Eagle Prosperity

I am reading a great book on low budget, independent filmmaking, and the writer shares some amazing philosophy, something I certainly didn’t expect to find in a book on filmmaking. Author Rick Schmidt is talking about making his first feature. He is out of money, broke, horribly behind on his rent, full of despair. And then he gets a telegram from the American Film Institute announcing that a panel of four, including King Vidor, had decided to award him $9,918 for his film. He writes:

“I had been saved! For the first time in months, I relaxed, not fully realizing the strain I had been living under. I was deliriously happy, relieved that I could now tell all those people to whom I owed money that I would soon be able to pay them back. All of a sudden everything was OK-great, in fact! But what was the difference between this week and last week? I still didn’t have any cash in my hand. The difference was the idea of money coming. I wished that I could have just thought “Money” and received all the energy that the idea of winning the grant had supplied.”

The power of thought. What do you think?

PROSPERITY, according to Webster, is an advance or gain in anything good or desirable, successful progress toward, or attainment of a desired object. Prosperity does not mean the same thing to any two persons. To the wage earner an increase of a few dollars in the weekly income may seem like wonderful prosperity, for it means an increase in the comfort and welfare of his family. The man who engages in vast enterprises reckons prosperity in larger terms, and does not consider himself prosperous unless things are coming to him in a big way. Between these extremes are many ideas of prosperity, which shows quite plainly that prosperity is not in the possession of things but in the recognition of supply and in the knowledge of free and open access to an inexhaustible storehouse of all that is good or desirable.
In the great Mind of God there is no thought of lack, and such a thought has no rightful place in your mind. It is your birthright to be prosperous, regardless of who you are or where you may be.
Jesus said to all men, “Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” This does not mean that if you belong to a certain church you will be prospered, for “righteousness” is not conforming to some particular religious belief but to the law of right thinking, regardless of creed, dogma, or religious form. Get into the prosperity thought and you will demonstrate prosperity. Cultivate the habit of thinking about abundance everywhere present, not only in the forms of imagination but in forms without. Jesus did not make a separation between the two as though they were at enmity. He said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Put things in their right relation, the spiritual first and the material following, each where it belongs, and render to each its own.
Realize first of all that prosperity is not wholly a matter of capital or environment but a condition brought about by certain ideas that have been allowed to rule in the consciousness. When these ideas are changed the conditions are changed in spite of environment and all appearances, which must also change to conform to the new ideas. People who come into riches suddenly without building up a consciousness of prosperity soon part from their money. Those who are born and bred to riches usually have plenty all their life even though they never make the effort to earn a dollar for themselves. This is because the ideas of plenty are so interwoven into their thought atmosphere that they are a very part of themselves. They have the prosperity consciousness, in which there is no idea of any condition under which the necessities of life could be lacking.
It is not a crime to be rich nor a virtue to be poor, as certain reformers would have us think. The sin lies in hoarding wealth and keeping it from circulating freely to all who need it. Those who put wealth into useful work that contributes to the welfare of the masses are the salvation of the country. Fortunately, there are many in this country who have the prosperity consciousness. If we were all in a poverty consciousness, famines would be as common here as they are in India or China. Millions in those lands are held in the perpetual thought of poverty and they suffer want in all its forms from the cradle to the grave. The burden of the poverty thought reacts on the earth so that year after year it withholds its products and many people starve.
Universal Mind controls all nature and is in possession of all its products. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” is a great Truth. Puny, personal man uses all his craft to get control of the products of nature but is always defeated in the end.
From the book “Prosperity” by Charles Fillmore. Charles Fillmore is the founder of Unity.