How to use the Laws of Mind, Chapter Ten, The Book of Life

How to use the Laws of Mind, Chapter Ten, The Book of Life

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Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, America's greatest spiritual healer, said in 1847 that children are like little, white tablets upon which everybody who comes along scribbles something. All of us were born without any religious beliefs, fears, prejudices or racial bias. When we were children we were highly impressionable and malleable and subject to the teachings and beliefs of all those who had any control over our lives. Children grow up in the image and likeness of the dominant mental and emotional climate of the home. The first language you spoke came from your parents.

Your subconscious mind is a book of the law, and the dominant impressions and convictions of the mind become the ruling and governing forces of your life. In talking with and counselling many people through the years, I have found that the main reason many do not advance in life and remain healthy and prosperous is that when they were very young they had impressed on their deeper mind (the subconscious) feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness and inferiority, which governed their choices in life and their reactions, preventing them from succeeding and prospering in life.

Sigmund Freud, the great psychopathologist, pointed out that all of us are governed by subconscious impulses which are mostly irrational, which means that most of the religious beliefs, taboos and strictures which were given to us when very young are illogical, unreasonable, unscientific and completely contrary to basic common sense. One man, for example, said to me, "It's wrong for me to make so much money." Since he kept thinking that way, he eventually lost his business and did not know why. However, he learned the hard way that his subconscious takes what he says and thinks literally, and that whatever he conveyed to his subconscious mind would be made manifest, whether good or bad.

His family could have used the money and he could have done a lot of good with it, but this false and irrational impulse and belief in his subconscious governed his actions long after the earlier statements of his mother had been forgotten. He had to fail, because he was constantly reminding himself, "It is wrong to make so much money. Money is evil." This was a record implanted in his deeper mind, and it was being played back to him.

He learned that there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so, and that there is nothing evil in the universe, for good and evil are the movements of his own mind relative to the One Being—God—the Living Spirit, which is whole, pure and perfect. Use determines whether a thing is good or evil. How do you use the Power? If you use the One Power constructively, you call It God, Allah, Brahma, peace, harmony and prosperity. If you use the One Power negatively, ignorantly or maliciously, you can experience lack, limitation, sickness and disease. The world calls it satan, devil, hell, etc., all of which are states of mind. The word satan means to err, to slip, to deviate from the truth.

As you continue to read this chapter, the truth will be revealed to you about the Book of Life. Remember, when a person is fearful, suspicious or angry, he acts and reacts in an abnormal way even when there are no circumstances or conditions warranting such actions. What is written in his Book of Life (his subconscious) becomes a law governing his experiences and relationships with others.

How Your Mind Works

The Book of Life is your subconscious mind, and you are always writing in that Book based on the nature of your habitual thinking and imagining. Shakespeare said, "What is in a name?" Well, when I mention your name, it indicates your particular sex, your nationality, your background, your training, your education, your financial structure, your social status, and all other things appertaining to you.

When your conscious and subconscious mind work harmoniously, peacefully and joyfully together, the children of that union are happiness, peace, health, abundance and security. The disharmonious relationship of the conscious and subconscious mind brings misery, suffering, pain, sickness and disease into your life.

Abram left Ur of Chaldea. Ur means sorcery, black magic, worship of stars, idols and all that sort of thing. Abram changed his name to Abraham, meaning the father of the multitude, indicating the one God, the one Presence and Power. We are all children of the one God. That's the unity of all life. All men and women are brothers and sisters—same mind, same spirit and same substance. Therefore, to hurt another is to hurt yourself; and to bless another is to bless yourself.

You can write a new name, a new estimate and a new blueprint of yourself. Get a new concept of yourself. Is it great enough, noble enough or grand enough to redeem you, to bring about an inner transformation of your heart, your mind and your whole being? Today people have many idols just as they had in Chaldea thousands of years ago. Superstition is rampant. They still have false gods, such as "The weather is going to give me a cold," or "If I wet my feet I am going to get pneumonia. " Some are afraid of germs, so that when someone sneezes, they feel  they may be infected by the virus. If you ask the exposed person, "Did you get the virus this year?" the response is, "No, not yet." The infection is anticipated, though. What you expect, you always get.

Some people say, "I don't know the right congressman. I have no pull. I can't get that job." They are thus denying the Creative Power within them. They say It is omnipotent and supreme, yet at the same time they are denying It. If It is supreme and omnipotent, there is nothing to oppose It or challenge It. Therefore, you should say, "Infinite Spirit opens up the door for me, revealing to me my hidden talents and showing me the way I should go." That's exactly what the Infinite Spirit will do for you.

There are congressmen who speak and touch wood when they talk about something negative, as if the wood had some power. Do you give power to other people? To the atmosphere? To the weather? All of these things are innocuous. They have no power. The power is in you.

What Do You Believe?

This Universal Presence creates out of Itself by means of It becoming that particular thing. In other words, God becomes man by believing Himself to be man. God creates a being out of Himself capable of returning glory, light and love to Himself. Abraham knew the Creative Power. He was aware of It, and he demonstrated It in his life. He believed that the Spirit would guide and direct him, which, of course, It did.

Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, etc., all spoke of God as Infinite Mind and Infinite Intelligence, but they did not tell you how to use the Presence and Power for guidance, for harmony, for prosperity, for success, or how to heal yourself with it. It was a satisfactory intellectual conclusion—very interesting, but they did not tell you how to use It in everyday practice.

If you believe you are an abject worm of the dust, people will step on you and will treat you the way you treat yourself. If you are cruel and nasty to yourself, the world will be cruel and nasty to you. As within, so without. Realize that you are a son or a daughter of the Living God. You are heir to all of God's riches. Realize you should exalt God in the midst of you, mighty to heal. How could you feel inferior if you knew that you were a daughter of the Infinite, that you were a darling of God, and that God loves you and cares for you? God is the Life Principle, or the Living Spirit within you, which created you and watches over you when you are sound asleep, because He that watches over you neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Born to Win

There are a great many people who work very hard, but they nevertheless fail in life. The reason is that they have a subconscious pattern of failure, or they believe they should fail. Sometimes they think a jinx is following them. They feel inferior. Perhaps they were told when they were young, "You'll never amount to anything. You are stupid. You are dumb." These thoughts were accepted by their impressionable mind and now these thoughts have a life of their own in the subconscious mind, and are experienced by them.

But man can change his life. These subconscious or irrational impulses act long after the events which caused them have been forgotten. Man can feed the subconscious mind with something new. He can say, "I'm born to succeed; the Infinite cannot fail." He can feed his subconscious life-giving patterns such as: "Divine law and order govern my life, Divine peace fills my soul, Divine love saturates my mind, Divine right action reigns supreme, Infinite Intelligence guides and directs me in all my ways—It is a lamp unto my feet and a light upon my path."

When you are angry, suspicious or full of fear, these emotions are negative and destructive. They snarl up in the subconscious mind, and they cause you to do the wrong thing and to say the wrong thing. When you want to be happy, you are sad; when you want to do the right thing, you do the wrong thing. This is true when you are under the sway of negative and destructive emotions, for, very likely, whatever you do then will be wrong.

Discover Yourself

You are here to solve problems. The reason you have problems and challenges is because you are here to discover your Divinity and sharpen your mental and spiritual tools; otherwise you would never discover yourself.

There are failures in life, yes! That is why you had an eraser at the end of your pencil when you went to school. Everybody knew that you were going to make mistakes. Through the mistakes, however, you learned how to add and subtract, as well as many, many other things.

You must have a basis for thinking constructively. When you know that thoughts are things and that what you feel you attract, and that what you imagine you become, then you begin to think constructively because you realize, "My thought is creative—not because it is my thought, but because it is thought."

"Nothing can give you peace but the triumph of principles" (Emerson). Quimby said that a child is like a little, blank tablet; and the uncles, and the aunts, and the clergyman and everybody else comes along and scribbles something on it. This is easy to do because the little child's mind, of course, is impressionable, malleable and open to all of the beliefs, opinions, creeds, dogmas, superstition, ignorance and fear of the parents. The child grows up in the image and the likeness of the dominant mental, emotional and spiritual climate of the home.

Who is scribbling on your mind today? Does your mother-in-law, father-in-law or some in-law scribble something on your mind? Do they disturb you? Does someone tell you you are going to fail? And do you reject it and say, "You do not know what you are talking about. I cannot fail. How could I fail? The Infinite is within me. I am born to win. I am a success in my prayer life, in my relationship with people, and in my chosen work." The minute you affirm the above, the Power will respond to you.

How could the Infinite fail? Where is the Infinite? Within you. And you are born to win, to overcome, to triumph. You are here to go from glory to glory, and from octave to octave, for there is no end to the glory which is man.

Is the columnist writing something in your mind? Or are you writing the truths of God, which are the same yesterday, today and forever? What are you writing in your mind every day? Some people write grief, despair, hopelessness, loneliness, etc. Inscribe the conviction that you are worthy, that you are adequate, that you are full of faith and confidence in the only Power there is, and that you know you are inspired from On High, and that you believe implicitly that God is guiding you in all your ways and is a lamp unto your feet and a light upon your path.

Your subconscious mind, which is the book of life, will receive these impressions, viewpoints, opinions and convictions because you are sincere, because you mean them. Whatever you think, feel and believe to be true, your subconscious mind will bring to pass—good or bad.

Inscribe in your mind harmony, health, wholeness, beauty, peace, perfection and right action. These are principles. You do not create these truths, but you activate them and make them effective and functional when you affirm them. Stir up the gifts of God within you.

Anything that fills you with faith, with confidence, with joy and with enthusiasm has power over you, and it governs your conduct. Enthusiasm governs all of your activities, because enthusiasm means "possessed by God." You will never go so far as when you are possessed by the One, the Beautiful and the Good.

You are a mental and a spiritual being, because when you say I AM, you are announcing the Presence of the Living God. You have always lived. A billion years from now you will be alive, because life was never born and will never die; water wets it not, fire burns it not, wind blows it not away. You are alive, and that life is God's life. God is life; therefore, you have always lived.

Are you the same person you were five years ago? Ten years ago? Twenty-five years ago? No, you are not. Are you the same person you were when you were three months old or a year old? Of course not. You have had hundreds of reincarnations since you were born. Reincarnation is Spirit making Itself manifest at higher levels. So, at five years of age you were different; at 10, at 20, and at 30. If I showed you photographs of every month of your life, you would hardly recognize yourself in some of them.

You are not the same as you were six months ago. You have a new concept of God, of Life, of the universe—a new estimate, a new blueprint, a new insight. You do not talk the same; you do not walk the same or think the same. Your life is progressing from glory to glory. When you go on to the next dimension, you will still go on from octave to octave. You cannot be less tomorrow than you are today, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Write, "I go from glory to glory. I go from octave to octave." Write these truths in your life, because you are alive and you are always implanting something new in your deeper mind.

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How to use the Laws of Mind, Chapter Ten, The Book of Life

Dr. Joseph Murphy