If you want to succeed, keep your counsel. Be determined in your effort.

WHEN questions requiring decision arise the man who works by reason must depend upon the results of past experience. If he has had no experience bearing on that particular point he is adrift upon a tempestuous sea of doubt. The man who has reached the higher wisdom can go into his room and get help from the source of power. More than half of the American world are aimless. They rush hither and thither with one idea to-day, another to-morrow, throwing their force away in fruitless effort. This will never accomplish enough to acquire a competence. Wait! Find yourself! Make the decision as to what the occupation shall be with due deliberation.
Keep the idea before you during your leisure and let it remain in the consciousness while employed. The decision will come. When it does hold it in a tight grip. It makes no difference what the aim is. Nothing is beyond you if your power is developed. Nothing can be farther above you than was my desire for understanding was from me. Ignorant, uncouth, antagonistic, I was everywhere wrong. Mine worked out through persistent determined effort. Yours will also. Do not talk. This is imperative. If you do some one will laugh at you, or sneer, or pour cold water some other way, and diminish your resolve if not destroy it entirely. They bring you into touch with the current of world doubt. If you want to succeed, keep your counsel. Be determined in your effort. If some one tells you that God is withholding the realization of ideals for some purpose which we are forbidden to examine, put him down for a false prophet, laugh, and go serenely upon your way. You will get whatever your mind feels it must have if you keep after it with all the wisely directed vigor of your soul. Do not allow yourself to become subservient. The cringing type of man draws scorn, ridicule and figurative blows. His society is nowhere welcome. No one trusts such a man. Do not " look up " to any man. You are the peer of all. Not as fully developed perhaps, filled with fears, perhaps : but in the reality none are superior. Get expression from your soul and live from within, then this subserviency will leave you. Neither should you be domineering. Holding yourself dominant in order to repel insolence does not imply that one should domineer. The latter is the other extreme of subserviency. It draws disrespect, opposition and hostility.

Into The Light by Bruce Maclelland - 1916

Now don't you know you have no enemies excepting as you make them by considering them as such?

Self reliance, or lack of it, is the difference between an employer and an employee.

Prosperity Through Thought-Force
by Bruce MacLelland
[1907]




Later in life it became possible for me to closely observe some of the master minds in the world of business, and to the qualities peculiar to each there seemed to be added an inherent force, a something one could feel distinctly upon coming into contact with them. They were able to think of thousands as others thought of hundreds, and obtained them as easily. They were broad, strong, hopeful individuals, who bent their energies to accomplish vast undertakings, the very thought of which would frighten an ordinary man. It was also noted that the wisest men, wisdom is induced by peace or calmness and that wisdom without force is of small value.

John G. Saxe wrote : " Fools will be fools as certain as fate, Men of wisdom, make them your tools; That, only that, is the use of fools."

If you master yourself first, hold yourself absolutely obedient to your desire for peace, you can control anyone, savage or civilized. The passengers on a through train from Chicago to New York were disturbed by the constant crying of a little babe in its mother's arms. She walked along the aisle of the car, tossed the babe up and down, laid it face downward on her lap, and her nerves were evidently at a tension. At last a gentleman asked her to permit him to try to quiet the child, and, in a few minutes, it was peacefully sleeping, and he did nothing but hold it in his arms. Evidently knowing the effects of the mental condition of the mother upon the baby, he would not allow her to take the child until both obtained a restful sleep. Poor baby! Poor mother! What a difference inherited or cultivated calmness in the mother would have made in the lives of both. Had, she been quiet in mind, which means that thoughts pass through one at a time, deliberately and not in droves (each crowding and jostling the other and more pushing from behind), the child would have been stronger, more courageous and healthful, and bright smiles of happy contentment would have shown in the baby face instead of the constant nervous crying.

Now, briefly, to summarize: Build yourself into a calm, determined, courageous, forceful man by the aid of autosuggestion, and the attractive force of your mentality will bring success to you. You need not seek it. It will seek you. Use the methods given for any quality desired, eloquence, wisdom, health, anything you will get results. Faith is a dead letter unless accompanied with active, progressive thoughts and actions.

Love others and others will love you, and your ability to love will grow, constantly adding strength to your mind. Anyone can bring the hate or love of the entire world on himself, as he chooses, by building up the quality in his own mind. As now constituted, the minds of most people desire to love their friends and hate their enemies. Now don't you know you have no enemies excepting as you make them by considering them as such? You send them hating thought, they return it; this establishes a connection between you, constantly taking your strength to keep up the war. You cannot afford to do this; it is destroying your money making power. Just reverse your plan and imagine him in mind as a friend; think of him as such; feel friendly towards him. That is strength.

"The truth, once announced,
has the power not only to renew but to extend itself.
New Thought is universal in its ideals
and therefore should be universal in its appeal
Under the guidance of the spirit,
it should grow in good works
until it embraces many lands
and eventually the whole world."
--Mr. James A. Edgerton on New Thought Day, August 23, 1915 

A lay person and former  U.S. Post Office employee, Edgerton was the first president of the INTA, holding office from 1915 to 1923 and again from 1934 to 1937. Excelling at both diplomacy and organizarional management the INTA still follows the basic organized structure he established. By 1920 Divine Science, Homes of Truth, Unity and Church of Truth were among the members.