That the individual is the sole manifesting force in their own lives, the character in the book (to use the analogy) who can use the Laws correctly to begin to write his or her own destiny; this is a fundamental reversal of the Abrahamic idea that God creates a world and set of circumstances that we must try to endure as best possible without breaking any of “God’s” rules, and with no control except hoping our prayers will be heard, and it also reverses the fatalistic eastern idea that our outcomes are fixed reactions to our actions (karma), whiuch can be mitigated by never avoided, and that our lives should take a specific path, dharma.
The explanation of the Divine Paradox in the Kybalion dispels forever the apathy and indifference towards the suffering of others (especially those born into low-status states) that ideas about karma inevitably produce. It’s a liberating principle.
Although people can believe in either of those religious systems (religious because they believe in a controlling external power) AND benefit a lot from the Kybalion’s teachings within the moral and mind-control frameworks they accept, it ultimately liberates us from those, and places man as Source made manifest, through the operation of certain simple Laws.
It’s the most LHP book ever written IMO.
And were there any other influential new thought authors that influenced any of you in your practices?
Napoleon Hill & W. Clement Stone liberated me from thinking my state of mind, personality and beliefs about myself were outside my control, and I learned from practicing their ideas (especially Nap. Hill’s “PMA” stuff) that thoughts can affect reality, even in mundane ways - a better attitiude, deliberately adopted, makes for a better day, better relationships, a better life and better lived experience as well.
This was a revolutionary concept for me, my family were very political (mostly left-wing) with a big social conscience, and I was kind of raised on the idea a human’s happiness depended on how society treated them, and how fair their share of life’s good things were. It’s hard to explain in words what a massively freeing thing it was to read my first Nap. Hill book saying no, happiness and self-belief can come from within, and you don’t need to wait (or fight) to be given them.
Hill gets slightly more into the occult (hidden, not immediately linked in obvious ways) in the book Think And Grow Rich where, for whatever reasons, he leaves the core concept (which is actually in the title, and obviously inspired by New Thought) for the reader to discover themselves.
David Neagle is the contemporary trainer & author (he only has one book out right now afaik but a ton of online material indlucing videos) who’s most helped me to understand these principles in terms of applying them to everyday life and situations, he’s talked many times about how the Kybalion is one of his foundation books for his own work, and he pushes the idea that we can change what we manifest in our own lives - and he doesn’t dredge up limiting concepts like karma or whatever.