Like attracts like

The great law, "Like attracts like," is ever operating. This is a great cosmic law. This is a law in nature. This law operates in the thought world also. People of similar thoughts are attracted towards each other. That is the reason why the maxims run as follows: "Birds of the same feather flock together.... A man is known by the company he keeps." A doctor is drawn towards a doctor. A poet has attraction for another poet. A singer loves another singer. A philosopher likes another philosopher. A vagabond likes a vagabond. The mind has got a 'drawing power'. You are continually attracting towards you, from both the seen and the unseen sides of life-forces, thoughts, influences and conditions most akin to those of your own thoughts and lives.

In the realm of thought, people of similar thoughts are attracted to one another. This universal law is continually operating whether we are conscious of it or not. We are all living, so to speak, in a vast ocean of thought; and the very atmosphere around us is continually filled with the thought-forces that are being continually sent or that are continually going out in the form of thought-waves. We are all affected more or less by these thought-forces either consciously or unconsciously and in the degree that we are more or less sensitively organised or in the degree we are negative and so are open to outside influences, rather than positive, which thus determine what influences shall enter into the domain of our thoughts and hence into our lives.

Carry any kind of thought you please about with you and so long as you retain it, no matter how you roam over land or sea, you will unceasingly attract to yourself, knowingly or inadvertently, exactly and only what corresponds to your own dominant quality of thought. Thoughts are your private property and you can regulate them to suit your taste entirely by steadily recognising your ability to do so. You have entirely in your own hands to determine the order of thought you entertain and consequently the order of influences you attract and are not mere willowy creatures of circumstances, unless indeed you choose to be.

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Good thoughts and evil thoughts

A good thought is thrice blessed. First, it benefits the thinker by improving his mental body. Secondly, it benefits the person about whom it is entertained. Lastly, it benefits all mankind by improving the general mental atmosphere.

An evil thought, on the contrary, is thrice cursed. First, it harms the thinker by doing injury to his mental body. Secondly, it harms the person who is its object. Lastly, it harms all mankind by vitiating the whole mental atmosphere.

Every evil thought is as a sword drawn on the person to whom it is directed. If you entertain thoughts of hatred, you are really a murderer of that man against whom you foster thoughts of hatred. You are your own suicide, because these thoughts rebound upon you only.

A mind tenanted by evil thoughts acts as a magnet to attract like thoughts from others and thus intensifies the original evil.

Evil thoughts thrown into the mental atmosphere poison receptive mind. To dwell on an evil thought gradually deprives it of its repulsiveness and impels the thinker to perform an action, which embodies it.

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"If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world."
Chinese Proverb

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Nothing Comes by Itself - You Can't Win a Lottery if You Don't Buy a Ticket
By Boris Vene
If fate intended you to be rich, then all you have to do is just wait for the "business of the century," money, spouse, health and wealth to fall into your lap! Right?

Most people understand "fate" as something static - as if there were a message written in the stars that said, "This is the way it's going to be and it's not up to me." No wonder a passive life develops from this attitude - lives where people wait for their fate to find them and just "happen."

Years go by before they realize that in all this time they have not experienced anything and have virtually slept through most of their days in a monotonous routine of work, lunch, dinner, occasional entertainment, television and rest.

Each day is the same, boring routine until the days become months and finally they stretch into years. Not to mention, they have probably been struggling for money and possibly survival, experiencing health and relationship problems and such. It is not surprising that in the end, all this leads to the final confirmation that "I am not intended to live the good life."

Jacob Needleman, a philosophy professor at the University of San Francisco and author of many philosophical, religious and medical books, sometimes compares life with a jail cell, where institutionalized prisoners no longer remember their previous life of freedom. Instead, their only goal becomes meager attempts to improve their living conditions (if they can) within the prison walls.

They may paint walls with the vivid colors of nature, hang posters or magazine pictures to cover the ugly walls that surround them.

All the while, they're dreaming about a better life and envying other prisoners for meager privileges above their own. Even worse - maybe their cells are wide open and nobody is forcing them to stay in the prison! They are free to go and experience a new, exciting life.

Instead, they refuse to believe that somewhere a better life awaits them. No, they would rather put another poster on the wall - and dream on about a better life than take the chance of moving towards it only to wind up disappointed.

For a prisoner to survive inside and behind bars, within the prison system, he or she must engage in a wide range of mind-games.

The most important one is to forget your life outside the walls. Unfortunately, this is also the most dangerous game of all; because its successful execution means you must become satisfied with the limited life you now have.

If a new prisoner comes in with grand tales of life outside, the rules of the game force the prisoner to reject them, not because they don't believe them, but because they don't want to believe them.

Believing the stories makes living the restricted and limited life inside unbearable.

Believing would change their attitude about the limited life they are living and they simply "can't afford" for that to happen. Believing the messenger might elicit talking, thinking and dreaming of escape - but the road from here to freedom is long.

Many people live in a mental prison as strong and confining as those who are behind bars. They have all the freedom in the world, but they exercise none of it because they are afraid to believe, like the prisoner, that a better life can be theirs.

Why?

Because it takes courage to change your life ... to break the old patterns, change old habits and rebuild your mental infrastructure. It is easier to stay where you are, blame others and tell yourself:

"No, this is too hard. Who am I to think that I can make it happen? What if I fail? Right now, I have something; maybe it isn't what I wanted or even what I like - but it's something! If I lose this ..."

Are you reading this article and thinking you cannot make it happen? Are you living in a prison without walls?

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Silverparrot

http://www.myspace.com/Silverparrot

Friends in your life are like pillars on your porch.
Sometimes they hold you up and sometimes they lean on you.
Sometimes it's just enough to know they're standing by.

~~"My tears do not compromise my strength"...~~

Cindy, thankyou for taking the time to post, good read for me.

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If you are compassionate in your approach to all tasks in life, believing that all "problems" contain valuable lessons, you will find peace of mind.
~Dr. Lee Jampolsky