CHAPTER 24

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A MAGNET

”I PREFER the word 'relate' to the word 'attract.' There is an important distinction. If I were to 'attract' sandbagging at the hands of some predatory gentleman, it infers that some quality in me acts as suggestion to him. If I 'related' myself, it would infer that universal causes-in-relationship caused me to come along just then, but that the gentleman would have been equally willing to sandbag any other promising looking subject. I cannot understand individuality in any other way. And I think many people have 'related' themselves to many varieties of cranks and fools. The ones lacking conscience simply smash things and walk out, the others — good gracious! I have gotten into a sentence I can't get out of.” — Juliana.

I will help you with that sentence you could not finish! You say, "The ones lacking in conscience simply smash things and walk out, and the others —”.

I will tell you what the others do — they sit still and enjoy their virtuousness. They sit still and enjoy the sensation of throwing the blame for their own situation on to somebody else! They enjoy themselves meandering round in the labyrinth of reason hunting after words that will mitigate the meaning of this statement:

The individual is a self-made magnet that attracts to itself the conditions that are related to it.

The individualist is a great substitutionist. He is always picking out words that are "just as good," but don't quite convey the whole meaning! For instance, he likes to say that he "relates" himself through no fault of his own to his unpleasant circumstances, but that he did not by something within himself attract those circumstances. Like Job, he enjoys himself repudiating his boils, instead of acknowledging their source and getting rid of them. He insists upon "holding fast his own integrity," even if he has to make God and Principle a liar to do it.

There are those who free themselves and the "fool" before they walk out of the unpleasant relationship. In such cases they smash nothing but things, and things are made to be smashed and replaced by better things.

They smash nothing but conventions, bringing freedom and opportunity for advancement to several persons including themselves. In looking back they see it was "the best thing ever happened," and they could not say that if they could not always see that it was the best thing that ever happened to the several other persons.

Time and experience prove the rightness of actions and nothing else does. And the one who dwells in the negative idea that he is "related" to bondage he cannot in conscience break if he desires to, has nothing to prove anything with, except the meanderings of his own reason.

The fact that you have "delivered others" will not excuse you before God for not delivering yourself. For the reason that God wills and works in us to deliver others by delivering ourselves.

Self-justification makes you ingenious in finding excuses for not doing the one thing necessary to "relate" yourself to God and all good — i.e., the accepting of yourself as a self-made magnet that attracts to itself ALL its conditions.

And with that goes the correlative that the conditions in themselves are merely counters given by the Good Principle, with which you can work out the new problem just presented.

While you sit back and accuse somebody else of putting the problem before you for no reason whatever, and for no good whatever, you do nothing toward solving it. Therefore you are held to it.

Just you accept the first principle of New Thought clear down deep in your HEART, and act from it, and it will not be long until you find yourself absolutely free to go or come, absolutely free to act as the spirit within you prompts.

The trouble with you is you have never had the good old Methodist experience of putting yourself "all on the altar." You live too much in your reason.

Reason can prove anything you suggest to it, and never until you put yourself "all on the altar" and act and think and feel from that fundamental principle of New Thought, will you find yourself freed from your limitations of environment.

Not until God enlightens your reason from within your heart, do you begin to realize your real I.

Until then you will go on fooling yourself with the idea that you are "delivering others." You only fool yourself, for one person never delivers another.

Oh, yes, I know it was said of Jesus, "He saved others, Himself he could not save." But who said it? The Jews who killed Him, who saw nothing more than the body. Jesus saved Himself and rose again in body and soul, if we are to believe the records.

Another may deliver himself by the use of what he has gained from you, but that is no credit to you. It is what he does with what he sees in you, or learns from you, that does the work. All the credit belongs to him.

You afford to others only the environment which they can use or refuse, according to what is within themselves.

You can only let your light shine, and your light shines fitfully indeed when your eye is not single to the one truth that the individual is a self-made magnet that attracts to himself all the conditions that come to him, good and bad; every condition affording the counters for the working out of the new problem by the individual; the individual himself always absolutely free and choosing moment by moment what he will think, either the truth of absolute or the untruth of limitation.

Wake up, Juliana, and take your dominion! It is a perfectly good dominion but slightly rusty through lack of use.

Dominion over your thoughts of course, dominion by choosing truth thoughts.

You cannot have dominion over the other fellow.

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