EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES (part A)

	A Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which
	may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run
	wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must,
	and will, bring forth.  If no useful seeds are
	put into it, then an abundance of useless weed
	seeds will fall therein, and will continue to
	produce their kind.

	   Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it
	free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits
	which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of
	his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and
	impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection
	the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure
	thoughts.  By pursuing this process, a man sooner
	or later discovers that he is the master gardener of
	his soul, the director of his life.  He also reveals,
	within himself, the laws of thought, and understands,
	with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought forces
	and mind elements operate in the shaping of his
	character, circumstances, and destiny.

	   Thought and character are one, and as character
	can only manifest and discover itself through en-
	vironment and circumstance, the outer conditions of
	a person's life will always be found to be harmoni-
	ously related to his inner state.  This does not
	mean that a man's circumstances at any given time
	are an indication of his entire character, but
	that those circumstances are so intimately connected
	with some vital thought element within himself that,
	for the time being, they are indispensible to his
	development.

	   Every man is where he is by the law of his being;
	the thoughts which he has built into his character
	have brought him there, and in the arrangement of
	his life there is no element of chance, but all is
	the result of a law which cannot err.  This is just
	as true of those who feel "out of harmony" with their
	surroundings as of those who are contented with them.

	   As a progressive and evolving being, man is
	where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and
	as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circum-
	stance contains for him, it passes away and gives
	place to other circumstances.

	   Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he
	believes himself to be the creature of outside con-
	ditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative
	power, and that he may command the hidden soil
	and seeds of his being out of which circumstances
	grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.