Leaving religion and finding faith

-- I found this article a few years ago -- Ronna Detrick, expressing my own view perfectly!

"Something has changed within me.

Something is not the same

I’m through with playing by the rules

Of someone else’s game

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It’s time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes: and leap!

- Defying Gravity, from the musical Wicked

When my beliefs, those long-held religious and doctrinal tenets I’d known since a child, started niggling at me, changing, and frankly, just stopped working, it felt as though the very ground beneath me was slipping away.

The image that often came to mind was of some brave soul crossing a rickety wooden bridge. It swings dangerously over a deep, cavernous space, sparsely protecting her from what’s below. As she gets closer to the other side, she realizes the just-traveled planks are disintegrating beneath her feet. She runs, scrambles, claws and then leaps (at the last possible moment) to the security and safety of firm ground. And simultaneously, what was left of the bridge, her previously-trusted stability, falls into oblivion. She sits winded and stunned on the other side, aware that her fate hung in an incredibly precarious balance – and she survived.

More than once I have been suspended over seemingly impossible situations that have caused me to grasp frantically for any solid ground. Childhood issues. Infidelity. Broken trust. Leaving the church. There is more, of course. This is enough.

My circumstances were/are not, in any way, more difficult than anyone else’s. And, like many others in such places I turned to my religious beliefs – certain that “all things work together for good.” But the bridge felt wobbly. I felt shaky, unstable, and ambivalent. And when push came to shove, literally, the firm foundation of my faith completely fell apart.

Right then and there I had to choose: return to a life of unquestioning, uncomfortable silence or leap into the unknown.

I leapt. And, in so doing, survived.

I also found faith.

In my religious tradition, faith is understood as a system of beliefs upon which one can (must) stand – firmly, resolutely, without question or doubt. It is something within which I (must) place my confidence and trust; something that resides outside of me and usually presides in authority (God, a pastor, a man).

What I needed, however, was confidence and trust in something within; frankly, I needed to have faith in myself. I had to make the leap. There was no other choice.

I’m not the only one who has stood in such places. Do you feel the ground beneath you starting to shift? Do your beliefs no longer provide you the sure footing they promised? Do you know how to cross the gaping chasm between significant life/belief questions and answers that no longer satisfy? When circumstances occur in life that defy the staid, safe tenets of religious dogma, do you know who and how you will be?

Frankly, there are no easy answers to these questions. The scrambling ensues. And ultimately, all you can do is leap.

To let go of seemingly rock-solid answers in search of more meaningful questions is not an abandoning of our beliefs; it is faith.

To adventure bravely across treacherous waters, confident that your own strength will carry you is faith.

To trust that old stories can have new meanings, assumed truths can be queried, and that you can remain standing in the midst is faith.

To leap when everything in (and everyone around) you tells you that gravity is irrefutable is faith.

And faith will not let you down.

I took the risk, stepped onto that swaying bridge, ran like hell, and didn’t look back. And I continue to stand strongly in my doubts, knowing that they are the very things that enable my beliefs. I am endlessly letting go of more and more that I’ve held sacred, dear, or sacrosanct. And I am forever leaping – trusting that when I land I will step forward, confident and empowered, defying gravity time and again.

This risking, doubting, letting go, and leaping is endless. Solid ground is a myth; but the endless, soaring flight of faith offers a stabilizing loft that sustains, emboldens, and yes, defies gravity over and over again.

Go ahead: make the leap. Have faith. I’ll be waiting for you on the other side. Here, take my hand…

It’s time to try

Defying gravity

I think I’ll try

Defying gravity

And you can’t pull me down!

"Christmas belongs to anyone who wants it, and just because I gave up believing in a god doesn’t mean I gave up believing in the love and joy of family. I did not give up the joy of celebration with my abandonment of the absurd. So to my religious and non-religious friends, I wish them all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah or happy Diwali from the heart and I hope they take it with the true spirit with which I give it – that of the spirt of humanity - something we can all celebrate."

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In the name of the best within you...

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.”

- Ayn Rand

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The right to be rich

Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No one can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money, for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

It's Not About Money - It's About Gaining the Freedom to Become The REAL You.

A person develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that we must have money in order to become the possessors of things. Therefore, the basis of all advancement must be the science of getting rich.

In learning about the science of getting rich, lies a deeper lesson, one not just of getting rich, but what kind of person you become in the process of getting rich. For the one cannot happen without the other.

The object of all life is development, and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.

A person's right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical unfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.

I shall not speak of riches in a figurative way. To be really rich does not mean to be satisfied or contented with a little. No one ought to be satisfied with a little if he is capable of using and enjoying more. The purpose of nature is the advancement and unfoldment of life, and everyone should have all that can contribute to the power, elegance, beauty, and richness of life. To be content with less is sinful.

The person who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of living is rich, and no person who has not plenty of money can have all he wants. Life has advanced so far and become so complex that even the most ordinary man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that even approaches completeness. Every person naturally wants to become all that they are capable of becoming. This desire to realize innate possibilities is inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be.

Success in life is becoming what you want to be.

You can become what you want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of things only as you become rich enough to buy them.

To understand the science of getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to get rich. The desire for riches is really the desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life - and that desire is praiseworthy. The person who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and so the person who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is abnormal.

There are three motives for which we live:

We live for the body,

we live for the mind,

we live for the soul.

No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three - body, mind, or soul - can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body, and it is wrong to live for the intellect and deny body or soul.

We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body and denying both mind and soul, and we see that real life means the complete expression of all that a person can give forth through body, mind, and soul.

Whatever he can say, no one can be really be happy or satisfied unless his body is living fully in its every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression or function seeking performance.

A person cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and warm shelter, and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.

One cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship.

To live fully in mind a person must have intellectual recreations, and must surround himself with all the objects of art and beauty he is capable of using and appreciating.

To live fully in soul, a person must have love, and love is denied fullest expression by poverty.

A person's highest happiness is found in the bestowal of benefits on those he loves; love finds its most natural and spontaneous expression in giving. The individual who has nothing to give cannot fill his place as a spouse or parent, as a citizen, or as a human being.

It is in the use of material things that a person finds full life for his body, develops his mind, and unfolds his soul. It is therefore of supreme importance to each individual to be rich.

It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich. If you are a normal man or woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly ,right that you should give your best attention to the science of getting rich, for it is the noblest and most necessary of all studies.

If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty to yourself, to God and humanity, for you can render to God and humanity no greater service than to make the most of yourself.

We live for the body,

we live for the mind,

we live for the soul.

No one of these is better or

holier than the other ...

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Season, Reason and Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.

When someone is in your life for a REASON,

It is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong-doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand.

What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.

When people come into your life for a SEASON,
It is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring  you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.

When people come into your life for a LIFETIME
relationships teach you lifetime lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person/people (any way); and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. 
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
- author Unknown -

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There is enough of everything, for everybody

I really want you to get into the realization that your lack-based conclusions are erroneous, and not validated. Your conclusion that there isn't enough of something—whether it is enough land or enough money, or enough clarity—your feeling that there is not enough of something, stems from you learning, without meaning to, a vibration that holds you apart from what you want. But you imply that there's not enough in the bucket, that there's not enough in the pile, that there's not enough in the Source—that the Source of what you want is somehow limited. And since the Source is limited, then those greedy buggers that have managed to figure out how to get it in their life, are somehow depriving you of it. And I say, oh, you could not be further from the fact of the abundance of Source!

There is no limitation. If you can identify a desire for it, Source recognizes your desire, and immediately begins to deliver it to you—and it will manifest in your experience in the variety, in the fullness, in the way that you, and only you, learn to allow it.

So, if you stand in your now and you say, "Look at where I am. Where I am, justifies the desire that is conjuring within me. It is really important that I have this, or this, or this—because, after all, I am living in the deprivation of it. And the deprivation of it has served me to identify that I want it. I want that thing that I do not have. I want that thing that I do not have! I want that thing that I do not have. I really, really want that thing that I really, really, really do not have!"

And I say, you cannot be equally focused upon the absence of something, and bring it swiftly into your experience at the same time, because in your awareness that you do not have it, you are offering a vibration. And the vibration that you're offering, is sending a signal to the Universe that says, "I am one who does not have this." The Universe, is based upon the Law of Attraction, which says, "The vibration that you emit is the vibration that you receive." You cannot set your radio for 98.6 and receive the broadcast from 101 FM—you understand that. And you cannot set your sender to the "I don't have enough money," and be in the place of receiving all the money that you want, because the signals do not line up—and Law of Attraction is responding to the vibration of your Being. Nice, isn't it? Nice to know. So consistent—always consistent.

No one affects you, but you. Oh, you can watch others, and you can get all revved up about what they're doing. In your watching of others, you can project a vibration that the Universe matches. But your vibration is yours. You have control of your vibration. And when you learn to offer a vibration deliberately, you are the Deliberate Creator of your own experience. And before you learn to offer a vibration deliberately, you are just the creator of your experience—a sort of creator by default.

Excerpted from the workshop 'Abraham' in San Francisco, CA on Saturday, March 8th, 2003

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Resign from a system that no longer serves you

Art By : 'Prana' Bernart Amygdalah Digital-Art

That feeling of pure bliss coming in when you decide to resign from a system that no longer serves you - be true to yourself don`t betray your own Soul.
For you to fully enter into your own mastery, you have to stop being a follower. Ask your own heart, and walk your own way lead by your heart and soul ...
We need for you to bring your own unique mastery into our togetherness ....
Espavo dear Ones !!!

~ Keeper of The Platinum Ray

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Feel the fear and do it anyway

What is waiting but a pause in a hurtful place?.. It’s like standing barefoot in a pricker bush and saying, 

“hmm, I don’t think I’m ready to move yet”.

The timing will never be right. The conditions will never ever ever ever be exactly perfect. No matter how long you wait, there will always be a reason it why isn’t the “right” time.

So maybe you should just do it anyway.

Whatever it is that you’re working on, planning to do, or waiting to implement, it’s too important to just let it slip away.

Whenever we humble ourselves, open up and decide to do something powerful, something worth doing, a lot of doubt, question, and “is it right?” is brought to the surface. Many of the people I work with have experienced this, and I too have felt waves of this feeling. And you know what? This is what makes us feel alive. This is us feeling, experiencing, and doing our work. The more we try and experience and move forward, the more “stuff” we’re faced with, and there’s always going to be more “stuff” and its all beautiful. It’s all moveable, and it’s all eye opening and perfect.

Through our “real work” we do our “soul work”.

And ooh we’re doing big things, we’re doing serious work. Whether it be bettering our own lives, and loving ourselves deeply, or sharing this with someone else through our work. The good stuff isn’t always easy. And we need to recommit to this work each and every day. We need to remind ourselves of the good that we are doing, and the fact that there is no one else in this world that can do exactly whatever it is that you can. There is no one that has what you have, because it’s YOU, that you do have. And it’s THAT which you will share, and spread out and send into the world. And this is what we must remind ourselves of.

And even more than all of this, we have to remind ourselves to actually DO IT, and make moves.

I mean really, what is the risk of moving forward and doing this thing? Are you afraid of loss or failure? Because psst, guess what: if you never move forward to do whatever it is you’re yearning for, you’ve automatically experienced loss, “failure” and non success. If you don’t do it at all, there’s no way to get it done. You have to at least TRY, or you’ve automatically failed.
Action is what really gets things flowing.

Movement is what the universe responds to more quickly than thought. It’s action that shows the world you are serious. Each step creates momentum, and each moment it gets stronger and stronger, pushing you along the way. This is you in the flow. And baby…. I LOVE the flow. Let’s move.

So let’s bring this back to you, my love. Where are you feeling stuck? What have you been waiting to do, when the timing is “right” or after “this one thing is done”?

It’s time to move now. The time is now because you will never feel ready. That edge of nerve, sweat, or super-fast heartbeat will never fully go away. And thank god, because it is that which reminds us of the strength of our actions. The fact that you are sitting here, thinking about this thing and experiencing a physical response, without having acted yet, shows how powerful it can be.

But let’s re-frame this a little bit….. Instead of experiencing this sensation as fear of what may come, look at it as if you are already feeling the effects of this powerful decision. It’s excitement about the good that is to come that you are feeling, not fear! Whoa!! Different right? One small shift of perspective changes this terrible feeling in your gut into something that’s beneficial, exciting and GOOD.

So recommit if you’ve felt like maybe it isn’t right, or that you can’t do it. I’ve been there, too. We all have. But you know what? It is right, you can do this, and you are important. Who cares how long it has taken you to get here, because you’re here now, and nothing super easy is really worth doing anyway.

There are thorns in your feet baby! Pluck them out and get a move on. Remember all that there is for you to create. Remember the fire, and kindle the flames. Remember that you are you.

Move baby! GO!

Tell me, what is the next thing you need to do to get you where you want to be? What’s your first step, and when are you doing it? Share it with me below, and THIS can become your first move to making it happen.

- by Morgan Potts

About the author:
Morgan Potts is a holistic health coach working with women from around the world who want to live a life more sacred and satisfying. Her passion is to fill life with ritual and connection, bringing wonder, magic and excitement to each moment. Morgan believes when we feel aligned we feel connected, we feel sacred, we are the divine feminine — and we can truly nurture our desires. The relationship between the moon’s phases and women’s natural cycles is a main focus.

Morgan works with women online through her one-on-one coaching programs, and also leads the Facebook group Moonblush Sacred Women. Both are aimed at reconnecting with the feminine flow, and understanding how to live a life more rich and nourishing to our bodies. If this subject fascinates you, and is something you want to connect with, join her Facebook group where all things sacred and feminine are discussed! Morgan also leads monthly women’s gatherings on the evening of the new moon, in Rochester NY.

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How To Alleviate The Current World-wide Financial Crisis

You can chill out and go to work.

Or you can focus upon the things that are important to you and figure out how to satisfy the details of your life and stop looking to someone else to solve it and figure out how to bring yourself into balance - and turn off things like this debate! - you're harassing yourself into the misalignment of what's already in your vibrational escrow.

Prosperity has been brought into motion by all of you; you are all co-conspirators, and you have, through that which you have been living, been contributing to this plan of prosperity and it is the legacy that you all hold ownership of.

In order for you to claim your piece of this amazing pie of prosperity, all you have to do is look in the direction of it and see if you can remember what pieces of it you put there, because every piece you have put there, has been lovingly held for you. It cannot evaporate from the stock-market and it cannot be squandered by those who do not understand and it cannot be taken from you. Because if your life caused you to put it in to this holding pattern, this vibrational escrow, then it is forever there for you . You hold ownership of it, and the only thing that is required for you to make your personal withdrawal, is make your personal withdrawal by no longer paying attention to who else is making what withdrawals.

Don't worry about them getting your fair share of prosperity - it's not possible for anybody to get your fair share - your fair share is always earmarked for you - it will always stay there - in perfect becoming-ness - and since you've put it there, it has been accruing magnificent interest - it's gotten bigger than it was when you asked for it and it gets bigger with every request you make and the more crisis you apply to it, it the bigger and bigger it gets - know that it's there for you and that no one can get it away from you - stop worrying about what anybody else is doing because it's the your worrying about what everybody else is doing that's causing you to hold yourself vibrationally out of whack from it.

For those who do not know about the vibrational reality, I would say, "Worry not, this has happened before and you will get through it. Do not worry about what's happening. Nothing has changed in the last few days. Nothing even has changed in the last few years that is so far out of balance that it cannot come back into balance." All you have to do is settle in and ride it out." Say to yourself every day, "It's better .. It's getting better, it's getting better, and it's going to be alright. It's better, it's getting better, it's getting better and it's going to be alright."

As soon as you convince yourself that it's better than you thought it was and that it's getting better than it is right now and that it's not only going to be alright, it's going to be REALLY alright, your prosperity can begin to come to you immediately.

Political leaders :

Do not hold anybody on the planet responsible for the well-being that comes to you - THIS man and THAT man is not responsible for your well-being. YOU are responsible for their well-being. GIVE THEM A BREAK.

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Abundance

Do you know that everyday you are unconsciously reliving successes or failures? By playing these positive or negative tapes over and over in the mind, you are literally planning and practicing your future.
Thoughts form habits.

When you learn to discipline your thoughts and concentrate on the positive, you’ll be creating the habit of success.

Success, happiness and self-satisfaction come from within.

Believe without exception that, “I can do it!” and you will.

Success and happiness also depend on your willingness to persist when the going gets tough.
Often, giving up too soon is the reason most people fail to find their most satisfying successes.
Your belief in yourself determines what you’ll accomplish.

Your mind is always programming itself to keep you happy and content in the world you’ve created. Beating yourself up about negative habits only tightens their hold over you. And feeling guilty only makes them stronger.

"You can replace old habits by creating new, more positive ones. Research has shown that it takes about twenty-one days to change a habit."
- Sharon A. Michaels

Pop Quiz
Q: How do you find love, health, abundance, or enlightenment?
A: Stop searching. And start seeing what’s been there all along.

Note from the Universe :
Today, you are a magnet…
for infinite abundance, divine intelligence, and unlimited love.
Actually, this has always been true.
You are the reason the sun came up today.
BELIEVE IT!


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There will always be those who thrive

There are always those who thrive when masses are dying of sickness. There are always those who thrive economically when economic decline seems to be the order of our nation. There are always those who are clear-minded, in environments of confusion. You do not need everyone or anyone else to align with your desire—only you need to align with your desire.

It's interesting, how, when you know that you are the creator of your own experience, and that anything you ask for, Source immediately begins to answer, things start falling into place.

Through the millennia humanity has always grasped for something to lean on, a crutch, some external factor that can "save" them, get them to to a place of contentment or help them through a crisis or difficult times. People turn to drugs, smoking, drinking, religion, sedatives or many of the other external factors that can make one "feel good".

When you understand that you deliberately create your own reality through your focus and your exposure to contrast, when you really get it, that your desire is always answered and that it's just your work to get into a place of allowing it—then, standing in that unfulfilled place of a fresh, new desire is delicious.

All you have to do is to discover that you have within you a Guidance System that lets you know, in any moment, what you're doing with your vibration. You can literally feel, once you have listened for it a little bit, whether you are a vibrational match to your Core Energy or whether you are not.

None of the "crutches" are right or wrong. When you find something that works for you, stick to it. Have you ever known someone whose life was not based on what you thought was moral or appropriate behavior? And yet, they continued to win. You know why? They don't listen to the other side of the argument and mix up their vibration. They focus upon and hold themselves in alignment with what they want—and the Universe delivers to them what they want.

It doesn't matter how many others stand back and claim injustice, foul play, or inappropriate, the Universe always answers your vibration.

And it doesn't have anything to do with what anybody else is doing—or thinks about what you're doing—unless you change your vibration because of what they think about what you're doing. That's why a variety of medical remedies work differently on different people. That's why a variety of religious intentions work for different people.

How do you ever decide what is right or wrong for you, what is appropriate or inappropriate, when there are so many different opinions and voices trying to get your attention and trying to get you to follow?

If you have a very narrow experience, if you only have one or two choices, it is fairly easy to choose one and stick to it. But as you go through life, all these different options are offered to you, where people have different religious beliefs or different beliefs about what you should eat or the way you should dress, now you have greater contradiction within your experience. The variety is enormous. And so, many of us try to find the biggest group in order to please.

Begin to move through life more on a feeling basis than on an intellectual, thinking basis. You want to reach the point where you can just tell by the way you feel, “Am I vibrationally up to speed with who I am and what I want, or have I chosen — by influence of others or by some old habit of thought — have I chosen to focus somewhere that’s lower and slower in vibration?”

You can believe anything you want and have success with it. But in the moment you push against what another believes, you cut yourself off from your success.They must be allowed if I am to be allowed. All is allowed.

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I will not stay silent

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth. For being correct. For being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." - Gandhi

So many people need you to behave in a certain way for them to feel good. They condemn you for your selfishness. "How dare you be so selfish as to follow what makes you feel good? You should follow what makes us feel good!"

From an early age you were "told", through word and action, that you are too young, not smart enough to know anything and that somebody else should make all the decisions for you. (I'm not talking about infants). You were told what religion to follow, that you HAVE to have a religion to follow; you were told when to eat, even though your body knew it was not ready for food yet; you were told what to eat, even though your body knew what it needed and you were told that things only get done in a certain way even though you knew there was another way that would work for you.

You could not live in this culture during the times of your life without getting a huge amount of information relative to that, just the same as the way people respond to the things you do and say. And then people are scared out of their wits when you come up with an alternative theory, when you step out of the box and do something differently.

They are fearful that your choices, your beliefs, are somehow going to affect them. How can that be? How can anybody be fearful that what you or I do is going to affect them in any way?

But all that is slowly changing now. Many realise that there are many choices out there and that diversity is as real as their own convictions. All anybody needs to do is to focus on what they want in their lives, not what anybody else is doing.

You are free.

You’re so free, you can choose bondage.

You are so free, that no one can do anything to you.

You are so free, that you are the only one who is causing anything to happen in your experience.

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Do NOT study poverty

Since belief is all important, it is important for you to guard your thoughts if you want to thrive, and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things you observe and think about, it is important that you should carefully govern to what you give your attention. And here free will comes into use, for it is by your will that you determine upon what things your attention shall be fixed.

If you want to become thrive, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.

- Health is never to be attained by studying disease and thinking about disease;

- Righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and thinking about sin;

- and no one ever thrived by studying poverty and thinking about poverty.

Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease;

religion as a science of sin has promoted sin,

and economics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.

Do not talk about poverty, do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with them.

Do not read books or papers which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness of the tenement dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on.

Do not read anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.

You cannot help the poor in the least by knowing about these things, and the widespread knowledge of them does not tend at all to do away with poverty.

What concerns you is to thrive. Do not spend your time in so-called charitable work or charity movements; most charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate.

I do not say that you should be hard-hearted or unkind and refuse to hear the cry of need, but you must not try to eradicate poverty in any of the conventional ways.

Ayn Rand said, “There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism – the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means – one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul – (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) – Jesus (or perhaps his interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which he told them that, in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires, or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s souls to the souls of others.

This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for 2,000 years. The reason of their failure was not men’s natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work.”

You cannot hold the mental image which is to make you thrive if you fill your mind with pictures of poverty and all its attendant ills. Poverty can be done away with, not by increasing the number of well-to-do people who think about poverty, but by increasing the number of poor people who purpose with faith to thrive.

The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two. But inspiration can cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can thrive. Prove it by thriving yourself.

Put poverty behind you, and put all that pertains to it behind you, and “make good.” Thrive. That is the best way you can help the poor.

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