The Lexicon
Shadow and obstacles
Lack
Lack is the consciousness of not-enough, the inner conviction of absence that the New Thought teachers hold to be the true cause of outer want. It is not poverty of circumstance but poverty of mind, the belief in a closed and stingy universe that then arranges the proof of itself. Wilmans traced all poverty to fear and to ignorance of one's own power to command supply; the prosperity teachers, from Fox to Ponder, treat lack as a mental equivalent to be exchanged, never an unalterable fact.
The map's promise is reversal at the root. Because supply is read as universal and ever-present, the work is to release the sense of lack and to realize abundance already given, awaiting only the opening of the mind. This is why the traditions counsel gratitude, the decree, and the steady picturing of plenty: not to wish hardship away but to dissolve the inner consciousness that holds it in place. Where the mind affirms enough, the teachers say, enough begins to appear.
In their words
And poverty is born of two misconceptions: first, man does not know that opulence is universal, awaiting only the opening of his own mentality to give of itself freely in every manner of uses and luxuries; and second, that he has not the faintest conception of his own power to command it.
The Law is Infinite and Perfect; but in order to make a demonstration we must first have a mental equivalent of the thing we desire.
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.