Concentration: The Road to Success

DO.

1

The Why Of The Book

Present power requires concentration on the moment and the thing to be done.

- Emerson.

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold.

- Walt Whitman.

Another book upon this subject? the reader may exclaim. Yes; because concentration is the secret of human power in action. Waste is prevalent everywhere and the consequences are poverty, illness, unhappiness, and failure. It is a libel on nature to think that any person should be in any kind of want because there is not supply and ability in him to appropriate it. The unconscious perception of this fact has pushed man onward to present civilization. A more or less clear perception of the Law and the Way has given rise to many schools of Human Culture. Each generation has had its seers who have studied the operation of the Power within man and discovered the Law, so simple, that all may intellectually grasp it. But because the ordinary person goes no further than to have a mere general perception of Truth, this book is added to the great metaphysical stock and others will necessarily come after mine. I am but one among the million. This book is but one stone cast on the cairn that authors are building to the worship of the God of Success.

Concentration is not something to be learned as one learns mathematics. It is a mental habit which is to be acquired just as the habit of solving problems in geometry is to be acquired by practice. Concentration is that mental attitude attained by practice, that characterizes the book-keeper and the mechanic, who know not that others are about, and who do their work almost automatically and unconsciously.

Concentration is that mental state, acquired only by practice, which enables the actor to forget self in the part he is playing, or the author to forget self in the thought he is writing. Only practice and more practice, can produce it. For this reason text-book after textbook will be needed, and the thought must be reiterated, line upon line, and enforced example by example, till the habit of concentration is formed.

Because of this I feel it a duty to give my testimony and to help those still struggling as once was I. But I have another reason. My magazine and books have caused a large clientele to look to me for assistance along the lines of soul unfoldment; they turn to me with questions, and I must answer. From this feeling and this need, this book is born. It has not been of predetermined growth. It arises from my articles in magazine, from my lessons in class, from letters and conversations. Because I feel these persons have made inquiries that others are asking; these others will find what so many have already found in my thought; so I let the matter stand just as first given, knowing that the sometime repetition of the same thought in a little different way, will through suggestion strengthen the idea. I simply talk to you, my reader, just as I should in writing yon a letter, or in answering your questions, were you in my room. In fact much of the thought of the book comes from my class conversation. I trust you will feel the inspiration from which the instruction sprung.

I wish most in these first pages to emphasize the fact that it is a mental habit you are to cultivate. I am not giving you a treatise for merely intellectual comprehension. It is a book of conduct, rather. Any book can help you only in so far as you put what you are told into practice. As soon as you grasp an idea, lay down the book and think upon it and begin, then and there, to practice what you have learned. Repeat it over and over as an Affirmation. Tell yourself that you live that. Practice this till you unconsciously, through habit, think in that line. It will ultimately become a habit for you thus to think and you will live from that Affirmation. This alone is Concentration.

When I was a boy I was an omnivorous reader; read every book no matter of what kind I could obtain, from Sunday School, library, or neighbor. I thus created a habit of reading anywhere and of paying no attention to whatever was about me. Often has mother shaken me with the words, Henry, where is that armful of wood you promised to get me? Or, Henry, when will you get that pail of water? Why mother, I would reply, I never heard you call me! My son, she would say, I have spoken several times, and you have answered me, 'yes, Mother, right away!' and now I can wait no longer. But I had not heard her. So at least I thought then. Now I know that my hearing was then perfect, but that I paid no attention to what I heard. I did not let the sound then cause me to think. I was deaf because I did not use my power to convert sound to thought. The old saying is true; Deaf people hear when they wish to!

How many of my readers have this habit of abstraction or of absent mindedness? And yet they are the very ones who tell me they cannot concentrate. Please change this expression to this form, and it is true: I do not concentrate upon that which I desire! I let myself drift through habit! Study this last sentence till you get the meaning. It will help to develop the power of conscious concentration.

All I am trying to do in these conversations is, to bring you to consciously do that which you are doing unconsciously and automatically every day. I wish you to rise from habit formed through neglect or necessity, to a habit formed because you desire and choose it. In the first place you are a slave of, and in the last place you are the Master of, habit.

Note - Since Concentration is only paying attention to right thoughts, I have prefaced, each section with extracts from best literature, and recommend that the reader memorize them, as they are Power-thoughts and will, when meditated upon, lead to Success.

2

Concentration a Natural Process

If the first rule is to obey your native bias, to accept the work for which you were inwardly formed, - the second rule is concentration, which doubles its force.

- Emerson in Greatness

The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of intellectual attainments.

- Horace Mann.

Judging from letters and questions of pupils, no part of the Mental Science causes so much difficulty as the demand that there be Concentration. I propose to take from this demand all that is difficult, and remove all obstructions from the mind so that there will be a clear understanding of what is meant by Concentration, and what by the phrase so much in use, - In the Silence!

There is no break in the methods of nature. Truth is identical whether uttered by ancient or modern teacher, by eastern priest or modern Mental Scientist. He who finds Truth, finds it by Nature's one method. There are no patent rights upon any of her secrets, and no corners upon any method of arriving at the perception of Truth.

The cave man found it just as Moses did, and Moses just as Socrates, and Socrates as Jesus, and A. J. Davis as Jesus, and Mrs. Eddy as Davis, and Henry Harrison Brown as they did. Therefore, unless we are to admit the claim of special revelation and arbitrary selection on the part of a Creator, we are to analyse our own mental action, and from the way we have come to Truth, realize that all in like manner come. From the study of our own unfoldment, we are to deduce ways for still more extended progress, just as we have by study of nature's methods in other lines of manifestation, learned to assist her in her unfoldment.

As man, by interrogating nature has learned to become a factor in the evolution of the material world, as he has, by the same process learned to be a factor in his own evolution, mentally, artistically, esthetically; so by the study of our mental conditions we are to learn to be a conscious factor in the evolution of a control over ourselves.

The child and the savant learn by the same means. The slave and the king develop by the same process. The workman and the poet win success by obedience to the same law. The victor and the vanquished are results of the one instrument. Nature is no respector of persons. All the old conception of any special revelation; of any peculiar method; of any newly invented process; of any specially prepared series of directions; of any collections of teachings, or of any prepared formulas, being of value, must pass away. You are to realize that in you abides the same power; in you lies latent, the same intelligence; in you awaits the same germ, that all other men possess, to be brought into unfoldment by the same methods. You are to declare, - What man has done I can do! When I know how others achieve I also can achieve. When I have learned the Law, I can use it! When I find the Way I can walk in it. When I see the Light I can follow it. When I know the Truth I can demonstrate it.

So long have the old ideas held sway that it is important that you see that all of the old growths of error, of self depreciation, of beliefs in the supernatural and in the special are rooted out of your mind. Too many are trying to come into the New Thought and hold on to the old thought at the same time. For such, Jesus spoke, when he admonished Us not to put new wine in old bottles. New perceptions of truth will not fit old statements, and new perceptions must not be limited to old methods. Truth is never old and her methods of revelation, the processes of awakening to the perception of Truth, are ever the same. Do not confound