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Excerpts from
The Secret Door to Success by Florence Scovel Shinn  Order in Adobe PDF eBook or printed form for $3.95 (+ printing charge)  The Secret Door to Success Audio Book  130 minutes of audio. Can easily be burned onto CD or DVD (MP3 format audio files - suitable for any computer, mp3 players, i-pods, etc.) Download immediately for just $9.95Click here to order from Amazon.com for $7.95 Chapter 1 - The Secret Door to Success
A successful man is always asked - "What is the secret of your success?" People never ask a man who is a failure, "What is the secret of your failure?" It is quite easy to see and they are not interested. People all want to know how to open the secret door to success. For each man there is success, but it seems to be behind a door or wall. In the Bible reading, we have heard the wonderful story of the falling of the walls of Jericho. Of course all biblical stories have a metaphysical interpretation. We will talk now about your wall of Jericho: the wall separating you from success. Nearly everyone has built a wall around his own Jericho. This city you are not able to enter, contains great treasures; your divinely designed success, your heart's desire! What kind of wall have you built around your Jericho? Often, it is a wall of resentment - resenting someone, or resenting a situation, shuts off your good. If you are a failure and resent the success of someone else, you are keeping away your own success. I have given the following statement to neutralize envy and resentment. What God has done for others, He now does for me and more. A woman was filled with envy because a friend had received a gift, she made this statement, and an exact duplicate of the gift was given her - plus another present. It was when the children of Israel shouted, that the walls of Jericho fell down. When you make an affirmation of Truth, your wall of Jericho totters. I gave the following statement to a woman: The walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace. She had a vivid picture of stepping over a fallen wall, and received the demonstration of her good, almost immediately. It is the word of realization which brings about a change in your affiars; for words and thoughts are a form of radio-activity. Taking an
interest in your work,
enjoying what you are doing opens the secret door of success. Chapter 2 - Bricks Without Straw
In the 5th chapter of Exedus, we have a picture of every day life, when giving a metaphysical interpretation. The Children of Israel were in bondage to Pharaoh, the cruel taskmaster, ruler of Egypt. They were kept in slavery, making bricks, and were hated and despised. Moses had orders from the Lord to deliver his people from bondage - "Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh -- Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." He not only refused to let them go, but told them he would make their tasks even more difficult: they must make bricks without straw being provided for them. "And the task-masters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw." "Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it: yet not ought of your work shall be diminished." It was impossible to make bricks without straw. The Children of Israel were completely crushed by Pharaoh, they were beaten for not producing the bricks -- Then came the message from Jehovah. "Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale (number) of bricks." Working with Spiritual law they could make bricks without straw, which means to accomplish the seemingly impossible. How often in life people are confronted with this situation. Agnes M. Lawson in her "Hints to Bible Students" says -- "The Life in Egypt under foreign oppression is the symbol of man under the hard taskmasters of Destructive thinking, Pride, Fear, Resentment, Ill-will, etc. The deliverance under Moses is the freedom man gains from the taskmasters, as he learns the law of life, for we can never come under grace, except we first know the law. The law must be made known in order to be fulfilled." In the 111th Psalm we read in the final verse, "The fear of the Lord (law) is the beginning of Wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth forever." Now if we read the word Lord (law) it will give us the key to the statement. The fear of the law (Karmic law) is the beginning of wisdom (not the fear of the Lord). When we know the whatever we send out comes back, we begin to be afraid of our own boomerangs. I read in a medical journal the following facts telling of the Boomerang this great Pharaoh received. It would appear that flesh is indeed heir to a long and ancient line of ills, when, as was revealed by Lord Monyahan at a lecture at Leeds, that the Pharaoh of the oppression suffered from hardening of the heart in a literal sense. Lord Monyahan showed some remarkable photographic slides of results of surgical operations a thousand years before Christ, and among these was a slide of the actual anatomical remains of the Pharaoh of the Oppression. "The large vessel springing from the heart was in such a well-preserved state, as to enable sections of it to be made recently from the lantern slide. It was impossible to distinguish between the ancient and modern vessel. Both hearts had been attacked by Atheroma, a condition in which calcium salts are deposited in the walls of the vessel, making it rigid and inelastic." Inadequate expanse to the stream of blood from the heart caused the vessel to give way; with this condition went the mental changes that occur with a rigid arterial system: A narrowness of outlook; restriction and dread of enterprise, a literal hardening of the heart. So Pharaoh's hardness of heart, hardened his own heart. This is as true today as it was several thousand years ago -- we are all coming out of the Land of Egypt, out of the House of Bondage. Your doubts and fears keep you in slavery; you face a situation which seems hopeless. What can you do? It is a case of making bricks without straw. Chapter 3 - And Five of Them Were Wise
My subject is the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. "And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." The parable teaches that true prayer means preparation. Jesus Christ said, "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" (Math. 21:22). "Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them" (Mark 11:24). In this parable he shows that only those who have prepared for their good (thereby showing active faith) will bring the manifestation to pass. We might paraphrase the scriptures and say: When ye pray believe ye have it. When ye pray ACT as if you have already received. Armchair faith or rocking chair faith, will never move mountains. In the armchair, in the silence, or meditation, you are filled with the wonder of this Truth, and feel that your faith will never waver. You know that The Lord is your Shepherd, you shall never want. You feel that your God of Plenty will wipe out all burdens of debt or limitations. Then you leave your armchair and step out into the arena of Life. It is only what you do in the arena that counts. I will you give you an illustration showing how the law works; for faith without action is dead. A man, one of my students, had a great desire to go abroad. He took the statement: I give thanks for my divinely designed trip, divinely financed, under grace, in a perfect way. He had very little money, but knowing the law of preparation, he bought a trunk. It was a very gay and happy trunk with a big red band around its waist. Whenever he looked at it it gave him a realization of a trip. One day he seemed to feel his room moving. He felt the motion of a ship. He went to the window to breathe the fresh air, and it smelt like the aroma of the docks. With his inner ear he heard the shriek of a sea-gull and the creaking of the gangplank. The trunk had commenced to work. It had put him in the vibration of his trip. Soon after that, a large sum of money came to him and he took the trip. He said afterwards that it was perfect in every detail. In the arena of Life we must keep ourselves tuned-up to concert pitch. Are we acting from motives of fear or faith? Watch your motives with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of life. If your problem is a financial one (and it usually is) you must know how to wind yourself up financially, and keep wound up by always acting your faith. The material attitude towards money is to trust in your salary, your income and investments, which can shrink over night. The spiritual attitude toward money is to trust in God for your supply. To keep your possessions, always realize that they are God in manifestation. "What Allah has given cannot be diminished," then if one door shuts another door, immediately opens. Never voice lack or limitation for "by your words your are condemned." You combine with what you notice, and if you are always noticing failure and hard times, you will combine with failure and hard times. You must form the habit of living in the fourth dimension, "The World of the Wondrous." It is the world where you do not judge by appearances. You have trained your inner eye to see through failure into success, to see through sickness into health to see through limitation into plenty. I will give you the land which you though seeth." The man who achieves success has the fixed idea of succes. If it is founded on a rock of truth and rightness it will stand. If not, it is built upon sand and washed into the sea, returning to its native nothingness. Only divine ideas can endure. Evil destroys itself, for it is a cross current against universal order, and the way of the transgressor is hard. "They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." The lamp symbolizes man's consciousness. The oil is what brings Light or understanding. "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made. Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us your oil; for our lamps are gone out." The foolish virgins were without wisdom or understanding, which is oil for the consciousness, and when they were confronted with a serious situation, they had no way of handling it. And when they said to the wise "give us of your oil," the wise answered saying, "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." That means that the foolish virgins could not receive more than was in their consciousness, or what they were vibrating to. The man received the trip because it was in his consciousness, as a reality. He believed that he had already received. As he prepared for the trip he was taking oil for his lamps. With realization comes manifestation. The Secret Door to Success
Audio Book 130 minutes of audio. Can easily be burned onto CD or DVD (MP3 format audio files - suitable for any computer, mp3 players, i-pods, etc.) Download immediately for just $9.95Order in Adobe PDF eBook or printed form for $3.95 (+ printing charge) Click here to order in printed form from Amazon.com for $7.95 |