INTRODUCTION
BY JOEL FOTINOS
Each of the chapters in this book is short, and yet this small publication contains huge ideas that have gone on to change millions of lives.
Emmet Fox, the author of this volume, was a hugely popular and influential leader of what is called the New Thought philosophy, a transcendental-based thought system that was created in the late nineteenth century, and gained steam in the early twentieth. Born in 1886 in County Cork, Ireland, Fox discovered New Thought in England and eventually was ordained as a minister through Divine Science, one of the early New Thought organizations, along with Unity and Religious Science (now Centers for Spiritual Living). All three of those organizations are still around today.
Fox eventually moved to the United States and became the minister of a Divine Science spiritual center in New York City. His charisma, brilliance, and common sense quickly won him large crowds, and soon his talks moved to famed Carnegie Hall, with weekly attendance in the thousands.
His teachings struck a nerve, and his books became top sellers; his work became a key influence in New Thought, as well as the burgeoning Alcoholics Anonymous movement. Fox was able to synthesize ideas into practical application. He was also able to take traditional teachings, most often from the Christian Bible, and explain them in a way that made them accessible, helpful, and inspiring. Not only have his books never gone out of print, they’ve gone on to become spiritual classics that continue to reach new readers in every generation.
Fox’s most widespread work is undoubtedly The Golden Key. The Golden Key began its life as a series of dozens of short pamphlets. These were originally on sale at his standing-room-only lectures, as well as through mail order. For spiritual seekers, these little pamphlets were like powerful mental vitamins that could reframe and expand the reader’s thinking and perspective in just a couple of minutes. Some were only a few paragraphs long, others a bit longer—but all contained Fox’s take on time-honored principles in his trademark style: to-the-point, friendly, comforting, challenging, motivational. Fox knew that simple ideas were the ones that could bring the biggest and longest-lasting changes.
But it was specifically this one pamphlet—The Golden Key—that captured the imagination of millions. It is referenced in countless books, taught in countless churches and spiritual organizations, and has helped countless people overcome challenges and experience a greater, deeper, richer life.
What is the Golden Key? As you’ll see in the following pages, the Golden Key is essentially focusing one’s thoughts on God rather than on one’s problems. We all can choose what we think about and how we direct our thoughts, and Fox explains that what we focus on directly influences our reality. Focus on the negative, and you’ll no doubt experience more negativity. However, Fox shows, when we focus on the good, we tend to see more good, experience more good, and attract more good. He expands on this idea, and shows how life-changing this concept can be. In approximately a thousand words, Fox teaches a life-changing principle that can—and has for millions—change literally everything in your life. That’s how potent a teacher Fox is: he can tell you more in a thousand perfectly chosen words than many authors can over the course of hundreds of pages.
Also included in this volume are several other powerful and popular pamphlets by Fox. Many of these have also reached millions of people and continue to inspire readers of all walks of life and all ages around the world.
You can read the included pamphlets in any order you want. However, my recommendation is to start with The Golden Key. Read it over and over again, perhaps when you wake up and right before bed, every day for a week (or a month, or a year). Memorize it, embody it, use it, apply it. When anything happens in your life, apply the Golden Key to it as best you can. Since, as Fox notes, you are responsible for your own life, use and adapt these ideas to infuse it with as much positivity as possible. After you experience the Golden Key, move on to the next one, and then the next.
Even though this volume is small, it has the potential to bring unlimited inspiration to you. It’s small enough to remember, but big enough to move mountains.
What mountains do you need moved in your life? Turn the page, and start the process …
FOREWORD
I have compressed this booklet into six pages. Had it been possible I would have reduced it to six lines. It is not intended to be an instructional treatise, but a practical recipe for getting out of trouble. Study and research are well in their own time and place, but no amount of either will get you out of a concrete difficulty. Nothing but practical work in your own consciousness will do that. The mistake made by many people, when things go wrong, is to skim through book after book, without getting anywhere.
Read the Golden Key several times. DO exactly what it says, and if you are persistent enough, you will overcome any difficulty.
Emmet Fox
THE GOLDEN KEY
Scientific prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself, or anyone else, out of any difficulty on the face of the earth. It is the Golden Key to harmony and happiness.
To those who have no acquaintance with the mightiest power in existence, this may appear to be a rash claim, but it needs only a fair trial to prove that, without a shadow of doubt, it is a just one. You need take no one’s word for it, and you should not. Simply try it for yourself and see.
God is omnipotent, and man is His image and likeness and has dominion over all things. This is the inspired teaching, and it is intended to be taken literally, at its face value. Man means every man, and so the ability to draw on this power is not the special prerogative of the Mystic or the Saint, as is so often supposed, or even of the highly-trained practitioner. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, the Golden Key to harmony is in your hand now. This is because in scientific prayer it is God who works, and not you, and so your particular limitations or weaknesses are of no account in the process. You are only the channel through which the Divine action takes place, and your treatment will really be just the getting of yourself out of the way. Beginners often get startling results at the first time of trying, for all that is absolutely essential is to have an open mind and sufficient faith to try the experiment. Apart from that, you may hold any views on religion, or none.
As for the actual method of working, like all fundamental things, it is simplicity itself.
All that you have to do is this: Stop thinking about the difficulty, whatever it is, and think about God instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you will do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will presently disappear. It makes no difference what kind of trouble it is. It may be a big thing or a little thing; it may concern health, finance, a lawsuit, a quarrel, an accident, or anything else conceivable; but whatever it is, just stop thinking about it, and think of God instead—that is all you have to do.
The thing could not be simpler, could it? God Himself could scarcely have made it simpler, and yet it never fails to work when given a fair trial.
Do not try to form a picture of God, which is, of course, impossible. Work by rehearsing anything or everything that you know about God. God is Wisdom, Truth, inconceivable Love. God is present everywhere; has infinite power; knows everything; and so on. It matters not how well you may think you understand these things; go over them repeatedly.
But you must stop thinking of the trouble, whatever it is. The rule is to think about God, and if you are thinking about your difficulty you are not thinking about God. To be continually glancing over your shoulder, as it were, in order to see how matters are progressing, is fatal, because that is thinking of the trouble, and you must think of God, and of nothing else.
Your object is to drive the thought of the difficulty right out of your consciousness, for a few moments at least, substituting for it the thought of God. This is the crux of the whole thing. If you can become so absorbed in this consideration of the spiritual world that you really forget for a while all about the trouble concerning which you began to pray, you will presently find that you are safely and comfortably out of your difficulty—that your demonstration is made.
In order to “Golden Key” a troublesome person or a difficult situation, think, “Now I am going to ‘Golden Key’ John, or Mary, or that threatened danger”; then proceed to drive all thought of John, or Mary, or the danger right out of your mind, replacing it by the thought of God.
By working in this way about a person, you are not seeking to influence his conduct in any way, except that you prevent him from injuring or annoying you and you do him nothing but good. Thereafter he is certain to be in some degree a better, wiser, and more spiritual person, just because you have “Golden Keyed” him. A pending lawsuit or other difficulty would probably fade out harmlessly without coming to a crisis, justice being done to all parties concerned.
If you find that you can do this very quickly, you may repeat the operation several times a day with intervals between. Be sure, however, each time you have done it, that you drop all thought of the matter until the next time. This is important.
We have said that the Golden Key is simple, and so it is, but, of course, it is not always easy to turn. If you are very frightened or worried it may be difficult, at first, to get your thoughts away from material things. But by constantly repeating some statement of absolute Truth that appeals to you, such as There is no power but God, or I am the child of God, filled and surrounded by the perfect peace of God, or God is Love, or God is guiding me now, or, perhaps best and simplest of all, just God is with me—however mechanical or dead it may seem at first—you will soon find that the treatment has begun to “take” and that your mind is clearing. Do not struggle violently; be quiet but insistent. Each time that you find your attention wandering, just switch it straight back to God.
Do not try to think out in advance what the solution of your difficulty will probably turn out to be. This is technically called “outlining” and will only delay the demonstration. Leave the question of ways and means strictly to God. You want to get out of your difficulty—that is sufficient. You do your half, and God will never fail to do His.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Copyright © 2022 by Joel Fotinos
