The Sowing of the Seed
hen you start in the "New
Thought"
do not expect sudden illumination.
Do not imagine that you are to
become perfectly well, perfectly
cheerful, successful, and a healer,
in a few days.
Remember all growth is slow.
Mushrooms spring up in a night, but oaks
grow with deliberation and endure for centuries.
Mental and spiritual power must be gained
by degrees.
If you attained maturity before you entered
this field of "New Thought" it is folly to suppose
a complete transformation of your whole being
will take place in a week--a month--or a year.
All you can reasonably look for is a gradual
improvement, just as you might do if you were
attempting to take up music or a science.
The New Thought is a science, the Science
of Right Thinking. But the brain cells which
have been shaped by the old thoughts of despond-
ency and fear, cannot all at once be reformed.
It will be a case of "Try, try again."
Make your daily assertions, "I am love, health,
wisdom, cheerfulness, power for good, prosperity,
success, usefulness, opulence."
Never fail to assert these things at least twice
a day; twenty times is better. But if you do not
attain to all immediately, if your life does not
at once exemplify your words, let it not discour-
age you.
The saying of the words is the watering of
the seeds.
After a time they will begin to sprout, after
a longer time to cover the barren earth with
grain, after a still longer time to yield a harvest.
If you have been accustomed to feeling prej-
udices and dislikes easily, you will not all at
once find it easy to illustrate your assertion, "I
am love." If you have indulged yourself in
thoughts of disease, the old aches and pains will
intrude even while you say "I am health!"
If you have groveled in fear and a belief that
you were born to poverty and failure, courage
and success and opulence will be of slow growth.
Yet they will grow and materialize, as surely as
you insist and persist.
Declare they are yours, right in the face of
the worst disasters. There is nothing so confuses
and flustrates misfortune as to stare it down with
hopeful unflinching eyes.
If you waken some morning in the depths of
despondency and gloom, do not say to yourself:
"I may as well give up this effort to adopt the
New Thought--I have made a failure of it evi-
dently---." Instead sit down quietly, and as-
sert calmly that you are cheerfulness, hope, cour-
age, faith and success.
Realize that your despondency is only tem-
porary; and an old habit, which is reasserting it-
self, but over which you will gradually gain
the ascendency. Then go forth into the world
and busy yourself in some useful occupation, and
before you know it is on the way, hope will creep
into your heart, and the grey cloud will lift from
your mind. Physical pains will loosen their hold,
and conditions of poverty will change to prosperity.
Your mind is your own to educate and direct.
You can do it by the aid of the Spirit, but
you must be satisfied to work slowly.
Be patient and persistent.
The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Chicago : The Psychic Research Company, c1902.
Previous
Chapter