HUNDREDS of persons have realized that “visualizing is an Aladdin’s lamp to him with a mighty will.” General Foch says that his feelings were so outraged during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 that he visualized himself leading a French army against the Germans to victory. He said he made his picture, smoked his pipe, and waited. This is one result of visualizing with which we are all familiar.
A famous actress wrote a long article in one of the leading Sunday papers last winter, describing how she rid herself of excessive avoirdupois by seeing her figure constantly as she wished to be.
A very interesting letter came to me from a doctor’s wife, while I was lecturing in New York. She began with the hope that I would never discontinue my lectures on visualization, which were helping humanity to realize the wonderful fact that they possessed the means of liberation within themselves. Relating her own experience, she said that she was born on the East Side of New York in the poorest quarter. From earliest girlhood she had cherished a dream of marrying a physician some day. This dream gradually formed a stationary mental picture. The first position she obtained was in the capacity of a maid in a physician’s family. Leaving this place, she entered the family of another doctor. The wife of her employer died, and the doctor married her—the result of long-pictured yearning. After that, both she and her husband conceived the idea of owning a fruit farm in the South. They formed a mental picture of the idea and put their faith in its eventual fulfillment. The letter she sent me came from her fruit farm in the South. Her second mental picture had seen the light of materialization.
Many letters of a similar nature come to me every day. The following is a case that was printed in the New York Herald last May: “Atlantic City, May 5—She was an old woman, and when she was arraigned before Judge Clarence Goldenberg in the police court today she was so weak and tired she could hardly stand. The Judge asked the court attendant what she was charged with.
‘Stealing a bottle of milk, Your Honor,’ repeated the officer. ‘She took it from the doorstep of a downtown cottage before daybreak this morning.’
‘Why did you do that?’ Judge Goldenberg asked her.
‘I was hungry,’ said the old lady.
'Well, you’re not very wealthy now, but you’re no longer poor. I’ve been searching for you for months. I’ve got $500 belonging to you from the estate of a relative. I am the executor of the estate.’
“Judge Goldenberg paid the woman’s fine out of his own pocket, and then escorted her into his office, where he turned her legacy over to her and sent a policeman out to find her a lodging place.”
I learned later that this little woman had been desiring and mentally picturing $500, while all the time ignorant of how it could possibly come to her. But she kept her vision and strengthened it with her faith.
In an issue of Good Housekeeping there was an article by Addington Bruce entitled “Stiffening Your Mental Backbone.” It is very instructive, and would benefit anyone to read it. He says, in part: “Form the habit of devoting a few moments every day to thinking about your work in a large, broad, imaginative way, as a vital necessity to yourself and a useful service to society.”
James J. Hill, the great railway magnate, before he started building his road from coast to coast, said that he took hundreds of trips all along the line before there was a rail laid. It is said that he would sit for hours with a map of the United States before him and mentally travel from coast to coast, just as we do now over his fulfilled mental picture. It would be possible to call your attention to hundreds of similar cases.
The method of picturing to yourself what you desire is both simple and enjoyable, if you once understand the principle back of it well enough to believe it. Over and above everything else, be sure of what it is you really want. Then specialize your desire along the lines given in the following chapter.
Take me to the next chapter VI. Suggestions for Making Your Mental Picture.
Return me to previous chapter IV. Operation of Your Metnal Picture.
Return me to the CONTENTS.
Take me HOME.