Fear attracts, as well as Desire—Learn to aim straight and aim at the right thing—Examples—The bowler—The bicyclist and the car—The bicyclist and the post—The boy and the marbles—Wisdom from the babe—Look straight; Think straight; Shoot straight.

A strong Desire or a strong Fearthought is an aim at the thing desired or feared. And in proportion to the degree of Desire or Fear, will we be carried toward the thing at which we aim. Confident Expectation is manifested in a Fearthought as well as in an earnest Desire, and when we confidently expect a thing to happen we are carried toward it by an irresistible force. It may seem strange to you to hear that Fear is akin to Desire, but this is the truth. It matters not whether we call it Desire or Fear, the gist of the matter lies in the Confident Expectation. A faint Hope and a lurking Fear have about the same attractive force—a Desire coupled with a firm belief in its realization attracts strongly, but no more strongly than does a Fear coupled with a feeling of certainty of its realization. The thing upon which your Thought is firmly fixed or drawn toward, will be the thing you will realize. Therefore Aim Straight.

We have heard much of the Attractive Power of Thought as applied to Desire. I will now say something to you about the same force called into operation by Fearthought. It is far more pleasant for me to speak of the bright side of the question, but I would be neglecting my duty toward you if I failed to direct your attention to the reverse of the shield. When you thoroughly realize that Thought-force works both ways, you will know how to handle it, and will understand many things that have heretofore been dark to you. You will learn to AIM STRAIGHT, but will also learn to be careful at what you aim. You will learn to avoid the aim inspired by Fear, and will hereafter use all your energies to pointing your mental arrow at the bull's-eye of Happiness and Success.

Let us take a few facts from the physical plane in order to illustrate things as they are on the mental plane of effort. Life has its correspondences on all its planes, and by taking examples from one plane, we will be able to more readily understand the workings of the Law on other planes.

Some time ago, I was talking to a number of people about this subject, and gleaned from each an illustration of the workings of the Law of Attraction on the physical plane. And each example although on the physical plane, showed the power of Mind behind it. I will tell you what some of these people said, and you can see for yourself just what I mean.

The first man was a printer, who after hours spent much time in bowling, and who was looked upon as an expert in that game. He said that some time before he was playing a game, and at a critical point when he was taking aim and endeavoring to put the ball in between the 1 and 2 pins (a specially advantageous shot), his opponent spoke up and said "Just watch him hit the 4 pin." I do not know anything about bowling, but it seems that to hit the 4 pin is about the worst thing that can happen to a bowler, outside of missing the pins altogether. Well, to go on with the story, with the remark of his rival, Fearthought entered the mind of the printer, and he couldn't get the 4 pin out of his mind. He kept on looking at the place he wanted to hit, but his mind was on the 4 pin, and he feared that he would hit it. To use his own words, he "got rattled," and away went the ball striking the 4 pin fair and square. He concluded the story by saying: "And so instead of making a 'ten strike' I got only a 'split.'" Maybe you understand those terms better than do I, but at any rate you will see what a Fearthought brought to this typographical bowler in his little game of ten-pins. Moral: When you wish to place the ball Energy between the 1 and 2 pins of Life, don't allow Fearthoughts to switch you off to the 4 pin, thereby giving you a "split" instead of the coveted "ten-strike."

Another friend told me that, a few days before, he had been riding on the front bench of a grip-car on a Chicago cable-line. Hearing the gripman break into the vernacular in a vigorous style, he looked up, and saw a colored man on a bicycle trying to cross the track "on the bias," as the girls say, just ahead of the car. There was plenty of time—plenty of room—for the man to get across, but when he reached the middle of the track Fearthought got hold of him, and in spite of himself his wheel turned and he headed straight for the car. He headed straight for the gripcar, just as if he had aimed at it, and the next moment he went "bang" right into it. He escaped injury, but his wheel was wrecked. When asked about it, he said that from the moment he got afraid of the car his wheel "ran away with him," right into the thing he Feared. Moral: Keep your mind fixed on the thing you want—not on the thing you don't want.

Another man, to whom I related the story of the man on the wheel, said that he had the same trouble when he was learning to ride the wheel. He was getting along pretty well and could manage to steer half-way straight, although in a wobbly manner, until one day he happened to see a certain telegraph pole in front of the place where he was learning to ride. The pole seemed to hypnotize him, and from that day he couldn't keep his front wheel away from it. He couldn't keep away from that pole—he was afraid of it. The pole seemed to have magnetic qualities and the result was "Bump." He remounted, over and over again, but the result was the same. At last he made up his mind that he was going to get ahead of that pole somehow, and he mounted the wheel with his back toward the pole (but his Mind was still on it) and lo! the front wheel described a semi-circle, and back to the pole he went. Moral: Don't let a pole hypnotize you with Fearthought—keep your Mind on the place to which you wish to go.

But the best example was given by a boy who had kept his eyes open and his thinker working. Maybe I had better tell you in his own words. This is what he said, just as he said it:

"Oh, pshaw!" said the Boy, "you're making a big fuss over nothing. Every feller knows that you've got to think about a thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you'll hit the wrong thing. If I fire a stone at a tin can, why, I just look square at the can and think about the can for all I'm worth, and the can's a dead one, sure. If I happen to let my mind wander to the cat what's on the shed over to the left of the can—well, so much the worse for the cat, that's all. To shoot straight, you've got to aim straight; and to aim straight you've got to look straight; and to look straight you've got to think straight. Every kid knows that, or he couldn't even play marbles. If I get my heart set on a beauty marble in the ring, I just want it the worst way and says I to myself, 'You're my marble.' Then I look at him strong and steady-like and don't think about nothing else in the world but that beauty. Maybe I'm late for school, but I clean forget it. I don't see nothing—nor think nothing—but that there marble what I want. As the piece in my reader says, it's my 'Heart's Desire,' and I don't care whether school keeps or not, just so as I get it. Then I shoot, and the marble's mine. And, at school, when our drawing teacher tells us how to draw a straight line, she makes two dots, several inches away from each other. Then she makes us put our pencils on the first dot and look steady at the other and move our pencil towards it. The more you keep thinking about the far off dot, and the less you think about the starting dot or your hand, the straighter you're going to get your line. Wonst I looked straight at the far-off dot with my eyes, but I kept thinking about a red-headed girl on the other side of the room, and what do you think, the line I was drawing slanted away off in her direction, although I had kept my eyes glued on the far-away dot and never even peeped in the kid's direction. That shows, sure, that it's the thinking as well as the looking. See?"

All of the examples above given contain within them the principles of a mighty truth—a working illustration of a great law of Life. If we are wise we will profit by them. Many things are happening around us every day, from which we might gain lessons if we would only think a little, instead of playing "follow my leader" and accepting other people's thought, ready made. We have gotten so accustomed to these "hand-me-down" thoughts, that we have almost forgotten how to turn out thoughts for ourselves. The day has come when we are required to do a little thinking on our own account, instead of humbly bowing before moth-eaten Authority perched upon a crumbling base. The time has arrived when we must strike out for ourselves, instead of following a musty Precedent which has "seen better days." This is the age of the Individual. This the time for the "I" to assert itself.

I wish you would pay attention to what the Boy said. It is not the first time that we have gone to the babe for wisdom. Although a child has an imagination beyond our comprehension, he, at the same time, is painfully and even brutally, matter of fact. He is continually asking: "Why," and when we grown-ups are unable to answer him he answers the question himself, often better than we could have done. He doesn't theorize, but gets down to business, and works things out for himself. This boy knew all about the Thinking part of the problems, and had put it into practical application, while we were theorizing about it. He had discovered that in order to get things we must first earnestly Desire them; then Confidently Expect that we would get them; then go to work to procure them. That's the true philosophy of getting things. He tells us, about the marble, that he first "wanted it the worst way" and "didn't care whether school kept or not" just so he got the marble. Then he "looked strong and steady-like" at the marble, saying: "You're my marble." Then he shot, and the marble was his. Can any of you describe the process of getting things better than this? If we grown-ups would only put into our daily tasks the interest and attention that the boy put into his game of marbles, we would "get the marble" oftener than we have been doing.

Of course, it may be true, that the principal joy is in the getting of things rather than in the possession of them—that the Game of Life is like the game of marbles in that respect, but what of that? That needn't spoil the game. The boy knows enough to enjoy playing for a few marbles that may be obtained for a penny-a-fistful at the corner store—but that fact doesn't bother him at all. He knows that when he gets the marble it will not seem half so beautiful in the hand as it did in the ring—but he gets ready to shoot for the next one with just as much zest and enjoyment. He finds a joy in Living; Acting; Doing; Expressing; Growing and Outgrowing, Gaining Experiences. Take a lesson from the Boy—while you are in the Great Game, take a boy's interest in it; play with a zest; play your level best, and get the marble. The Boy instinctively knows that the joy of life consists of Living, while we poor grown-ups vainly imagine that our pleasure will come only in the trophies of the game—the glass-marbles of Life—and look upon the playing of the game as drudgery and work imposed upon us as a punishment of the sins of our forefathers. The boy lives in the Now, and enjoys every moment of his existence—his winnings, his losings, his victories, his defeats, while we, his elders and superiors in wisdom groan at the heat of the day and the rigor of the game and are only reconciled to our tasks by the thought of how we will enjoy the possession of the marbles, when we get them at the end of the game. The Boy sucks his orange and extracts every particle of its sweet contents, while we throw away the juicy meat and aim only to secure the pips. Oh, yes! the boy not only knows how to "get there," but he has also a sane philosophy of Life. Many of us grown-ups are now re-learning that which we lost with our youth.

You will notice that the bowler, the bicyclists and the others, got what they didn't want, because they were afraid of it, and allowed it to distract their thoughts from the object of their Desire. To Fear a thing is akin to Desiring it—in either case you are attracted toward it, or it to you. It's a rule that works both ways. You must think about the Thing you Want—not about the Thing you Don't Want, for the thoughts you are thinking are the ones that are going to take form in action, as the Boy said: "You've got to think about a thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you're going to hit the wrong thing." Watch your Ideal, not your Bugbear. Concentrate on your Ideal—fix your thought and gaze upon it, like the boy upon his marble—and don't allow Fearthought to sidetrack you. Select the thing you want to be, and then grow steadily into it. Pick out the thing you want, and then go straight and steadily to it. Replace your old whine: "I Fear," with the New Thought shout: "I Can, and I Will." Then you will experience an illustration of "Thought taking form in Action."

Look Straight; Think Straight; Shoot Straight; in these three things lie the secret of Success.