VISIONS AND IDEALS
The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the
visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their
trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions
of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot
let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities
which it shall one day see and know.
Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage–these are the makers
of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because
they have lived. Without them, laboring humanity would perish.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will
one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world and he
discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds
and a wider universe, and he revealed it. Buddha beheld the vision of a
spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into
it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs
in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that
drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions,
all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your
world will at last be built.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Shall man’s basest
desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations
starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law. Such a condition can
never obtain: "Ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision
is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy
of what you shall at last unveil.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak
sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg. And in the highest vision
of a soul a waking angle stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not remain so
if you only perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You can’t travel
within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty
and labor. Confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled and
lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things. He
thinks of intelligence, or refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives
of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life. The wider liberty and
a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and
he uses all his spare times and means to the development of his latent
powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the
workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his
mind-set that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside. And
with the growth of opportunities that fit the scope of his expanding powers,
he passes out of it altogether. Years later we see this youth as a grown
man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind that he wields
with world-wide influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands he holds
the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks and lives are changed;
men and women hang upon his words and remold their characters. Sun-like,
he becomes the fixed and luminous center around which innumerable destinies
revolve. He has become the vision of his youth. He has become one with
his ideal.
And you too, youthful reader, will realize the vision (not just the
idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both,
for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love.
Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts.
You will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present
environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts–your
vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire;
as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful words of Stanton
Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall
walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of
your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still
behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers - and then and there shall
pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and
you shall wander to the city - bucolic and open mouth; shall wander under
the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and
after a time he shall say, ‘I have nothing more to teach you.’ And now
you have become the master, you did so recently dream of great things while
driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself
the regeneration fo the world."
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent
effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune,
and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!"
Observing another become skilled intellectually, they exclaim, "How
highly favored he is!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence
of another, they remark, "How chance helps him at every turn!"
They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have
encountered in order to gain their experience. They have no knowledge of
the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth,
of the faith they have exercised so that they might overcome the apparently
insurmountable and realize the vision of their heart. They do not know
the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call
it "luck." Do not see the long, arduous journey, but only behold
the pleasant goal and call it "good fortune." Do not understand
the process, but only perceive the result, and call it "chance."
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results. The strength
of the effort is the measure of the result. Change is not. Gifts, powers,
material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort.
They are thoughts completed, objectives accomplished, visions realized.
The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone
in your heart–this you will build your life by; this you will become.
Next Chapter: SERENITY
