The rich mentality fears nothing, and he is free from the burden and care that the world groans under. He is not under the law of wear and tear and exhaustion because this rich subconsciousness of him causes him to know that his good is inexhaustible. He is not serving a good that is liable to cease, but his good is so manifold and widely spread that it might be accused of wastefulness. Think of all that the hills and mountains contain that has never been revealed or opened up to this age! The wonderful gems and jewels, gold and silver, that await future ages, already stored underground, and this is but the symbol of the g greater storehouse of God.
The man of this vision exercises faith and he wants to exercise faith. In the rich mentality he never thinks that he can be lazy and never work anymore. He knows that he can convert Divine energy and force every moment and so he is active with great dynamic power. He uses faith every moment. It is his joy and incentive, and life is thoroughly interesting to the one who practically enters into an alignment with the rich mentality.
The rich mentality is supreme in this, that it believes absolutely in the good. You cannot persuade it that evil is a reality; it does not sit down to meditate on evil ; it has no moments of malice or jealousy or hate; it has no time for these, for its whole time is taken up on lines that are strong, powerful witnesses of the good. And it pays the one who exercises his mind in this direction, and he never consents to talk about evil as a reality. He knows that thinking about good is the rule and the standard which is his unfailing resource. He entertains it for his business life, for his social life; in his relations with men; with his own family and children. Every relationship must be maintained in the recognition of the good and the good only. Thus, he is educating himself, training himself as God desires him to live and to be happy.
Now we are all after that, are we not? If we could find one word to cover our aspirations tonight, could we find a larger word, or that is more inclusive than joy or happiness? I do not mean that happiness which the world so defines to us — a limitation that fritters away and is liable to be lost. I mean the lasting happiness — the happiness that is secured to the individual by fidelity to principle.
Infinite Mind made you for happiness; it made you capable of a supreme bliss, able to enjoy as you little dream today you can enjoy life. You will begin to smile the moment you actually believe this and do away with the wrinkled thoughts, the troubled thoughts. You will grow perpetually young through the inspiration of the Almighty penetrating to the innermost realm of your heart, and you can keep it there and it is bound to make you strong and beautiful.
The rich mentality maintains a cheerful attitude which can smile pain down, and sorrow away, and seeming trouble into nothingness. It minimizes instantly that which the world feels to be oppression and loss and inharmony, and feels the mastery over it. It is a wonderful capital!
A man once came to my door in Alameda and wanted to sell me some shoestrings. You know the kind of a man who sells shoestrings. He is a man who does not smile very much. If he smiled very much he would be selling something else than shoestrings. He does not have the rich mentality towards life and well-being; he does not have the right attitude towards the law of success. And he came all bent over, although a young man in years, and begged me to buy a shoestring. He looked so lugubrious, complaining of every resident of my town, declaring that nobody was kind and nobody would buy. So he had to get a lesson and this was the lesson:
He was told to go away and instead of looking so mournful that nobody wanted to open the door, he should go forth with a smile and with faith in himself and in the kindness of those with whom he should come in contact. He said:
“Will that pay? And will it sell my needles and shoestrings?”
He was assured that it would, far better than the attitude he had taken. In a few days he came
back and told me he had taken my advice and that he had sold more in that afternoon than in a month, and his business had picked up and was growing. That is what the smile does. And the world needs your smile; it is the smile that heals the world. It is the smile, not the groan, that makes for a spiritual life and for success. Then it should be your part to contribute these to the world and help others who are bestowing smiles upon the world to redeem it.
The rich mentality can smile because it knows. It is sure of some things, because it is absolutely certain of others worthwhile. It knows God as tenderness and love; as the All-Providing Presence and therefore it smiles with an inner smile of good cheer and certainty and strength.
The rich mentality does not love money, it loves God. How could it love God supremely and love money? It does not divide its forces foolishly, for it sees readily that those who love money become metallic, their eyes are metallic, their souls are metallic, and the strength of muscle and brain lessens daily, being sold in one who serves money. The rich mentality is master of money, does not serve money, and, being its master, money feels attracted towards that one. There is a certain intelligence in money. It wants to be used by those who are able intelligently to keep it in circulation, for circulation is the very spirit of money. If it is hoarded or put away, it corrodes and dies, but as it is kept in motion, it is kept in life. Therefore, it is not the accumulation and the grabbing of money that constitute wealth, but the giving and letting it go forth freely. To the rich mentality money is a blessing, “But to the poor mentality it is a curse. It is not that money is the source of evil, but the love of money. Pain and sickness and sorrow would vanish if would renounce the love of money, and love God as our Provider, Success and Life. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”
As you decide to stand by the principles of Truth in your success and prosperity, you no longer work under the false idea of economy, because many people are only economical through a belief in poverty, not from the standpoint of prosperity. Their prosperity is only beggaring them. You have seen people that deny themselves the luxuries and comforts of life, the things that make life beautiful, although they have much property and money aplenty but not the right thought.
It is then a matter of thinking, of contacting this great white Truth. Ignorance or knowledge? Moses is an example. His great riches were inexhaustible; so magnificent were they that after he had taken the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he fed them by a self-conscious, working miracle-law for forty years with a strange bread known as “the manna in the wilderness.” Did you think that an interfering God had given this blessing to the Israelites? It was the direct work of the mind of Moses, the God in Moses. He knew how to produce and re-produce and to keep it up in definitely. He knew how to strike a flint rock by which it would spring forth a refreshing stream. Repeatedly he did this and it was but the forerunner of great things to come, the symbol of a consciousness- of- providing, that is dose at hand , so close to you and to me as to be “nearer than our breath” and yet we may pass through this incarnation without recognizing or receiving any benefit from it if we close our eyes to its Presence , or our hearts to its reception. It needs that we understand that God is Prosperity, and every blessing proceeds from the infinite, inexhaustible Resource, the Mind of God. We want to know more and more of this wonderful law and how to apply it in life so that it shall quickly bring to us our own inheritance.