Most of us read and love fairy stories, but we all know that stories of improbable riches and good fortune are for the delight of the very young. But are they? I want to tell you of something unbelievably wonderful that happened to me through the power of my imagination – and I am not ‘young’ in years. We live in an age which believes in neither fable nor magic, and yet everything I could possibly want in my wildest daydreams was given to me by the simple use of what you teach – that ‘imagining creates reality’ and that ‘feeling’ is the secret of imagining.
At the time this wonderful thing happened to me I was out of a job and had no family to fall back upon for support. I needed just about everything. To find a decent job I needed a car to look for it, and though I had a car, it was so worn out it was ready to fall apart. I was behind in my rent; I had no proper clothes to seek a job; and today it’s no fun for a woman of fifty-five to apply for a job of any kind. My bank account was almost depleted and there was no friend to whom I could turn.
But I had been attending your lectures for almost a year and my desperation forced me to put my imagination to the test. Indeed, I had nothing to lose. It was natural for me, I suppose, to begin by imagining myself having everything I needed. But I needed so many things and in such short order that I found myself exhausted when I finally got through the list, and by that time I was so nervous I could not sleep. One lecture night I heard you tell of an artist who captured the ‘feeling’, or ‘word’, as you called it, of ‘isn’t it wonderful!’ in his personal experience.
I began to apply this idea to my case. Instead of thinking of and imagining every article I needed, I tried to capture the ‘feeling’ that something wonderful was happening to me – not tomorrow, not next week – but right now. I would say over and over to myself as I fell asleep, ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Something marvelous is happening to me now!’ And as I fell asleep I would feel the way I would expect to feel under such circumstances.
I repeated that imaginary action and feeling for two months, night after night, and one day in early October I met a casual friend I hadn’t seen for months who informed me he was about to leave on a trip to New York. I had lived in New York many years ago and we talked of the city a few moments and then parted. I completely forgot the incident. One month later, to the day, this man called at my apartment and simply handed me a Certified Check in my name for twenty-five hundred dollars. After I got over the initial shock of seeing my name on a check for so much money, the story that unfolded seemed to me like a dream.
It concerned a friend I had not seen nor heard from in more than twenty-five years. This friend of my past, I now learned, had become extremely wealthy in those twenty-five years. Our mutual acquaintance who had brought the check to me had met him quite by accident during the trip to New York last month. During their conversation they spoke of me, and for reasons I was not to know (for to this day I have not heard from him personally and have never attempted to contact him) this old friend decided to share a portion of his great wealth with me.
For the next two years, from the office of his attorney, I received monthly checks so generous in amount they not only covered every necessary requirement of daily living, but left much over for all the lovely things of life: a car, clothes, a spacious apartment – and best of all, no need to earn my daily bread.
“This past month I received a letter and some legal papers to be signed which provide the continuation of this monthly income for the rest of my natural life!”
…T.K.
“If the fool would persist in his folly Hewould become wise.” – William Blake
Story from the book The Law and The Promise
