Everything in your life is affected by your own inner experience. It matters very little what is outside you, for everything outside is a reflection of your state of consciousness. It matters very much what is within you, for everything in the world is colored by this accordingly.

Your own thoughts and desires make up your life, and everything you see is contained within yourself. By your own thoughts you make your life, your world, and your universe.

The selfish soul is moving with unerring precision toward misfortune and catastrophe; the pure soul is gravitating with equal precision towards happiness and prosperity. Every soul attracts its own and nothing can possibly come to it that is not within it. To realize this is to recognize the universality of divine law……

As we clothe both events and objects with our own thoughts, so likewise do we clothe the souls of others in the garments of our thoughts.

The suspicious believe everybody to be suspicious. The liar believes that there is no such thing as a completely truthful person. The miser thinks everyone is after his money – he sleeps with a pistol, wrapped up in the delusion that the world is filled with thieves. The sensualist looks upon the saint as a hypocrite.

On the other hand, those who dwell in loving thought see events which call for their love and sympathy. The trusting and honest are not troubled by suspicion. The good-natured and charitable rejoice at the good fortune of others. Those who realize the divine within themselves recognize it in all living things.

We our supported in our mental outlook because we attract what we send forth. Therefore we come in contact with people similar to ourselves. The old adage, “birds of a feather flock together,” has a deep significance, for in the thought-world as in the physical world, each attracts like itself.

If you are one of those who pray for, and look forward to, a happier world beyond the grave, here’s a message of gladness for you: you may enter into and realize that happy world now. It fills the whole universe and is within you, waiting for you to find and acknowledge it.

– James Allen from ‘As a Man Thinketh’