you always have done save to choose your thought. There is no change in law or method. It is a simple thing to choose other thoughts where you have been thinking unpleasant ones. This requires will and effort till you create the habit and then the right thought will think itself.
Automatism is to be made of conscious use; habit is automatism.. By a course of right thinking we change nerve tissue; build cells which like storage batteries hold the thought and, when cells enough have been created, they do the work without our conscious volition. We materialize our thoughts and our will into muscle and nerve. Gray matter is secreted in the ends of the fingers of the blind, and in the fingers of the pianist and the deft artisan. The fingers do not think, but the thought out of which they have been made, does the work. So is it in any line of labor; the body becomes materialized so that the less of conscious thought is put upon it the better work it does. This is done under the universal Law of Concentration. You are consciously to obey the Law to a chosen end, as you have in the past involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed it, to an end chosen for you by necessity. In the old thought and labor you were slave; in the New Thought you are Master through Self-direction.
You do not surfer from lack in concentration, for without concentration nothing is done. Every step you take and every word you speak is the result of concentration. What you complain of arises from a lack of proper thought choice. People differ in the power to concentrate at will upon a chosen thought and their power to hold by will to a chosen thought for any definite time. Some people have persistence and consecutiveness while others are fickle, veering, and easily discouraged. But discouragement, fear, grief, pain, sorrow, worry,, anxiety, jealousy, anger, and weariness are all like their opposites, the results of concentration. What is the difference? Is it because some persons possess less will? Can one person have more Life than another? Each one has All Life and can draw at will. Can a person then have less will than another? The All-Will belongs to each, and each has all of the All-Will that he or she wills to use. There is no such thing as a weak or a strong will, any more than there is a strong or a weak life. There may be a strong or weak manifestation of life and will through the same individual. No person exercises the will in the same way at all times.
The very fact that we notice the difference between the exercise of will on occasion, is evidence that will is limitless and we can use all we desire. Therefore it is not a valid excuse for a person to say of another, "He has a stronger will than mine!" because each person has a will of equal strength. It is merely a question of how you will to use the Ego as Will.
VI. How Shall I Concentrate
Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.
- Jesus.
Whatsoever things are lovely and of good repute, think on these things.
- Paul.
No man can choose what coming hours may bring To him of need, of joy, or suffering; But what his soul shall bring unto each hour To meet its challenge - this is his power.
- Priscilla Leonard.
It is profanation for you to ask how Life will do its work tomorrow. It is sacrilegious after telling Life, the Omnipotent and the Omniscient what you desire, for you to put your finger into the work. You are to let the One in the sub-conscious materialize your ideal. Every time you interfere with Life, you get burnt fingers. Your entire business is to build in the Ideal. When you have created the mental image you are to concentrate upon that image and LET the MASTER BUILDER - LIFE (GOD), do the work while you enjoy the conditions that come to you.
I think this advice is plain; Concentrate upon the mental image and let that image, through the operation of mental laws, direct the Soul in the manifestation. Simply do your work in imagination; do your work by thinking. God will through necessity do the rest. Thinking is all you can do. Therefore watch your thoughts and when they are inclined to stray away from the chosen image, bring them back. Soon the Will by that faculty must body itself forth in the physical becomes so trained to the fact that it must hold to the chosen picture, that it will keep your thoughts from straying. This is the ultimate of Concentration; it brings REALIZATION"; then you and the mental image become one.
I give you in this connection a fine mental picture to hold of your power, from Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia!" Concentrate upon it till it becomes your thought of yourself, as body, as Will, and as Infinite Life.
Look upon Spirit as the rider! take The body for the chariot and the Will As charioteer! Regard the Mind as reins; The senses steeds, and things of sense The ways they trample on. So is the Soul The Lord that owneth spirit, body, will, Mind, senses, all. Itself unowned.
Thus think the wise! He who is unwise, drives with reins Slack on the neck o' the senses, then they romp Like restless horses of a charioteer. He that is wise, with watchful mind and firm, Calms these wild fires, so they go fair and straight Like well-trained horses of a charioteer.
The imagination is the real creator. The pictures it creates become objective realities. Henry Wood deserves a much greater recognition than he has yet received for the Principle he lays down in his "Ideal Suggestion." This form of Suggestion controls the life. The ideal is the real in Spirit and that which is spiritually created must take objective form. As every picture was first a mental image in the mind of painter, and painted itself; as each statue was first a mental picture in the mind of sculptor; as palace, hut, or stable in the mind of architect was once a mental picture; so every form of human expression is in the inception a mental image, created upon, or by, or through, the Imagination. What is once impressed upon the mind universe. Pictures created by Affirmations become, according to the fidelity with which they are held imaged forth in the body. "According to the fidelity with which they are held." Note this well. Rest here and give the thought time to affect the body. Rest an hour and it will have an hour's effect.
Make a mental habit of holding this thought constantly as a picture, to the exclusion of all pictures that mar, and it becomes reflected in the body as does the mental image in mind of artist or workman. "Let your yea be yea." This is why you are at all times to keep before yourself the picture of health, happiness, and success. "Think on these things." These pictures are to be held as realities in Principle; not to be wrought out in detail, save as day by day, the need of detail comes. As soon as mentally created, they are Powers and Realities in the Soul Realm. There alone you have creative power. Details are the objective conditions with which you are to deal with reason when the time for reasoning comes. "NOW is the accepted time" for you to deal with Principle. Principle will take care of the detail that now is, and with other details, when the evolution of the mental image brings them into the present. Make not the mistake of planning the how, and the way, in which this mental image will objectify. That is not your business. Do not think on these things. Give to Life the outline of what you desire and trust Life. Let Life carry out your desire. Life is omnipotent and is the only builder. Life will decide when to give the picture objective form.
Hold the picture in your mind and trust. Be yourself the architect; Life is the workman. Keep your hands off. The only work for you is: - Think, Concentrate, and Trust.
VII. The Will
The education of the Will is the object of our existence.
- Emerson.
O living Will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock.
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