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Rosicrucian Writings Online
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Creating Your Future
By H. Spencer Lewis, F.R.C.
[From The Rosicrucian Digest February 1931]
This is undoubtedly a period in the lives of many thousands of persons when the past becomes a memory and the future looms as a serious question mark. Such persons seem to feel that they are standing on the edge of a great abyss. Back of them are fields, mountains, and valleys over which they have traveled with more or less safety and with considerable pleasure and happiness mingled with periods of sorrow and grief that now seem inconsequential as they face the great abyss before them filled with the terror of the unknown and presenting a serious obstacle to their future progress.
As they face this wide chasm, it seems that nothing but a miracle will help them to get across the great open space and prevent them from falling into the dark recesses below, thus bringing an end to their careers.
In the early days when the pioneers first traversed this continent in an attempt to reach the gold fields and fruitful valleys of California, there were many occasions when hordes of them in covered wagons and on foot came face to face with similar situations. It seemed that the journey's end was at hand and yet the goal of their desires was far from them. For days, they camped at the edge of an abyss or canyon and wondered how they would ever cross that great space with its depths of thousands of feet, and continue their journey on the other side toward the distant goal. They were face to face with real engineering problems, and yet had neither the skill nor the materials with which to bridge such gaps.
The history of the progress of the pioneers shows that eventually these groups found a way of getting to the other side and continuing westward, and their success will ever be a monument to the prowess of the human mind. Ingenuity, prayers to the Cosmic for inspiration, determination, will-power, and an undaunted faith in Providence helped them to solve their problems. They could not turn backward, for they had been months on their way and had traversed desert spaces where there was neither food nor water, and their supply of these things being exhausted meant that they must either go onward or remain where they were and starve. Surely, these persons faced greater obstacles than the thousands of persons face today who think that their problem is one that cannot be solved.
The abyss which these persons face at the present time is a mental one and not a physical one. The obstacles which they have to overcome are more mental than physical in every sense. It is undoubtedly true that these persons stand on a material rock and at the present moment have material obligations and conditions to contend with, but the great chasm that lies between them and the future progress in their lives is not a material one that must be bridged with material things.
The incentive that encouraged the early pioneers to face their problem and try to solve it was the fact that the future that was before them was quite definite and appealing, and in every way alluring. They had no doubt about the joy, the happiness, and success that waited them if they could once cross the great abyss. It was this picture of future prosperity and the enjoyment of the greatest blessings in life that strengthened their determination to solve their problems.
The thousands today who feel depressed and who stand at the edge of the abyss in doubt and hesitancy do not have the alluring picture of the future before them that would encourage them to meet their problems. They cannot see a bright and happy future and they cannot see the goal of their desires waiting for them just beyond the horizon. For this reason, they hesitate and wonder whether the effort to overcome the present obstacles is worth while, and whether anything is in the future worthy of supreme sacrifice at the present time. This is where they are in error. And, this is really their greatest problem, for they must remove from their minds the doubt about the future, and they must have a glorious picture of what lies beyond in order that they may be strengthened to tackle their present problems and overcome them.
The early pioneers knew nothing of the future that was before them except through the reports that had reached them and the pictures they had built in their minds. For many months before they started from their eastern homes and during the many months of suffering and privation while traveling, they had re-created, re-painted, and re-built the pictures in their minds of what the future held in store for them. In their hours of loneliness, privation, cold, hunger, and intense suffering from storms and other conditions, they eased their bodies and their minds by rejecting the present and the past and living mentally in the beautiful picture of the future that their minds preserved and held before them as a rich reward for all suffering and all effort.
The future became so real to them, so actual, so near, and so tangible in its every element that they were able to bridge the gap of the present and move out of the past into the future in the twinkling of an eye. Their day dreams and their night dreams were lived in the land beyond the horizon where everything would be what they had made it in their mental pictures. They created homes, new estates nestled in fertile valleys or on the side of picturesque hills. They filled caskets with gold and boxes with fruit.
They visualized new life, new strength, temperate climate, and an abundance of the necessary peace, happiness, and contentment. They enjoyed these things daily, and hourly before they ever reached the western border. They were making a new world in their minds and this new world constituted their future, and as the picture was completed and all of its marvelous details finished, they drew themselves into that picture and became living, vibrating parts of it so that nothing of the present, no obstacle, no barrier, no charm could prevent them from stepping from the present into the future and realizing all that they had visualized.
In the same manner must the present thousands of hesitating, doubting individuals create a new future and a new life beyond the present horizon. They must look upon all of the sufferings and all of the joys of the past as mere experiences enabling them to select the good from the bad as elements to put into the new picture, the new future, and the new life. Every experience has its lesson, every one of the joys and sorrows of the past and of the present are but illustrations to teach us what we should create and what we should not create for the future.
The future for each one of us can be precisely what we make it. But we must not wait until we are into the future or until we stand in the new valley of the new land, and then begin to make our plans for the estate, the home, the gardens, the orchards, the mines out of which we shall draw our wealth and our necessities. We must visualize each detail, paint in each part of the picture, and keep adding to it all of our dreams and meditations until it becomes a living thing in our lives not of the future but of the present. We should look upon ourselves as standing at the very border of this picture about to step into it, and to begin to enjoy all that we have created. If we do this, the obstacles that now seem insurmountable and which appear to rise before us will be overlooked and negated in our ambition, our determination to step across the borderline from the present into the future, and live in the picture we have made. Such visualization and creating gives us not only the allurement and fascination which is tempting but the urge and determination, the faith, and the power to go beyond the present obstacles.
There is no limitation to what the mind can create in its imagings. There are no castles too high, no homes too large, no estates too great, and no parts of the country too beautiful or too bountiful for the mind to visualize. The world is yours when it comes to painting mental pictures of what you want and what you should have. Furthermore, the history of civilization proves that there is no limitation to man's material creation of the things he has visualized. The whole history of man's achievement since the beginning of the world proves that what he has mentally visualized, he can bring into actual realization. The dreams of men of yesterday that seemed vague, indefinite, and impossible are surprisingly presented to us today in concrete realities and we awaken from our state of doubt and incredulity to realize that while we questioned and hesitated some other master mind turned a dream into reality and the impossible things of the dreamer are the material things offered to us today. And as we analyze the creations of man and his accomplishments, we are impressed with the one great outstanding fact; namely, that he who never dreamed or never painted a mental picture never created in the world of realities a single thing. Around us we find those who have accomplished and built for themselves the things they are enjoying, and there are the others who are in want or who are without even the actual necessities, who had no vision, who never attempted to create in their own minds a single thing, but who depended upon the creations of others and the gifts that might come to them through charity.
Which do you want to be, the creator of your life and the builder of the things you want to enjoy or the one who must take what is left over in the bounties of the lives of others and which are given to you in exchange for the hardest labor or denied to you altogether? Do you want to be the serf and the hireling who accepts at the hands of a master the things he has made and he no longer wants or the things he in a charitable mood is willing to share with you partially or incompletely? Or, do you want to be the creator and make the things you want and bring them into realities in your life so that you are not dependent upon anyone or anything except the great creative power that resides within you? God has given you the same creative power that He possesses, and He has made you equal with Him in making this world beautiful and happy for all living creatures. This great gift is your birthright and you alone determine whether you shall use the power or ignore it.
Come, step back from your close view of the obstacles that seem to surround you, and close your eyes to them for a while and create a new picture. Leave the past and the present out of your consideration and make a new life, a new day, beginning with tomorrow. Build it up part by part in your mind and in your conversations and contacts with those around you until you have a perfect picture of the future that is just beyond today's horizon. Then step forward bravely and with determination into this picture and start your journey along the line that leads to the new estate, the new home, and the new pleasures of life. You will find yourself master of the picture and master of those realities and you will find in it the greatest happiness and the greatest rewards, and every effort, every thought devoted to it.
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