“ Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” If you keep
in your mind an image, or imagination, of yourself in perfect health, and full
of strength and activity, you keep the forces working to make you so. You are constructing out of the unseen
substance of thought a spiritual self (the healthy self hoped for); and this
spiritual self will in time rule the material body, and make it like unto
itself. If your stomach is weak, refuse in imagination to see it a weak
stomach: see it only a strong stomach. If your lungs are weak, see in your
mind’s eye your lungs as strong. If your body is weak and sluggish, see yourself in imagination as you were
when a boy or girl, when your limbs were full of activity, and you took delight
in scrambling over fences and climbing trees. You are then putting out the
“substance” of the thing or condition of body “hoped for.” As you continue to see yourself thus, the gradual change in your
physical condition for the better will increase your faith that this law is a
truth. Keep to this thought of yourself as strong, active, and vigorous,
week after week, month after month, year after year, and you fix more firmly in
mind yourself as free from all disease. It
will be a confirmed habit, or, as we say, “second nature,” for you so to
imagine yourself.
What you think or
hold most in mind or imagination, which you have most faith in. If you
imagine a bugbear, much of the time you will make a reality of such imagining.
The “confirmed invalid” sees himself in his “mind’s eye” only as sick. He puts
out, or imagines, the wrong image, or imagination. He is unconsciously working
the same law. The invalid who always sees himself as sick, is in reality
constructing a sick body. You can make a weak stomach for yourself by always in
imagination seeing your stomach as weak. The great trouble and error of to‑day
is, that, so soon as any organ is a little overtaxed or strained, its possessor
is apt to think of it only as weakened and diseased, and in thought dwells only
on such weakness: in this, unfortunately, he is too often assisted by others.
As all thought put out is substance, the result is, there is by such means made
for him, first, spiritually, a stomach, or lungs, or kidneys, or other organ,
more imperfect; and this imperfection is embodied and expressed in the material
lungs, stomach, kidneys, or other organ.
It cannot be told too
often, that all material things are the outgrowth or product of spiritual or
unseen forces. Whatever you think of is made at once in unseen substance. So
soon as made, it commences at once to attract its like order of substance to
itself: so, no matter how weak you are, when in mind you see your body active,
strong, and vigorous, you have really made the spiritual body so. That
spiritual body is drawing, then, the elements of health and strength to itself.
Always in mind see yourself well when
your body is sick. This is a simple process, but it involves a wonderful
and wonder‑working law. When in mind you see yourself diseased, though your
body may be so, you are working this law the wrong way
The imagining of a fresh, sound, vigorous body, is in actual
substance, though unseen, a fresh, sound, healthy, and vigorous body. It is a
spiritual reality. The material body must
grow to be like the spiritual reality. If your body is weak, do not see it
in your mind’s eye as weak. See yourself full of life and playful vigor. Don’t
see yourself as an invalid propped up in a chair, or confined to the house,
though for the time being your body is in such conditions. You are healing yourself when you see yourself running foot‑races.
You are keeping yourself an invalid when you see yourself ever as one. Don’t
expect or fear sickness or pain for to‑morrow, no matter what sickness or pain
you have to‑day. Expect nothing but
health and strength. In other words, let health, strength, and vigor be
your daydream. The desirable condition of mind is better expressed by the word
“dream” than by the terms “hoping” or “expecting.”
“Dreamers” do far more than the world realizes. The “day‑dream” of a person who may sit for
an hour almost unconscious of what is going on directly around him, is a force
working out results in the unseen and mighty kingdom of thought, concerning
which we know so little. Only at present, he or she whose thought is so
disengaged from the body as to make them for the time quite unconscious of its
existence, having no knowledge of the power they are using, no belief that it
is doing something, have consequently no faith in it; and without faith, most
of the result must be lost to them.
If you know nothing of gold‑mining, or of the formations in
which gold is found, or the methods for extracting it from the soil, you may
dig in rich gold‑bearing earth for months, and cart it off to fill in sunken
lots. With no knowledge of the treasure in your soil, you have no faith in it.
We are, as regards our mental or spiritual powers, in an analogous condition. Yet every imagining is an unseen reality;
and the longer and more firmly it is held to, the more of a reality does it
make itself in things which can be seen, felt, and touched by the physical
senses. Dream, then, so much as you can by day of health and vigor. The
more you so dream of it by day, the more likely is your thought to enter the
same vigorous domain at night, and so recuperate you all the quicker. But if
you, dream by day of sickness or weakness, your thought at night will be the
more apt to connect itself with the current of sick, weak, diseased thought,
and you are, on waking, the worse for it. Ignorantly you may store gunpowder in
your cellar, thinking it some harmless material. A spark may then destroy your
house and your body. In an analogous manner mankind are now constantly bringing pain and evil on themselves through
an unwise or ignorant use of their mental forces. As we most think,
imagine, or dream, can we store up gold or gunpowder. A daydream, or reverie,
is an outflow of force working results. The more abstracted the reverie, the
greater is the force working separate and apart from the instrument, the body. When for a time you can forget, or lose
consciousness of, your physical self and immediate surroundings, you are
working your spiritual or thought power possibly a hundred or a thousand miles
away. All occult power, so called, all the miracle power of biblical
record, was wrought by this method. If
thought can be concentrated in sufficient volume on an image in mind, it can
produce instantly that image in visible substance. This is the only secret
of magic. Magic infers the instantaneous production of the visible by such
concentration…
Faith is indeed as the “grain of mustard‑seed” to which, as
to growth, it is compared in the New Testament. But it can grow for evil as
well as good, and, if for evil, may become a tree in which every foul bird of
evil omen will come and build its nest. Your evil or gloomy imagining is faith
in that evil. Your fear of a disease is
faith in the perpetuity and increase of such disease. You have a slight
derangement of stomach or kidney or other organ. So, having it for one day or a
few days, you begin to expect it. You think of it only as an unhealthy organ.
You never in mind see it as a sound organ. You may be then told it is in a
dangerous condition. You have a name possibly given to the ailment which is
suggestive of great suffering, debility, and ultimate death. All this is help to faith in evil. The
force of other minds may be added to yours which increases that faith.
Friends and relatives may be anxious on your account, and fearful, and
continually reminding you how careful you should be. Every thing tends to make
you see yourself sick, weak, and enfeebled. You have not in your own mind an
imagining of the part affected as sound or healthy. None send you their
thought, or imagining, as vigorous and healthy. The spiritual thought‑constructions
sent you are all in the opposite direction. The spiritual force sent you is
really all for evil. If your friend says he “hopes you may get well,” he says
it with an accent and expression which says he fears you may not. And so your
faith in an evil is constantly increased. You
always get the “substance” of the thing feared or expected as well as hoped
for. In this case you get the substance of evil. You get more disease, more
weakness by the same law, or force, which can, otherwise directed, bring you
health. You are taught to have more faith, or belief, in sickness than in
health. “According to the faith,” says the biblical record, “shall it be given
thee;” and accordingly you have given
you sickness, because you have most faith in sickness.
Prentice Mulford,
Your Forces and How to Use Them
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