly and less painful to start
some business of your own, no matter how small the beginning. You will then be called upon to take
responsibilities. If you fear taking them, you are always a slave. If you
know that you are the brains of any business, though not the seeming head,
demand a just price for your work. What do you fear? If you take the brains
away, will the business go on successfully? If you feel that you are robbed, you are equally guilty with him who
robs you, if you stand by tamely and see yourself robbed.
To work and live in
fear of the poorhouse, is to be in the poorhouse. You would not feel so
poor if you were actually there. To live
in such continual fear, injures mind and body. Whatever troubles the mind,
is certain in some way to injure the body.
You cannot think your clearest thought so long as you are in
the slavery of any fear. Clear thought and plan have a value in dollars and
cents.
If you come under the control of a whiffling, undecided
weathercock order of mind, if you absorb the thought of such a mind, you will
be whiffling and undecided yourself. You will affect those who come to you for
orders, be the work what it may, as you are affected yourself. If your employer
does not know exactly what he wants, you will not know exactly what you want of
others. As those under you, or in some way dependent on you, are so affected,
so will they affect in turn others with whom they deal. If the head of an
organization or business or movement is whiffling, whimsical, and uncertain,
there will be uncertainty and dissatisfaction all along his line of control. You can never satisfy such a person,
because that person is never satisfied with himself.
If you cannot find out what is really wanted of you, say so.
Don’t try to do for any when they do not know what is wanted or needed to be
done, themselves.
Stick by your own plan. If you see a good reason for any
step, any detail, in it, no matter how trivial, don’t allow yourself to be
argued out of it by another. The kingdom
of mind is full of tyrants. They want to have their own way, simply from love
of power. Very possibly they are not aware of their own motive. To greater or less extent, all of us may be
such tyrants.
You can ask with profit for information of many. You can ask
with safety for opinion, especially regarding your own purposes, of very few. The most thoughtful, considerate, and just
are the most careful in giving opinion. They will also take care to tell
you that their utterance is but their opinion. Ignorance, conceit, and injustice are full of dogmatic utterance.
Ignorance speaks as it feels at the moment. Don’t mistake utterance of this
sort for information. If you do, you
will absorb that conceited thought, that prejudice. You will then be ruled by
that mind. You may be thereby led to abandon what would have been most
profitable to you.
If you feel yourself the superior, and allow yourself to be
thus over‑ruled, or influenced in any way, by an inferior mind, you are
crippling your own success. You derange
most seriously the plans for your welfare of that order of unseen intelligence
which can do most for you. You set in motion an order of forces contrary to
theirs. In so doing, you oblige them to stop aiding you. They will not work for
you, when they see their work thrown away.
The moment you allow the thought of another to influence
you, against your own conviction, feeling, or intuition, in that moment you
lose your own best thought. You commence
thinking in part with the other person’s brains. You may then commence
thinking with brains below yours in motive, in judgment, in far‑sightedness, in
taste and discretion. You have muddied your own clearer intellect with a turbid
stream.
The person so swaying
you has an invisible following of minds like his own. When, unconsciously
perhaps, you surrender your thought to him, you let in all his following
likewise, to hang about, sway, and influence you. Worse, still; they will bar from you your own better, unseen
counsellors. Because these can by this means easily be driven away. They
are not driven away willingly, but their power with you may be limited. That
power depends on the attitude of mind you keep toward them. If you, desiring to be all yourself, demand
the wisest and best counsel in this endeavor to be yourself, you will get it.
Keep up this demand. It will at last drive off any inferior unseen following.
Prentice Mulford,
Your Forces and How
to Use Them
No comments:
Post a Comment