 Good morning! Isn’t it a glorious sunrise? Just see!—not alone one sun is showing its golden rim above the world’s edge, but ten million suns are rising upon ten million waiting hearts, and shadows flee to find a place of rest. Truly, a good morning to you of the NEW THOUGHT, whose hearts have turned to smile straight at the sun of life. I AM the sun of God. Just as this dear, old green earth is turning its face to the sun so you and I are turning our attention to the I AM sun. “The worlds in which we live are two, The world I AM and the world I DO.” Too long have we faced the world I DO. Too long have we judged ourselves and others by the dim light of what hath already appeared. We have been discouraged with comparing the already accomplished with itself. We said, “I can do no more than has been done; there can be nothing new under the sun.” So we have journeyed, and gazed, and regretted that it was all done. Everywhere we looked it was all done. “Every art and science and business is overdone,” we said, “there is no chance to do anything except what Tom, Dick and Harry have already done to death. There is no chance here for me.” I AM the ideal world. Ah, that is where the sun shines and youth plays eternal and almighty. In the world of ideals I AM omnipotent, omniscient, all-pervading. In the world of Doing I AM lost among the many and the already-accomplished. I have just read a letter from one who has been for 22 years a bookkeeper for one firm. For 22 years he plodded mechanically up one column of figures and down another, and drew his little salary. Now the firm has passed out with its head, and this man is left at 45 without a salary. He is “worn out” and nobody wants the remnants—I had almost said the remains. This man is a sucked orange and is meeting the natural fate of such. But unlike the orange, he was a free-will offering to the world I DO. His young ideals were choked off and crushed out. He said, “A salary in the hand now is worth two fortunes I might develop if I followed my ideals. I think I might in time work into something great if I worked along another line for myself, but I know I can draw a salary if I work for this man. I fear to trust ‘the world I AM.’ And, anyway, life is short and what’s the use of trying so hard? So I’ll add up columns, draw my salary and eat, drink and be merry.” So his ideals for lack of expression went into winter quarters, and are still hibernating—awaiting a new incarnation in the world I DO. But it is never too late to turn to the sun I AM. One’s muscles may be weak and his joints stiff; his brain cells may cry out for a little more slumber, a few more columns and then a long sleep; but still one can turn over if he will. It is never too late to begin putting what I AM into what I DO. Even if one is 45 and a sucked orange, with not time to accomplish much in this incarnation, he can at least get ready for a better start in the next. So it is never too late to consider and express what I AM—the ideal. Do you know that your ideals and desires are really YOU?— the I AM of you? Your body and your doings and even your education are but white caps on the surface of YOU. They are but an infinitely small and evanescent portion of your resources. They are what you have already realized of your infinite resources. The giraffe used to have a short neck. That was all he had expressed of himself. But his pasturage ran short and he began to reach up after the palm leaves. He reached and looked and reached again. This unwonted exercise stretched his neck until it is now long enough to easily reach the palm tops. So it has ceased to grow longer. As long as he kept reaching out his neck kept growing. What are you reaching out after? Do you see in the world I AM something that is worthwhile? Do you reach after it in the world I DO? Do you keep on reaching, and looking, and reaching again? Between reachings do you retire into the world I AM for inspiration and power for further reaching? This alternation from Being to Doing—from I AM to I DO —is the secret of power and progress and success. It is the soul’s breathing. You inhale in the world I AM; you exhale in the world I DO. The more easily and regularly you vibrate between these two the more complete is your realization of health and success. When you have that tired and unsuccessful feeling due to too much exhaling in the world I DO, just rise into the realm I AM and by imagination and affirmation pump yourself full of— I AM power. I AM wisdom. I AM love. I AM what I desire to be. ALL Things work together for the manifestation of what l AM. Then rise again and express your regenerated self in Doing. There was one man who talked back at me for that “Good Morning” article. I received from him an unsigned note which began by acquainting me with his opinion that he is “a very old man” and therefore entitled to assume authority and correct pert, little, young and conceited things like me, for the good of their souls; and it closed with calling my attention to a small attached card bearing in a little black frame this admonition: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” In my Bible, which is well thumbed by the way, and copiously underlined and annotated, these lines are underscored with red ink. If the sender of that card had dug the verses out of his own Bible instead of finding them where somebody else had put them, his eyes might have traveled down another line where they would have rested upon this: “Be not wise in thine own eyes.” And he would not have found after that any clause to the effect that he is entitled to become wise in his own eyes when he shall have become “a very old man.” The “aged” do not necessarily “understand judgment.” But there! I am reminding myself of old Dr. Driver, “the only man who ever downed Ingersoll.” But when a man fires Bible verses at me I enjoy dodging ‘em and firing the whole Bible back at him. And when a man fails to sign his name to his communication it takes some effort to think of him as anything but an impersonal sort of target that sets itself up and dares you to hit it. Now if there is anything I do enjoy it is hitting the bull’s-eye. But if I thought the bull’s-eye had any tender feelings to be hurt I’d fire the other way. But seriously, I do not mean to lay myself liable to be hit with that particular saying of David’s. I have lived with it, and tried to let it live with me, for at least 15 years. And I thought everybody knew that I AM is what the Bible calls God, or the Lord. When I say, I AM power, I lean to God, the only power. When I say, I AM wisdom, I call God. When I say, I AM love, I reckon myself nothing and God ALL, for God is love. When I say, I AM what I desire to be, I count myself as God’s manifestation, with his desires written on my heart. The desires of my heart are God’s desires. He worketh in me both to desire and to think, as well as to will and to do his good pleasure. ‘When I tell you to rise into the ideal and pump yourself full of I AM consciousness I bid you identify yourself with God, the one soul of all people and things; I bid you realize your oneness with all power, wisdom, love; I bid you in ALL your ways and thoughts and desires and deeds acknowledge HIM, the One-Power, One-Wisdom, One-Love, as the director of your every way. When you are disturbed, unhappy, unsuccessful, agitated, you are breaking the connection between God and yourself, by not taking him into your thoughts and desires. You are counting him OUT. So I say, stop and pump yourself full of I AM God. Power and Wisdom and Love are only names of God. Whenever you reckon yourself Power or Wisdom or Love you take in God. When you say, I am weak, or ignorant, or unloving and unloved, you deny God and force him out of your thought. Or at least you try to. Then let him in. In all thy ways acknowledge him. In all thy desires acknowledge him. And verily he shall direct thy paths, and they shall be paths of peace and pleasantness and plenty. |
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