Latest / Logic Library / 06 - Visions and Ideals - As a Man Thinketh - James Allen

Transcript

06 - Visions and Ideals - As a Man Thinketh - James Allen · Logic Library

• 0:00
  Chapter six, Visions and Ideals. The dreamers are the saviors of the world,
• 0:08
  as the visible world is sustained by the invisible, So men, through
• 0:12
  all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions
• 0:17
  of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers, It cannot let their
• 0:24
  ideals fade and die. It lives in them. It knows them in the
• 0:29
  realities which it shall one day see and know. Composer, sculptor, painter,
• 0:36
  poet, prophet, sage. These are the makers of the afterworld,
• 0:41
  the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived. Without
• 0:47
  them, laboring, humanity would perish. He who cherishes a beautiful vision,
• 0:54
  a lofty ideal in his heart will one day realize it. Columbus cherished of
• 0:59
  vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of
• 1:04
  multiplicity of worlds in a wider universe, and he revealed it. Buddha beheld
• 1:11
  the vision of a spiritual world, of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and
• 1:15
  he entered into it. Cherish your visions, Cherish your ideals, Cherish the
• 1:23
  music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind,
• 1:26
  the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all
• 1:32
  delightful conditions, all heavenly environment. Of these, If you but remain true
• 1:38
  to them, your world will at last be built. To desire is to
• 1:46
  obtain. To aspire is to achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest
• 1:53
  measure of gratification, and his purest abspirations starved for lack of sustenance. Such
• 2:00
  is not the law. Such a condition of things can never obtain. Ask
• 2:05
  and receive, dream lofty dreams, And as you dream, so shall you
• 2:09
  become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be.
• 2:15
  Your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. The greatest
• 2:20
  achievement was at first and for a time, a dream. The oak sleeps
• 2:23
  in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest
• 2:29
  vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of
• 2:34
  realities. Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so.
• 2:40
  If you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it, you cannot
• 2:46
  travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth, hard pressed by
• 2:51
  poverty and labor, confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop, unschooled and lacking
• 2:58
  all the arts of refined But he dreams of better things. He thinks of
• 3:04
  intelligence, of a refinement of grace and beauty. He conceives of mentally builds
• 3:12
  up an ideal condition of life. The vision of a wider liberty and a
• 3:16
  larger scope takes possession of him. Unrest urges him to take action, and
• 3:23
  he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to
• 3:28
  the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon, so altered has
• 3:34
  his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become
• 3:38
  so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as
• 3:42
  a garment, is cast aside, and with the growth of opportunities which fit
• 3:47
  the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever. Years
• 3:53
  later, we see this youth as a full grown man. We find him
• 3:58
  a master of certain forces of the mind, which he wields with world wide
• 4:01
  influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands. He holds the chords of
• 4:06
  gigantic responsibilities. He speaks, and lo lives are changed. Men and women
• 4:13
  hang upon his words and remold their characters and sunlike, he becomes the fixed
• 4:19
  and luminous center around which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized the vision of
• 4:26
  his youth. He has become one with his ideal. And you, too,
• 4:30
  youthful reader, will realize the vision, not the idle wish of your
• 4:34
  heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, For
• 4:41
  you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly most love. Into your hands
• 4:46
  will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts. You will receive that
• 4:49
  which you earn, no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may
• 4:55
  be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your
• 5:00
  vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire,
• 5:04
  as great as your dominant aspiration. In the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis,
• 5:12
  you may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the
• 5:15
  door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals,
• 5:18
  and shall find yourself before an audience. The pen still behind your ear,
• 5:24
  the ink stains on your fingers, and then and there shall pour out the
• 5:28
  torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander
• 5:33
  to the city, bucolic and open mouthed, shall wander under the intrepid guidance
• 5:40
  of the spirit, into the studio of the Master. And after a time
• 5:44
  he shall say, I have nothing more to teach you. And now you
• 5:47
  have become the master who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep.
• 5:54
  You shall lay down the saw and the plain to take upon yourself the
• 5:58
  regeneration of the world. The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent,
• 6:03
  seeing only the apparent effects of things, and not the things themselves, talk
• 6:08
  of luck, of fortune and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they
• 6:13
  say how lucky he is. Observing another become intellectual. They exclaim how highly
• 6:19
  favored he is, And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another,
• 6:25
  they remark how chance aids him at every turn. They do not see the
• 6:30
  trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain
• 6:35
  their experience. They have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of
• 6:42
  the undaunted efforts they have put forth of the faith they have exercised that they
• 6:46
  might overcome the apparently insurmountable and realize the vision of their heart. They do
• 6:53
  not know the darkness and the heartaches. They only see the light and joy
• 6:57
  and call it luck. Do not see the long and arduous journey, but
• 7:01
  only behold the pleasant goal and call it good fortune. Do not understand the
• 7:06
  process, but only perceive the result, and call it chance. In all
• 7:13
  human affairs, there are efforts and there are results, And the strength of
• 7:17
  the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not gifts, powers,
• 7:24
  materials, intellectual and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort. They are
• 7:30
  thoughts, completed, objects, accomplished, visions realized. The vision that you
• 7:36
  glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart. This
• 7:42
  you will build your life. By this you will become. End of Chapter
• 7:47
  six, Visions and Ideals.