By James Allen.
Dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the
invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are
nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot
forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them;
it knows
them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage; these are the makers of the
after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have
lived; without them, laboring humanity would perish.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day
realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it;
Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe,
and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless
beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your
heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your
purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all,
heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will
at last be built.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires
receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve
for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can
never obtain: "ask and you shall receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the
promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you
shall at last unveil.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in
the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a
waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you
but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand
still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labour; confined long
hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of
refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of
refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal
condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes
possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare
time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers
and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no
longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it
falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of
opportunities, which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it
forever. Years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master
of certain forces of the mind, which he wields with worldwide influence and
almost unequalled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic
responsibilities; he speaks, and lo, lives are changed; men and women hang upon
his words and remould their characters, and, like the sun, he becomes the fixed
and luminous centre round which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized
the Vision of his youth. He has become one with his Ideal.
And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of
your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always
gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. Into your hands will be
placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you
earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall,
remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as
small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the
beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts, and
presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the
barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience--the pen
still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall
pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you
shall wander to the city-bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the
intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time
he shall say, 'I have nothing more to
teach you.' And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of
great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to
take upon yourself the regeneration of the world."
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent
effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and
chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!" Observing another
become intellectual, they exclaim, "How highly favoured he is!" And noting the
saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, "How chance aids
him at every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which
these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have
no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they
have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the
apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not
know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call
it "luck". They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the
pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," do not understand the process, but
only perceive the result, and call it chance.
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength
of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers,
material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they
are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your
heart - this you will build your life by, this you will become.
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This is taken from As A Man Thinketh.
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