Chapter 2 — Any Job You Want
You can have any job you want. You do not believe that, do you? That is why you do not get the job you want now; you do not believe you can get it. Did you ever hear Mark Twain’s advice to the young seeker after a job? He said something like this: “Pick out the man you want to work for, and then go and work for him. Tell him you are going to work for him for nothing till he decides you are worth something, and how much.” That seems an absurd piece of advice. But it will certainly work if you really put it into practice. Now, think a moment with me.
If you get a job—any sort of a job—what will your employer pay you for? For the work you do, of course. Will he pay you in advance? He will not. He will pay you after you have worked a month, a week, a day. How much will he pay you? What you earn, of course. Will he pay you more than you are worth—even if he has agreed to? He will not. If you do not measure up to specifications, he will get out of his agreement in one way or another. He will discharge you, or if he has made a contract with you, he will break it or make you break it, or make your situation intolerable, or buy you off. He will certainly not pay you for something you do not give him.
Here is that saying in the business world again, that you cannot get something for nothing. You cannot. This means that you cannot get salary or wages for something you do not do. Do you think you see men getting paid for something they are not delivering? Watch them. Watch the loafers and the quitters and the “Soldiers.”
But there is a deeper thing under this fact and these appearances than people commonly think. It is this: Justice! Justice does work in the affairs of men, whether they recognize it or not. You do not believe it? Study it. Men do get what they want—what they really want. You can get what you really want, as we have said—and you will get it, whether you know it or not!
“But,” you say, “just as good men have failed of their aim as have succeeded.” So? What does it mean to be “good”? Goodness, in the ordinary sense, has nothing to do with the matter. If it had, we could not understand the situation at all. People who try to explain success or failure on the ground of goodness never do understand it—nor anything else they try to explain on the same ground. Because “goodness” or “badness” in the ordinary moral sense is not the reason. Law is the reason, for everything.
“Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Real virtue consists in keeping in harmony with the law—or trying to. Goodness, in this sense, is always rewarded, and badness, in the same sense, is always punished. That is, the law works for those who keep it and works against those who choose to go against it. I do not dare to set any limits. I do not believe there are any limits. It does not make the least difference in the world whether we know the law or not—it works. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” And you cannot blame some far-off God for your actions, or for anything that happens to you, or for your knowing the law or not knowing it. It is up to you!
Does that frighten you? Or if you believed it, would it frighten you? Instead of frightening you it should encourage you, inspirit you, stir you up to your highest ambition, fill you with your highest hope, assure you of realization of your highest desire, make you certain of success, and happy beyond your dreams! Because you cannot lose!
Now, let us see. We have made some pretty rash statements, have we not? From the ordinary, unbelieving standpoint, yes. But it is not bumptiousness to state law, nor modesty to understate it. What have we said? You can have anything you really want. Well, you can; the thing you want is among the possibilities for you or you would not want it. Desire is implanted in you by a power that intends you to have what that desire calls for. You have no desires that this power has not given you. Desire was meant to be fulfilled—consuming, supreme desire, not the piddling little wishes that do not even last over night or past mealtime. Your real desire becomes the great purpose of your life; and it matters not what that purpose is, you are going to get a reward commensurate with your single-heartedness. Remember, your desire is implanted in you by this power we are talking about.
This power will grant the desire—has already granted it—because this power is the only power there is in the universe. It is the power for which another name is ,God. He is the only power you will ever know, and the only power you will ever get a job from; the only power you will ever work for and the only power that will ever pay you. You may think you ask some man or woman for a job, but you do not really. You “ask” the universal law for that job. And because the universal law (God) has put the desire for that job in you, you will get it. And because that same universal law is the paymaster you will get paid for it, and no man or woman on earth can prevent it. You are working for God, not man. God is the one to whom you go for your job, for whom you labor, from whom you receive your reward. You cannot help it; that is the way it is. It is so, whether you believe it or not, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not!
But you remind me that I have said that all desire comes from God. It may be well enough to think that the desire to work comes from the one power, but does the desire of the thief to steal come also from the Supreme Being? To steal, no. To possess, yes. Every instinct, appetite and aspiration is implanted in man by God. But who is God? Why, God is my Creator. God is my life, my strength, my intelligence, my mind. Now turn the statement around. My being is God, my life is God, my intelligence is God, my mind is God. Do you pretend to say that you have a desire independent of your mind? Hardly. Well, that is the answer.
The answer is that God, instead of being something outside of you, is within you, controlling all your affairs through you. Is it hard to believe that you have only to realize that overwhelming conception in order to have God come forth visibly into your affairs, whatever they are, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your circumstances appear to be? You are an individual expression of God. You create what you choose. How? First by thinking it. That is the only way anything is created—by thought. If you think that things are created by hammer and nails, or steam shovels, or dynamos, or lathes, or trowels, or giant powder, or printing presses, or congresses, or kings, you have never thought even so far back as the drafting table or the blue pencil!
Things are created by thought in the mind, and by nothing else and nowhere else. Yes, by your thought, and in your mind. And when you begin to realize that, you will begin to work for the God who is universal Mind, in you and in me and in everybody else, and in everything in the universe. You will realize that you cannot fail to do what you really want to do and have what you really want to have.
How shall you begin? By going after that first job with an idea in your mind just the reverse of what you have been trying to hold there. Think not about what you are going to get, but about what you can give. Ask for opportunity to give, and give with all your heart all you have got, knowing that you cannot fail to get what your desire calls for. You cannot fail to get back what you give out. For who are you? You are the expression of God in your individuality. Think of that. In Him you live and move and have your being. You are one with God, the supreme power in the universe. You are one with supreme universal Mind. And universal Mind creates what it wants to create. In other words, it gives out what it wants to see manifested. Think of it. Think! You! Not somebody else—you! You cannot fail!
