Chapter 2 Can you, yourself, make your ideals become realities

Some of you are endowed with faith and some beset with doubt. Of those endowed with faith based upon spiritual knowledge, there is not one whose faith is not weakened a little by trifling doubts. Of those beset with the darkest of doubts, there is not one whose doubt is not enlightened a little by a touch of faith.

When I state that ideals come true none of you deny it or think of denying it. But, when I assure you that every ideal always comes true and that every one of your own particular ideals can be changed to a material reality, my statement contrasts so astoundingly with your past experiences of having tried faithfully to attain that which you desire, that some of you feel it can not be true, -some of you may doubt even my common sense in making such an assertion. You who doubt that every ideal comes true, doubt sincerely, -doubt because of common sense judgments based upon your present knowledge. No matter what the cause, doubt interferes with your realization of your ideals: it dampens the fire of desire and lessens your effort to attain that which you wish because you think the effort is useless.

I do not wish you to accept any statement; I wish you to know truth! Do not change from doubt to blind belief; it will do you no permanent good, -blind faith soon dies. But what are the “ideas” in your mind that make you doubt?

First, mistaking ideas for ideals. Second, your idea of the density of matter. Third, your idea of the solidity of matter. Fourth, your idea of matter as motionless and lifeless. Fifth, your present incomplete knowledge of the process of making ideals become realities.

These are the only serious causes of doubt, -five stones in the path of faith and attainment. I shall not, in succeeding chapters, give them more attention than they deserve, but just enough to remove them.

By and large, your doubt is based upon the seeming impossibility of etheric images of the mind being able easily to change, re-form and re-create the substance of matter that is seemingly so dense, solid and lifeless. If you could know that matter is not so dense as it seems, not so solid as it appears, not so lifeless as it is assumed to be -if you could know these things, then doubt would be faith and faith would be divinely certain, forever lasting, and ever impelling to action.

Most of your trouble, then, relates to your idea of the nature of matter -its substance and attributes. In what follows I shall not be so silly as to assert that matter does not exist, that it is a mere claim of matter, or that it is an illusion.

If I should assert that matter is non-existent, you could laugh at me and justly, -for I am so conscious of the existence of matter that I find it necessary to have a house in which to live, a bed in which to sleep, clothes to wear and food to eat. If I should assert that matter is a mere claim of being matter, I would corner myself; when people owe me money, I am not content with the claim, -I prefer the money itself. If I should state that matter is an “illusion of the mind,” you could -knowing the certainty of the law that only like perceives like -smile to yourself over the idea that nothing but an illusionary mind could conceive an illusionary world, eat illusionary vegetables, wear illusionary shirts, handle illusionary money, use and depend upon ten thousand illusionary things and live upon an illusionary earth.

I hold that matter is existent and that it is very unwise and detrimental to deny its existence and attempt to live up to the denial, -for instance to deny the existence of material food and try to live without it. But, I hold also that it is lack of knowledge of the true nature of matter that makes us think of it as dense, solid, motionless and lifeless.

If in our greater knowledge of matter we find that it is only energy in reality, that it is not restricted energy but infinite energy, and that it is of the same substance as spirit -then our concept of matter becomes so like our concept of the substance of which ideals are made, that it is possible for us to perceive some definite connection -a real relation, perhaps a similarity, perhaps even a co-existence -of the substance of every ideal and the substance of every material reality.

With such knowledge -found in next succeeding chapters -our faith that ideals come true, because they are of the same substance as matter, can be and is justified. Such faith will fire anew our ideals and desires and impel us to cease no effort until they become realities; and with knowledge of the process of attainment, we shall know by experience that it is not so difficult as it once seemed. And you, yourself, can make your ideals become realities. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Ideals are the substance of the things that are.