Supercharging Napoleon Hills’ Think And Grow Rich.

Napoleon Hills’ “think and grow rich” is one of the bestselling self-improvement books of all time and a copy of it should probably be on most everyone’s bookshelf in that he painstakingly presents the essential principles that are necessary for one to adapt in order to accomplish certain goals in life. The example goal that he used is the accumulating of one million dollars. So as not to get ahead of myself though, let me just drop this on you right now; Mr. Hill held back some extremely important details that if you having read his book already, will now embrace will effectively supercharge your effectiveness in accomplish financial gain and more importantly an overall quality of life. If you haven’t already read “Think”, go ahead and order your copy now. I recommend the hard copy.

I titled this post such as I did because “Think And Grow Rich” takes the principle right out of the bible. I can’t be certain about this (I am mostly certain though) but I believe that Mr. Hill purposely held back from referencing the substantial extent of biblical principles incorporated in the book so as to appeal to a wider spectrum of readers. While the principles are biblical they work for the unsaved as well as they do for the saved. My guess is that Mr. Hill knew this also and was familiar with this bible verse; “for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” Mat 5:45.

2^ND Corinthians 10: 4-6 reads like this:

“for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ: and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.”

In this scripture, Paul is basically illustrating how to un-do so called strong holds (generally thought of in Christendom as demonic oppression or worse perhaps); so he lays out the principle in reverse but it is clear that thoughts are the seed to the inevitable stronghold (manifestation) with imagination being right smack in the middle. I actually see Napoleons’ so call Six Sense in there too along with some familiar admonitions that Mr. Hill had for us regarding our thoughts.

Dictionary.com says that imagination is the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses. For our purposes here it is basically just that except with great passion. God says of man: “And the LORD said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

 You know there is a scripture in the bible that goes; “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled” 2Co 10:4-6.

Okay, so here we go six things:

1. God says we can do anything we imagine.

2 .Our imagination is as an image; a picture of something we want or somewhere we would like to go.

3. Our imagination in birthed in a thought and is the bridge from that thought to the manifestation (negatively “strong hold”) of the thing desired. The above scripture while describing the principle in reverse i.e. manifestations-imaginations-thoughts clearly give the concept a biblical foundation and shows that thoughts should be gate checked to keep the imagination “picture” and spirit man (also called the heart of man) in the desired state.

4. The Material manifestation of the desired thing or action is brought into reality by the human spirit (the so called subconscious mind) for he has received a clear and concise mandate from the imagination and has involuntarily accomplished the task.

5. The imagination is fashioned by the spirit of man (subconscious mind) and will reflect that which is the essence of his heart (spirit) be it evil or good.

6. Napoleon Hill says there are two kinds of imagination; synthetic, that draws from old concepts and ideas and creative. He refers to Infinite Intelligence and capitalizes it (Him). I think he is speaking again about that Sixth Sense Fellow, you know, The Holy Spirit. As I work on this series; He, the Holy Spirit is literally flooding me with thoughts and ideas. I am writing several a day.

I believe that Napoleon Hill either knowingly or unknowingly (really, probably knowingly) use biblical principles when writing his “Think and Grow Rich”. The titling of the book and calling many of the principles by names that secular folks could relate to and embrace was probably a strategy to get these important truths into the hands of enthusiastic entrepreneurs. 

I am kind of backing into this work as his “Sixth Sense” topic was the last principle that he presented. I choose to talk a little bit about this topic first by telling you Who (yes Who) he was referring to and relate the associated attributes. So here we go 9 items: 

1. The Six Sense that he speaks of is theHOLY SPIRIT in that; 
2. His so-called subconscious mind (there really is no such thing) is the SPIRIT OF MAN.
3. The HOLY SPIRIT resides within the spirit of men who receive Him (who are baptized in the spirit) effectively giving them access to infinite intelligence (God i.e., THE HOLY SPIRIT). The Holy Spirit is one part of the triune God.
4. He re-enforces the activity of the so-called subconscious mind (spirit of man) who in an involuntary fashion brings into manifestation those things thought of and imagined and delegated to him by the mind by decision.
5. His infinite knowledge supplies the imagination with ideas as to what the target (not necessarily monetarily gain) looks like. I like “Think and Grow Spiritually Powerful” as the desired goal.
6. It is Him that will warn of impending dangers and will show you opportunities (likely in a dream).
7. He will likely show you some signs along the way that you are still on course and that He is still present with you.
8. He will give instruction to your “guardian angel” when He wills for your instruction, guidance, and protection.
9. You bring your desire, and He brings His power.

If you don’t have the book, get it. I will be presenting the biblical truth about most of the principles that Mr. Hill included in the book. You will love what I have to say and show about imagination and will be amazed at what God says about it. 

The concept of The Subconscious Mind is largely if not totally a myth. The term was apparently coined about 160 years ago or so and is generally thought to be a layer/layers of consciousness underneath the layers of critical-thought functions of the so called conscious mind. Now of course if the concept is a myth, then everything that you have been taught about it needs to be re-thought. While there is, nor can be any documented scientific support for this concept, there is a lot of valid documented historical information related to this subject; though putting a different spin on it and taking it in an entirely different direction. I am going to present here an initial outline of the what (who) is really at work here and if you follow along, you will be eternally empowered and rewarded.

Folks such as Napoleon Hill “Think and Grow Rich”, Psychologists Gavin De Becker and Pierre Janet as well as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung also reference the subconscious mind. A contemporary Brian Tracy (http://www.briantracy.com/blog/general/understanding-your-subconscious-mind/) apparently teaches extensively on this topic.

Okay, here is the truth, what is often referred to as The Subconscious Mind is the spirit of man (man is spirit, soul and body) Gen 2:7, 1 Thessalonians 5:23. It (he) is the depository of everything that we have ever been exposed to and is the essence of who we are relative to how this information was voluntarily or involuntarily (degree to which it is “checked at the door”) allowed to influence our spirit; 2 Corinthians 10:5. Memory resides within the spirit and is provided when called up by the brain. The spirit basically works on its’ (his) own in an automatic fashion based on what he has been commanded to do either voluntarily or involuntarily. Interestingly voluntary control of the spirit results in involuntary control of the mind (will) by the spirit. Our desire should be to be spirit lead in our actions. This would make for a purer and more profitable life. Just as the Spirit of God created (re-created) the world Gen 1:2-3, it is our spirit who brings things into manifestation for us. Our thoughts and imagination have much weight in this regard.

I have plenty more to say about this but need to add these three substantial attributes (functions) of the spirit: communion, our direct interaction with God, conscience a built in mechanism that warns us corrects and reprimands us to do the right thing and intuition the somehow knowing things (because they are revealed by the spirit) such as “don’t go that way”, or “be weary of that person”, or  “take your umbrella”.

As Arnie would say; “I’ll be back”.