Wallace Wattles – Give Value in Excess
(This is an excerpt from an upcoming release – “Freedom Is – “. Hope it can help you improve your understanding and knowledge of this classic.”
Wallace Wattles authored the “Science of Getting Rich” as one of his last books. He had already tested and proved the results of this book and is reported to have had no want or lack in his life.
And as Wattles summized, this can make a person rich – and can also bring anything that person wants into their lives by the same token. He wrote this in a style and manner such that even the miners in his home town would be able to easily read and understand these basics.
As we continue through this book, you start seeing various datums reinforced by these authors – which is the basic premise of “Go Thunk Yourself!” – that there is one, common, underlying system of laws and principles which govern all self-help and personal development.
With this book, we are taking a slightly different approach. Namely that you already have and know everything you need to make your life a success. You only have to uncover all that knowledge. Then every good thing you’ve always been able to have will start showing up around you.
In this chapter, we see that what Wattles covers stays true to our central concept: all the Freedom, Happiness and Peace already lies within you. While many have held that his book is a path all on it’s own, I’ve found that he really just tells you some very non-inclusive principles which can be added to any other belief system – or vice versa.
Even today as I write this, I find in reviewing him that his Summary covers all the key points Wattles wanted to make from his book. In conjunction with Carnegie, Hill, and Haanel, you can see exactly why this book continues to be passed around, shared, and sold nearly 100 years later.
Looking over his work in that light, it has a whole new flavor. Again, don’t take this essay as a gospel understanding to swallow wholesale. Rather, use what you can and what makes sense to you. Refer to the original book as you need to, if more clarification is needed:
“THERE IS A THINKING STUFF FROM WHICH ALL THINGS ARE MADE, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.”
A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
A person can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
Here is the underlying basic to this book. This aligns with our three earlier authors completely. You are in control over your own life and whatever you want to do with it. You can think in your mind whatever you want. And from this, all you want shows up around you.
In order to do this, a person must pass from the competitive to the creative mind. Otherwise he cannot be in harmony with formless intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive in spirit.
This point of creative vs. competitive can’t be understated. Competition is a fiction, practically. Look it over and you’ll find that competition has to be created. Whether it is on a “level playing field” of sports, or the unequal struggle of similar companies offering similar products to a shared public. But to “compete” by offering nearly identical products to the same people is to give up the idea that you can create something different. And so the idea of commodity markets.
A person may come into full harmony with the formless substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him. Gratitude unifies the mind of man with the intelligence of substance, so that man’s thoughts are received by the formless. A person can remain upon the creative plane only by uniting himself with the formless intelligence through a deep and continuous feeling of gratitude.
The idea of achieving a “full harmony” in your life is a key point. And here is the idea of gratitude, which keeps you “in tune” with the Universal, so you can know your own Freedom, Happiness, and Peace. This is also “the Zone” which people strive to get into and stay in.
A person must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become, and he must hold this mental image in his thoughts, while being deeply grateful to the supreme that all his desires are granted to him. The person who wishes to get rich must spend his leisure hours in contemplating his vision, and in earnest thanksgiving that the reality is being given to him. Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of frequent contemplation of the mental image, coupled with unwavering faith and devout gratitude. This is the process by which the impression is given to the formless and the creative forces set in motion.
Here the certainty of your own ideals, goals, and purposes show up again. Holding these in a concentrated effort or approach to life, along with the gratitude of thanksgiving that you already have it, then aligns your life. What you concentrate on then shows up around you. It’s much wider than just getting rich – it’s getting all the Freedom, Happiness, and Peace you could ever ask for and more.
The creative energy works through the established channels of natural growth, and of the industrial and social order. All that is included in his mental image will surely be brought to the person who follows the instructions given above, and whose faith does not waver. What he wants will come to him through the ways of established trade and commerce.
The world around us is simply the composite of all of our thoughts put together. It’s no more mysterious or cause-effect induced than that. It’s not this big materialistically-organized complex of stuff which is overpowering and cannot be controlled or managed by any one person. It is simply the composite of all our past thinking assembled in one place. Really too simple.
So any thought in this area simply brings about the manifestation through these “ways of established trade and commerce.” Because miracles are one thing, but when most people don’t “believe” in them, the next fall-back is to have whatever you really conceive and concentrate on to come from the “real world” around us.
In order to receive his own when it is ready to come to him, a person must be in action in a way that causes him to more than fill his present place. He must keep in mind the purpose to get rich through realization of his mental image. And he must do, every day, all that can be done that day, taking care to do each act in a successful manner. He must give to every person a use value in excess of the cash value he receives, so that each transaction makes for more life, and he must hold the advancing thought so that the impression of increase will be communicated to all with whom he comes into contact.
This is the key to the entire book, Wattle’s philosophy summed up in a single paragraph. The real successes which have been created with the Golden Rule are built on this one point: that when you work for others and get across to them that when they work in abundance for others, this is the exact way abundance shows up for themselves.
To the exact degree we act on this single concept, that we actually get the bulk of everyone we come into contact with into this same idea of natural abundance, it will be just to that degree which we meet with success in our own lives. Period.
While abundance is a necessary concept to spread to others so that both they and you can get rich, imagine the concept being spread about being Happy all the time. Or the idea that anyone can be and use all the Freedom they want. Or even the idea that Peace is internally generated (we don’t have to wait around for governments to act) and so spread Peace through out the world by everyone being internally at peace with themselves…
The men and women who practice the foregoing instructions will certainly get rich, and the riches they receive will be in exact proportion to the definiteness of their vision, the fixity of their purpose, the steadiness of their faith, and the depth of their gratitude.
Boil this all down, and you get to the same ideas which Carnegie, Hill, and Haanel (plus the other authors later in this book) all hold as vital: to the extent that you consider you can change and control what you think and what you would like to have show up around you – it is exactly to that extent, plus your faith in yourself, that your world will change.
So, if you haven’t guessed already, it’s entirely up to you to change the world you live in.
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But I don’t mean to get really “heavy” and serious here. We still have some other authors with different viewpoints to review. And these have a lot to say about how you can live a life that has you natively calm and cheerfully expectant about all the great things coming your way.
Let’s move on to our next author, who just happens to talk about this… (Stay tuned for upcoming posts.)
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