Thought-Currents

Thought-Currents

We need to be careful of what we think and talk. Because thought runs in currents, as real as those of air and water. Of what we think and talk, we attract to us a like current of thought. This acts on mind or body - for good or ill.

If thought was visible to the physical eye, we should see its currents flowing to and from people. We should see that persons similar in temperament, character and motive are in the same literal current of thought. We should see that the person in a despondent and angry mood was in the same current with others despondent or angry, and that each one in such moods serves as an additional "battery" or "generator" of such thought and is strengthening that particular current. We should see these forces working in similar manner and connecting the hopeful, courageous and cheerful with all others hopeful, courageous and cheerful.

When you are in low spirits or "blue," you have, acting upon you, the thought-current coming from all others in low spirits. You are in oneness with the despondent order of thought. The mind is then sick. It can be cured, but a permanent cure cannot always come immediately, when one has long been in the habit of opening the mind to this current of thought.

In attracting to us the current of any kind of evil, we become, for a time, one with evil. In the thought-current of the Supreme Power for good, we may become more and more as one with that power, or in Biblical phrase "one with God." That is the desirable thought-current for us to attract.

If a group of people talk of any form of disease or suffering, of death-bed scenes and dying agonies, if they cultivate this morbid taste for the unhealthy and ghastly, and it forms their staple topics of conversation, they bring in themselves a like current of thought full of images of sickness, suffering and things revolting to a healthy mind. This current will act on them, and eventually bring them disease and suffering in some form.

If we are talking much of sick people or are much among them and thinking of them, be our motive what it may, we shall draw on ourselves a current of sickly thought, and its ill results will in time materialize itself in out bodies. We have far more to do to save ourselves than is now realized.

When men talk business together they attract a business current of idea and suggestion. The better they agree the more of this thought current do they attract and the more do they receive of idea and suggestion for improving and extending their business. In this way does the conference or discussion among the leading members of the company or corporation create the force that carries their business ahead.

Travel in first-class style, put up at first-class hotels and dress in apparel “as costly as your purse can buy,” without running into the extreme of foppishness. In these things you find aids to place you in a current of relative power and success. If your purse does not now warrant such expenditure, or you think it does not, you can commence so living in mind. This will make you take the first steps in this direction. Successful people in the domain of finance unconsciously live up to this law. Desire for show influences some to this course. But there is another force and factor which so impels them. That is a wisdom of which their material minds are scarcely conscious. It is the wisdom of the spirit telling them to get in the thought current of the successful, and by such current be borne to success. It is not a rounded-out success, but good is far as it goes.

If our minds are, from what is falsely called economy, ever set on the cheap–cheap lodgings, cheap food and cheap fares, we get in the thought current of the cheap, the slavish and the fearful. Our views of life and our plans will be influenced and warped by it. It paralyzes that courage and enterprise implied in the old adage “Nothing ventured nothing gained.” Absorbed in this current and having it ever acting on you, it is felt immediately when you come into the presence of the successful and causes them to avoid you. They feel in you the absence of that element which brings them their relative success. It acts as a barrier, preventing the flow to you of their sympathy. Sympathy is a most important factor in business. Despite opposition and competition, a certain thought current of sympathy binds the most successful together. The mania for cheapness lies in the thought current of fear and failure. The thought current of fear and failure, and the thought current of dash, courage and success will not mingle nor bring together the individuals who are in these respective streams of thought. They antagonize, and between the two classes of mind is built a barrier more impenetrable than walls of stone.

Live altogether in any one idea, any one “reform” and you get into the thought current of all other minds who are carrying that idea to extremes. There is no “reform” but what can be pushed too far. The harm of such extreme falls on the person who so pushes it. It warps mind, judgment and reason all on one side. It makes fanatics, bigots, cranks and lunatics, whether the idea involves an art or study, a science, a “reform” or a “movement.” It connects the extremists of all people in such order and current of mind, no matter what their specialties may be. Such people often end in becoming furious haters of all who differ with them and in so hating expend their force in tearing themselves to pieces. The safe side lies in calling daily for the thought current of wisdom from the Infinite Mind.

When that wisdom is more invoked our “reforms” and organizations “for the good of the whole” will not run into internal wrangles almost as soon as they organize. As now conducted the thought current of hatred of and antagonism to the “oppressor” and monopolist is admitted at their birth. This very force breeds quarrels and dissensions among the members. It is force used to tear down instead of build up. It is like taking the fire used to generate steam in the boilers and scattering it throughout the building.

When people come together and in any way talk out their ill-will towards others they are drawing to themselves with ten-fold power an injurious thought current. Because the more minds united on any purpose the more power do they attract to effect that purpose. The thought current so attracted by those chronic complainers, grumblers and scandal mongers, will injure their bodies. Because whatever thought is most held in mind is most materialized in the body. If we are always thinking and talking of people’s imperfections we are drawing to us ever of that thought current, and thereby incorporating into ourselves those very imperfections.

We have said in previous books that “Talk Creates Force,” and that the more who talk in sympathy the greater is the volume and power of the thought current generated and attracted for good or ill. A group of gossips who can never put their heads together without raking over the faults of the absent are unconsciously working a law with terrible results to themselves.

Gossip is fascinating. There is an exhilaration in scandal and the raking over of our friend’s or neighbour’s or enemy’s faults is almost equal to that produced by champagne. But in the end we pay dearly for these pleasures.

If but two people were to meet at regular intervals and talk of health, strength and vigour of body and mind, at the same time opening their minds to receive of the Supreme the best idea as to the ways and means for securing these blessings, they would attract to them a thought current of such idea. If these two people or more kept up these conversations on these subjects at a regular time and place, and found pleasure in such communings, and they were not forced or stilted; if they could carry them on without controversy, and enter into them without preconceived idea, and not allow any shade of tattle or tale-bearing, or censure of others to drift into their talk, they would be astonished at the year’s end at the beneficial results to mind and body. Because in so doing and coming together with a silent demand of the Supreme to get the best idea, they would attract to them a current of Life-giving force.

Let two so commence rather than more. For even two persons in the proper agreement and accord to bring the desired results are not easy to find. The desire for such meetings must be spontaneous, and any other motive will bar out the highest thought current for good...

The real orator in his effort draws to him a current of thought, which as sent again from him to his audience, thrills them. So does the inspired actor or actress. They bring a higher and more powerful element of thought to themselves first, and this flowing through them acts on the audience afterwards.

If you dwell a great deal on your own faults you will by the same laws attract more and more of their thought current, and so increase those faults. It is enough that you recognize in yourself those faults. Don’t be always saying of yourself, “I am weak or cowardly or ill-tempered or imprudent,” Draw to yourself rather the thought current of strength, courage, even temper, prudence and all other good qualities. Keep the image of these qualities in mind and you make them a part of yourself.

Prentice Mulford

One Way to Cultivate Courage

One Way to Cultivate Courage

COURAGE and presence of mind mean the same thing. Presence of mind implies command of mind. Cowardice and lack of mental control mean about the same thing. Cowardice is rooted in hurry, the habit of hurry or lack of repose. All degrees of success are based on courage–mental or physical. All degrees of failure are based on timidity.

You can cultivate courage and increase it at every minute and hour of the day. You can have the satisfaction of knowing that in everything you do you have accomplished two things–namely, the doing of the thing itself and by the manner of its doing, adding eternally to yourself another atom of the quality of courage. You can do this by the cultivation of deliberation–deliberation of speech, of walk, of writing, of eating–deliberation in everything.

There is always a bit of fear where there is a bit of hurry. When you hurry to the train you are in fear that you may be left, and with that comes fear of other possibilities consequent on your being left. When you hurry to the party, to the meeting of a person by appointment, you are in fear of some ill or damage resulting from not being in time.

This habit of thought can, through an unconscious training, grow to such an extent as to pervade a person’s mind, at all times and places, and bring on a fear of loss of some kind, when there is absolutely no loss to be sustained. For instance a person may hurry to catch a street car and act and feel as if a great loss would occur did he not get on that particular car, when there may be another close behind, or at most two or three minutes’ waiting will bring it. Yet the fear of waiting those three minutes grows to a mountain in size, and is in that person’s mind a most disagreeable possibility. Through mere habit a similar condition of hurry may characterize that person’s walking, eating, writing–in short, everything he does, and will render it more and more difficult for such person to act with coolness and deliberation.

 The quality of mind or emotion underlying all this hurried mental condition and consequent hurried act, is fear. Fear is but another name for lack of power to control our minds, or, in other words, to control the kind of thought we think or put out.

It is this kind of unconscious mental training (which is very common), that begets a permanent condition of mind more and more liable to large and small panics at the least interruption or trivial disappointment. It makes disappointments when none are necessary. It is the ever- opening wedge letting in more and more the thought current of fear. For if you so cultivate fear of one thing you are cultivating and increasing liability to fear in all things. If you allow yourself to sit in fear for half an hour that the carriage may not call for you in time to get to the boat or train, you are much more liable to be seized with a series of little panics at every trivial occurrence or obstacle occurring on that particular journey.

In this way does this habit of mind enter into and is cultivated in the doing of so-called little things. You are writing or sewing, or engaged in the performance of some work which is intensely interesting to you, and in which you do not like to be interrupted. If sewing, you reach for your scissors which have dropped on the floor. You do this in a momentarily impatient mood and with a spasmodic jerky action. Your mind, as the phrase runs, is “on your work.” You will not take it off your work while reaching for the scissors. You are trying in mind to go on with your work and reach for the scissors at the same moment. You make the movement of muscles and the action of the body momentarily disagreeable and irksome, because you refuse for the second to put into that act the force which it demands. When unconsciously you refuse to do this, any acts will become irksome and disagreeable, because there is not force enough let on to do the act with ease. It is the endeavour to do it with a weak body. You have the power of throwing your force instantly into any muscle, so making the act easy and pleasant. This capacity for turning on force on any part you will increases through cultivating it. And you can do a great deal more and do it better through this cultivation of deliberation, for deliberation can be as quick as thought, the more the mind is trained in that direction.

If you pick up a pin or tie a shoe-string in a hurry, you do so not only because such act is irksome to you, but because you fear it may deprive you momentarily of some bit of pleasure. There you have again opened your mind to the thought current of fear–fear of losing something.

The cultivation of courage commences in the cultivation of deliberation in so-called little acts like these. Deliberation and courage are as closely allied as fear and hurry. If we do not learn to govern our force properly in the doing of the smallest act we shall find such government far less easy in the doing of all acts.

If we analyze what we fear, we shall find we are in mind trying to deal with too much at once of the thing feared. There is only a relatively small amount to be dealt with now. In any transaction –in the doing of anything there is but one step to be taken at a time. We need to place what force is necessary, and no more on that one step. When that is taken we can take the next.

The more we train our minds so to concentrate on the one step, the more do we increase capacity for sending our force all in one given direction at once. Such force extends, and should be so used in the so-called minutest details of everyday life. In this way deliberation and deliberate action become habitual, and we are in a sense unconscious of making ourselves deliberate, even as after long training in the opposite and wrong direction we are unconscious of putting on the hurried frame of mind.

Timidity is often the result of looking at too many difficulties or terrors at once. In material reality we have to deal with but one at a time. If we are going to what we fear will be a disagreeable interview with a harsh, irascible, over-bearing person, we are apt to go, occupying our minds with the whole interview, setting ourselves down in the very middle of it, and seeing it in mind as necessarily trying or disagreeable. Perhaps we were thinking of it this morning while we were dressing. But it was then our proper business to dress. To dress was a necessary step for the interview and to dress well also. Possibly it occupied our thoughts while eating. But it was then our proper business to eat and get all the pleasure possible from our food. That was another step. The more reposeful our eating, the more vigorous will become our taste, and the more strength will our food give our bodies. Possibly the fear of this interview was on us as we walked to the place appointed for it. But it was then our proper business to walk and get from our walking all the pleasure he could. That was another step. Pleasure is the sure result of placing thought or force on the thing we are doing now, and pain of some sort in both present and future is the certain result of sending thought or force away from the act which needs to be done at this moment.

When we dress, eat, walk or do anything with mind placed on something else, we are making the present act irksome; we are training to make every act irksome and disagreeable; we are making the thing feared a certainty, for what we put out in thought as unpleasant is an actual thing, a reality. And the longer we continue to put it out the more force we add to it, and the more likely is it then to be realized in the physical world.

To bring us what all want and are seeking for, namely-happiness, we need to have perfect control of our mind and thought at all times and places. One most important and necessary means for gaining this, lies in this discipline regarding so-called little or trivial things, just as the discipline and movement of an army commences with the training of the private soldiers’ legs and arms. If you hurry and slur over these so-called petty details, you are the easier thrown off your guard or confused at unexpected occurrences, and in life it is the unexpected that is always happening.

We need to keep always our mind present with us. We want it always on the spot ready to use in any direction. Our thought is not on the spot when we tie a shoe-string and think a mile from that shoe-string–when we mend a pencil and dwell in one of tomorrow’s cares. It is then away, and if it has for a lifetime been in the habit of so straying from the act in hand to the act afar, it becomes more and more difficult to bring it back. Our thought moves from one thing to another with more than electric speed, and we can unconsciously train this quickness to be ever darting from one thing to another until it becomes almost impossible to keep it on one thing for ten consecutive seconds.

On the contrary, through cultivation of repose and deliberation in all things we can train ourselves to mass and fasten our thought on anything as long as we please, to throw ourselves into any mood of mind we please, and to throw ourselves at will into sleep or a semi-conscious, dreamy state as restful as sleep. These are very small parts of the possibilities for the human mind. There is no limit to its growth or the increase of its power, and no thing coming within the limits of our imagination but can be accomplished by it. The steps to these attainments are very small, very simple and relatively easy–so simple and easy that some reject them for that reason.

Unquestionably, these powers and many results coming of their exercise were known ages ago to a relative few. But any power or any condition of mind consequent upon it can be made more clear to an English-speaking people, through the use of an English word or form of expression than by terms taken from other languages...

Deliberation of movement, or in plainer English movement of muscle so slow that our mind has time to follow it, gives one time to think in great and small emergencies. But the lack of such training causes unconscious physical action. So confirmed becomes this habit, that the body moves without us aware of it. Awkwardness, lack of address, lack of tact are all due to this lack of command of mind caused by lack of deliberation, or in other words, a trained incapacity for taking time to think or plan the proper thing to do.

The terror-stricken person if the ship seems in sudden danger runs up and down the deck to no purpose, and this physical action is an exact correspondence of the life-long condition of his mind whose thought has been ever so darting from one thing to another, just as the whim seized him.

The more deliberate person whose mind is trained to take time to think and hold or concentrate its thought, holds himself steady, and so gives himself time to see what may be the opportunities for escape. And these two persons would pick up a pin in a very different manner and with very different mental action and method.

To train then for courage is to train for deliberate movement in all things, for that is simply training to mass and hold your force in reserve and let out no more than is needed for the moment...

Prentice Mulford

Sleep

Sleep

SLEEP, the life that occupies one-third of our stay on earth, is the natural door into the subconscious.

So it is with sleep that we are now concerned. The conscious two-thirds of our life on earth is measured by the degree of attention we give sleep. Our understanding of and delight in what sleep has to bestow will cause us, night after night, to set out for it as though we were keeping an appointment with a lover.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed; then he opened the ears of men and sealed their instruction”, Job 33.

It is in sleep and in prayer, a state akin to sleep, that man enters the subconscious to make his impressions and receive his instructions. In these states the conscious and subconscious are creatively joined. The male and female become one flesh. Sleep is the time when the male or conscious mind turns from the world of sense to seek its lover or subconscious self.

The subconscious – unlike the woman of the world who marries her husband to change him – has no desire to change the conscious, waking state, but loves it as it is and faithfully reproduces its likeness in the outer world of form.

The conditions and events of your life are your children formed from the molds of your subconscious impressions in sleep. They are made in the image and likeness of your innermost feeling that they may reveal you to yourself.

“As in heaven, so on earth” [Matthew 6:10; Luke 11:2]. As in the subconscious, so on earth.

Whatever you have in consciousness as you go to sleep is the measure of your expression in the waking two-thirds of your life on earth.

Nothing stops you from realizing your objective save your failure to feel that you are already that which you wish to be, or that you are already in possession of the thing sought. Your subconscious gives form to your desires only when you feel your wish fulfilled.

The unconsciousness of sleep is the normal state of the subconscious. Because all things come from within yourself, and your conception of yourself determines that which comes, you should always feel the wish fulfilled before you drop off to sleep.

You never draw out of the deep of yourself that which you want; you always draw that which you are, and you are that which you feel yourself to be as well as that which you feel as true of others.

To be realized, then, the wish must be resolved into the feeling of being or having or witnessing the state sought. This is accomplished by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The feeling which comes in response to the question “How would I feel were my wish realized?” is the feeling which should monopolize and immobilize your attention as you relax into sleep. You must be in the consciousness of being or having that which you want to be or to have before you drop off to sleep.

Once asleep, man has no freedom of choice. His entire slumber is dominated by his last waking concept of self.

It follows, therefore, that he should always assume the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction before he retires in sleep, “Come before me with singing and thanksgiving” [Psalm 95:2], “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise” [Psalm 100:4]. Your mood prior to sleep defines your state of consciousness as you enter into the presence of your everlasting lover, the subconscious.

She sees you exactly as you feel yourself to be. If, as you prepare for sleep, you assume and maintain the consciousness of success by feeling “I am successful”, you must be successful. Lie flat on your back with your head on a level with your body. Feel as you would were you in possession of your wish and quietly relax into unconsciousness.

“He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” [Psalm 121:4]. Nevertheless “He giveth his beloved sleep” [Psalm 127:2].

The subconscious never sleeps. Sleep is the door through which the conscious, waking mind passes to be creatively joined to the subconscious.

Sleep conceals the creative act, while the objective world reveals it.

In sleep, man impresses the subconscious with his conception of himself.

What more beautiful description of this romance of the conscious and subconscious is there than that told in the “Song of Solomon”: “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth [3:1]… I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him and I not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me” [3:4].

Preparing to sleep, you feel yourself into the state of the answered wish, and then relax into unconsciousness. Your realized wish is he whom you seek. By night, on your bed, you seek the feeling of the wish fulfilled that you may take it with you into the chamber of her that conceived you, into sleep or the subconscious which gave you form, that this wish also may be given expression.

This is the way to discover and conduct your wishes into the subconscious. Feel yourself in the state of the realized wish and quietly drop off to sleep.

Night after night, you should assume the feeling of being, having and witnessing that which you seek to be, possess and see manifested. Never go to sleep feeling discouraged or dissatisfied. Never sleep in the consciousness of failure.

Your subconscious, whose natural state is sleep, sees you as you believe yourself to be, and whether it be good, bad or indifferent, the subconscious will faithfully embody your belief.

As you feel so do you impress her; and she, the perfect lover, gives form to these impressions and out-pictures them as the children of her beloved.

“Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee” [Song of Solomon 4:7] is the attitude of mind to adopt before dropping off to sleep.

Disregard appearances and feel that things are as you wish them to be, for “He calleth things that are not seen as though they were, and the unseen becomes seen” [Approx., Romans 4:17]. To assume the feeling of satisfaction is to call conditions into being which will mirror satisfaction.

“Signs follow, they do not precede”.

Proof that you are will follow the consciousness that you are; it will not precede it.

You are an eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams. Your dreams take form as you assume the feeling of their reality.

Do not limit yourself to the past.

Knowing that nothing is impossible to consciousness, begin to imagine states beyond the experiences of the past.

Whatever the mind of man can imagine, man can realize. All objective (visible) states were first subjective (invisible) states, and you called them into visible by assuming the feeling of their reality.

The creative process is first imagining and then believing the state imagined. Always imagine and expect the best.

The world cannot change until you change your conception of it. “As within, so without”.

Nations, as well as people, are only what you believe them to be. No matter what the problem is, no matter where it is, no matter whom it concerns, you have no one to change but yourself, and you have neither opponent nor helper in bringing about the change within yourself. You have nothing to do but convince yourself of the truth of that which you desire to see manifested.

As soon as you succeed in convincing yourself of the reality of the state sought, results follow to confirm your fixed belief. You never suggest to another the state which you desire to see him express; instead, you convince yourself that he is already that which you desire him to be.

Realization of your wish is accomplished by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You cannot fail unless you fail to convince yourself of the reality of your wish. A change of belief is confirmed by a change of expression.

Every night, as you drop off to sleep, feel satisfied and spotless, for your subjective lover always forms the objective world in the image and likeness of your conception of it, the conception defined by your feeling.

The waking two-thirds of your life on earth ever corroborates or bears witness to your subconscious impressions. The actions and events of the day are effects; they are not causes. Free will is only freedom of choice.

“Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve” [Joshua 24:15] is your freedom to choose the kind of mood you assume; but the expression of the mood is the secret of the subconscious.

The subconscious receives impressions only through the feelings of man and, in a way known only to itself, gives these impressions form and expression.

The actions of man are determined by his subconscious impressions.

His illusion of free will, his belief in freedom of action, is but ignorance of the causes which make him act. He thinks himself free because he has forgotten the link between himself and the event.

Man awake is under compulsion to express his subconscious impressions. If in the past he unwisely impressed himself, then let him begin to change his thought and feeling, for only as he does so will he change his world. Do not waste one moment in regret, for to think feelingly of the mistakes of the past is to re-infect yourself. “Let the dead bury the dead” [Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60]. Turn from appearances and assume the feeling that would be yours were you already the one you wish to be.

Feeling a state produces that state.

The part you play on the world’s stage is determined by your conception of yourself.

By feeling your wish fulfilled and quietly relaxing into sleep, you cast yourself in a star role to be played on earth tomorrow, and, while asleep, you are rehearsed and instructed in your part.

The acceptance of the end automatically wills the means of realization. Make no mistake about this. If, as you prepare for sleep, you do not consciously feel yourself into the state of the answered wish, then you will take with you into the chamber of her who conceived you the sum total of the reactions and feelings of the waking day; and while asleep, you will be instructed in the manner in which they will be expressed tomorrow. You will rise believing that you are a free agent, not realizing that every action and event of the day is predetermined by your concept of self as you fell asleep. Your only freedom, then, is your freedom of reaction. You are free to choose how you feel and react to the day’s drama, but the drama – the actions, events and circumstances of the day – have already been determined.

Unless you consciously and purposely define the attitude of mind with which you go to sleep, you unconsciously go to sleep in the composite attitude of mind made up of all feelings and reactions of the day. Every reaction makes a subconscious impression and, unless counteracted by an opposite and more dominant feeling, is the cause of future action.

Ideas enveloped in feeling are creative actions. Use your divine right wisely. Through your ability to think and feel, you have dominion over all creation.

While you are awake, you are a gardener selecting seed for your garden, but “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” [John 12:24]. Your conception of yourself as you fall asleep is the seed you drop into the ground of the subconscious. Dropping off to sleep feeling satisfied and happy compels conditions and events to appear in your world which confirm these attitudes of mind.

Sleep is the door into heaven. What you take in as a feeling you bring out as a condition, action, or object in space. So sleep in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Neville Goddard

Beauty and the Beast, Two

Beauty and the Beast, Two

 

The shadow consists of all those qualities which are inherent in the potential consciousness of the individual yet, because of their apparent darkness or destructiveness are excluded from consciousness in the course of development. The individual then remains comfortably unaware that these qualities belong to him. We have seen how each psychological type has his “inferior” side, and the components of the inferior function of consciousness colour heavily the nature of the shadow. To this are added other factors, which the individual would find intolerable as components of his own makeup, repressed because of such sources as parental influence and religious training. The shadow generally appears to human consciousness first as a human figure, an image most commonly traceable in those dreams where the dreamer is hunted or attacked by a mysterious and malevolent enemy of his own sex.

 

As a rule the projection of the shadow falls on one’s own sex, and one can gain great insight here by an honest consideration of those qualities which we find abhorrent in others of our own sex…Like the old Roman god Janus, we are all double-faced, and the individual must acknowledge this if he is to have any conscious voice in the matter of whether his dark side or his light is expressed to his fellow man.

 

Sometimes the shadow projection falls on an institution, or a religion, rather than an individual. This phenomenon is readily observable in fanatical ideological hatreds of all kinds. Shadow and Ego put together make a whole, and wholeness, as we have seen already, is not merely or necessarily perfect; it is however complete

 

All of our opinions, when they carry a high emotional charge, are suspect.

 

When we find ourselves the victim of an emotional reaction that is out of proportion to the situation, or where we have such a reaction in regard to some situation that is not really within the range of our concern but is strictly someone else’s business, we should suspect that we are reacting to something of our own that we have not recognized as ours

 

The I and the Not I, M. Esther Harding

 

We have seen how each type, and consequently each astrological element, carries a weakness in the opposite function. When we see these qualities as evil, judge them, and force them into the unconscious, they fester and become precisely as evil as we believe them to be. It is our viewpoint towards the unconscious which produces its apparent enmity.

 

The unconscious has an inimical or ruthless bearing towards the conscious only when the latter adopts a false or pretentious attitude.

 

The I and Not I, M. Esther Harding

 

And one of the most pretentious attitudes of which human beings are capable is the belief it is always someone else’s fault.

 

Relating,

Liz Greene

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

 

He sees enough who doth his darkness see

 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury

 

The destructive side of human nature Jung calls the shadow and which in astrology is connected to Saturn, the “Dweller on the threshold”.

 

Most of us will do anything to avoid it. It is much more pleasant to think that one is a decent, “okay” sort of fellow – maybe with a few flaws, but basically alright – and much easier to assume that it is the government, the blacks, the hippies, the communists, or the foreign immigrants who have created all the evil in the world. For some people it is easier to assume that the devil has created all the evil in the world, thereby removing human responsibility from the issue altogether.

 

Unfortunately, the repercussions of this kind of apathy and blindness may, although not touching the individual for many years and sometimes not even in one lifetime, ripple out to become an important and even devastating social problem. We are all acquainted with the attitude that if it does not happen on my doorstep, it cannot possibly be my responsibility; and it is only when his own darkness catches up with him and engulfs him that a man will begin to question himself.

 

Edward Whitmont describes the phenomenon of “shadow projection”, as it is known in analytical psychology, very aptly in his book The Symbolic Quest:

 

“This type of situation is so classical that one could almost play a parlour game with it – if one wished to court social ruin. Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics – a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effects from the other person”.

 

Unfortunately, although this shadowy side of the personality is usually “utterly” unconscious in the individual, it is not so hidden from everyone else; and the more repressed and unconscious it is, the more obvious it will become to others. Often we may hear a man declare, “I simply hate dictatorial people, they make everybody’s lives miserable,” and then on another occasion, the wife or friend says, “Well, he really behaves like a tyrant sometimes, but whenever I try to tell him this he flies into a rage and I can’t make myself understood at all.” It may be people who are dictatorial, lazy, stupid, prejudiced, bad-tempered, manipulative, or unfeeling who drive us mad, but blindness to one’s own dark side – and projection of it upon others – is incredibly common and few of us are exempt from expressing it. What we generally do not do, with occasional exceptions, is understand what it means.

 

It is important to comprehend something of the implications of the shadow before we can look at the astrological chart to see what inferences may be drawn from it. Ideally we should perhaps not need such things as horoscopes to help us to see our own shadows; but the shadow is as its name implies, is almost always unconscious, and it is not a question of will or intellectual acumen, nor even good intentions, when one is trying to deal with this extremely unpleasant aspect of the human personality. The road to hell is of course paved with good intentions, and certainly with intellectual acumen as well.

 

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance

 

Aion, C.G. Jung

 

Recognising one’s own darkness appears to be a necessary prerequisite not only for self-knowledge, but also for knowledge and acceptance of others. Like everything else in the unconscious, the shadow, if it is not brought into the light, will be projected. The problem of the shadow is not only significant in an individual’s own development and in his capacity to form personal relationships; it is also extremely important in a collective sense. Were we more cognizant of this darkness in ourselves, it is entirely possible that collective phenomena which exhibit the projection of a group shadow – such as persecutions, inquisitions, purges, racial intolerance and prejudice, and other phenomena which involve the sacrifice of the scapegoat – would never occur. Even among children we find this ugliness manifesting: there is inevitably one child in any group who, for reasons which may be inherent in his own psychology but which are scarcely his fault, attracts the shadow projection of the group and becomes the scapegoat, the outcast who is mocked and ridiculed. He is made to bear the brunt of that childish savagery and brutality which, if unchecked in childhood, will eventually express its least destructive side in bigotry, and can attain its most horrific flowering in such examples of appalling bestiality as Auschwitz and Belsen. We have a mercifully dim awareness of the extent of our potential cruelty to each other in even the smallest of things; and although many people would prefer to forget about Auschwitz and its ilk because “somebody else” was responsible (certainly not decent people like you and I), we can see the pale reflection of this mechanism in the time-hallowed practice of the social snub.

 

Relating,

Liz Greene

 

Thought Forms

Thought Forms

Thought forms are intentions powered with emotion that live in your aura. They are structured constructs and are part of the attractive force that generates your experience. Charged areas of past trauma and unconscious beliefs are one type of thought form, as are intentions for manifestation that you have consciously created. However they can also be other people’s thoughts that are placed in your aura to manipulate you.

The unique aspect of self-generated thought forms that makes them different from your daily random thoughts is that they don’t require your continued attention to exist. You don’t have to feed thought forms with continued worry or other emotional energy. Once created, they are independent of your thought process and have a life of their own. Seeking to manifest their program, they grow by finding like-energy to combine with and become more powerful. In doing so they attract toward you the people and events that will help them grow.

Subconscious constructs can be both attractors and receptor sites for lower-level energy. Additionally, you can project your thought forms onto other people. Once implanted in someone else, they combine and make bigger and stronger constructs in both of you. Other people can do the same to you such that it becomes difficult to know whose thought form is whose. Any time you give your power away to someone else, you are combining thought forms. Massive constructs are formed and reinforced through the news, teachers, religious authority, governments, and so forth. Owning and deconstructing or transforming your negative thought forms helps not only you, but everyone around you.

A curse is a thought form intentionally constructed and placed in another person’s field to purposely destabilize them. Curses are programmed to stay through time and may activate only under certain conditions. For example, a curse from an old lover placed on your love life will only activate when you are establishing a relationship.

Dr. Synthia Andrews, ND

The Paths of Energy

AWAKE, O SLEEPER

AWAKE, O SLEEPER

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bible is addressed to the Imagination - which is spiritual sensation - and only immediately to the understanding, or reason.

In the fifth chapter of the Book of Ephesians we are told to: "Awake O sleeper and rise from the dead." Now, reason could never comprehend these words, but the Bible is calling upon Imagination (mind) to awaken, telling Him that he is sleeping, dreaming his world into being. But Imagination, now a rational being, does not know this and therefore cannot believe it.

All of the commands of scripture are addressed to and fulfilled by the Lord, who is all Imagination! It is your own wonderful human Imagination who is called upon to "Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!" (Psalms 44)

The greatest confession of faith man has ever received through revelation is called the Sh'ma. It is recorded in the 6th chapter of Deuteronomy as: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." The Lord spoken of here is the Elohim, which is a compound unity of one, made up of others. I know, for I have stood in His presence. He embraced me and incorporated me into His body. Since that day back in 1929, I have been one with the body of the Risen Lord.

I believe we are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm, which is quoted in the tenth chapter of John as: “God has taken his place in the Divine Assembly. In the midst of the gods he holds judgment, saying: ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die as men and fall as one man, O princes.’” You will notice that this statement begins in the past, claiming men are gods, sons of the Most High. Then the future is prophesied as: "You will fall as one man.”

This fall was not a punishment, but a plan - a pretense by an assumed appearance in order to conceal the real intention, which is an expansion of further existence and ultimate birth! Having chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world, one man fell, fragmenting itself into the unnumbered men that now appear. We are the gods in disguise who do not recognize our brothers, or ourselves.

In the beginning of Genesis it is said: “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept took one of his ribs. God made a woman from the rib and brought her to the man who said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, for she is taken out of Man.’ Therefore, man must leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, as they become one flesh.”

This statement is myth when viewed through the eyes of reason, but it is true. You will understand it perfectly when it is revealed in you.

Having had the vision, I say you have no body distinct from your soul. The body that scripture calls Eve is a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses. The physical body you wear, be it male or female, is emanated by Eve. She is the Jerusalem from above, who is the emanation of the Lord.

Although hidden from view, you are so one with Eve that if you were struck and felt pain, you would proclaim, "I am in pain," and I am is God's name. Imagination is joined to you and you are joined to me by our emanated Jerusalem's. The Jerusalem from below bear’s sons into slavery, and the Jerusalem from above bears sons into freedom

When questioned by the Jews, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” Not understanding, they said, “It has taken us forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?”

That's how the mind of man thinks. Thinking of an external thing made with human hands, they did not know that Jesus was speaking of the temple of the soul. Paul knew this, for he questioned the Corinthians, saying: “Do you not know that you are the temple of the Lord and the spirit of God dwells in you?”

Eve is your temple, your emanation, and your wife till the sleep of death is past. She is your soul, which God (Imagination) cleaves to and has become one with. There is no other Eve.

Falling in one body, you entered your cave and met your savior in the grave. Some found a female garment there and some a male, woven with care. I found a male garment. My wife found a female garment, but she is not female and I am not male, for in Christ there is no male or female, no bond or free, no Greek or Jew, no black or white. Being one with Christ, you - all imagination - are above the organization of eternal death.

In his great work called “Jerusalem,” Blake speaks of the sleep of Albion and his passage through eternal death - which is life as we know it. This world seems to be endless and without purpose, for when a rich man dies, he leaves his wealth behind. And when a poor man dies he is placed in a pauper's grave. But given the same length of time, their bodies will turn into dust and bones, and no one will be able to distinguish one bone from the other.

Regardless of what man seems to achieve here, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of the Lord. And the strength of man here is the weakness of God. Yet this world has purpose, for man has to pass through it in order to enter into eternal life.

In Blake's poem, "Jerusalem," he tells of the sleep of power as it passes through eternal death, and of its awakening into eternal life, saying: “This theme calls me in sleep night after night and every morn awakens me at sunrise. Then I see the Savior over me, spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song.”

In his letter to Mr. Butts, Blake spoke of this poem, saying: “I can praise it because I dare not pretend to be anything other than the secretary whose authors are in heaven. It's the grandest poem this world contains, for the spirit of truth dictated it morning after morning, sometimes twelve, sometimes twenty or fifty lines at a time. What now seems to be the labor of a long life was produced without labor or study and quite often against my will."

This is how the poem begins: "Awake! Awake O sleeper in the land of shadows, wake! Expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine."

The being in whom we were contained deliberately fell into this state called death, for the purpose of expansion into glorious life. His story is told in the parable of the grain of wheat, which unless it falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much. Here is the story of the mystery of life through death. Being all Imagination (mind), if I want an extension of reality, I must contract and die. I must empty myself of the glory I had with the Lord, and enter the one body, which falls.

The world tells us the fall was a mistake but that is not so, for God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. One day you will awaken, your mask will come off, and you will be enhanced beyond your wildest dreams as you awaken to eternal life. And when we all awaken, we will know each other more intimately than is possible to know one another here. My wife and I often think the same thoughts; but no matter how intimate we may be, we cannot know the intimacy that will be ours when these garments are taken off and we are once more awakened into eternal life.

Everyone will awaken in time, but not by any effort on their part while here. Your awakening was predetermined and it will happen on time, regardless of whether you are shining shoes or employing a million people. Our government undoubtedly has a million people on its payroll, with the president as its head. So in a technical sense he employs a million; yet tonight the one who shines his shoes could awaken, while the president continues to sleep, yet no one can die. That is the glorious part!

Your body is your emanation. Cut off its head and - believing you are it - you will instantly renew the same body, but with no missing parts. You will step out of the garment you now wear and men will call you dead; but you will have just stepped into another garment with no bridgework, no fillings in your teeth, no gray hair, no need to wear glasses or a hearing aid, to discover you are a young man (or woman) about twenty years of age. You will be in a terrestrial world just as real as this one, and continue your journey until you awaken.

I have awakened and know that when this garment is taken off I will no longer be in this world of death. This world, however, does not terminate at the point where the senses cease to register it.

You cannot follow those who are called dead, because of your limitation. But your friend who emanated the body you knew here is not dead to himself. Rather, he now emanates the same body, only young, where he continues to dream his world into being, not even knowing that he has gone through the door called death.

It's like leaving one room and entering another. Your friend is in the same fabulous, terrestrial world which the mysteries call eternal death, and from which he will one day awaken into eternal life. Having descended and entered the world of death, one day he will awaken to discover he has expanded and fulfilled his purpose. God made a limit to contraction and opacity, but not to translucency or expansion.

In the 1st chapter of Genesis it is said: “God made man in his own image. Male and female made he them.” The 2nd chapter changes this somewhat, but it is not a contradiction if you see it through imagination. “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his mouth the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”

Man's destiny is to become a life-giving spirit, not just to remain an animated body. The purpose of your fall is to transform you into an entirely different world, one where you are a life-giving spirit, animating everything around you. There you will stop time at will and start it again. That is your destiny. Now, reason cannot understand this, and you can't blame anyone who has not had the vision. Scholars believe the Bible is all myth, and certainly it is. If you take my body apart you will find no rib that is missing, yet scripture tells us one was removed.

The word rib is the Hebrew word "tselah," (TSAY-la), which literally means, a portion of the soul that emanates, that leaves everything and cleaves to his emanation until they become one flesh.

You have cleaved to and become your emanation so completely you believe you are it. When you introduce yourself you always say, “I am” before you give your name. And if you are hurt you say, “I am in pain.” Always calling upon the name of God, you don't say, “God is in pain,” but “I am,” and that is God's name forever, because the gods came down.

Now let me repeat: I not only believe in God, I believe that all men are gods and that collective Man is God. I believe that when you hurt men, you hurt God. And when you hurt men you hurt yourself, because you are God and there is no other.

In spite of the horrors of the world, God is love! When you stand in His presence you can't feel anything but love. And when love embraces you and you become one with God, you will know an ecstasy you have never known before. And with this union, you are incorporated into His body and know yourself to be all love!

“He who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.” (Romans 6)When you are incorporated into the body of love, you are united with the one body, the one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, knowing that you are He. Then you will awaken as the one who commanded the fall, for you will have fulfilled your purpose.

You will awaken in this world of death knowing you are God, the Father of God's only begotten son, David. It is recorded that in the spirit David called Jesus "Adonai", which is the Hebrew name for Father (Lord). (In Hebrew the name YAD HE VAU HE [pron. “YOD HEY VAV HEY” is so sacred the word “adoniyah” [corr. adonai, pron. “a-do-NAI”] is substituted.) In the spirit, David will call you father, and you will have fulfilled the 2nd Psalm. It is David who says: “I shall tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’”

One day when your time here is fulfilled, you will awaken and be born from above. Then David will appear and the entire drama of scripture will unfold within you, revealing your true identity. Then you will know you are one of the gods who agreed to dream in concert.

Now dreaming in concert, you and I see a building identically. You may see it through the eyes of one who would like to own it. I may see it through the eyes of one who admires it with no desire of possession, but we see the same building. We see the same streets and recognize the same number so we can go where we want to. But the world is a dream and we are the gods who agreed to dream in concert in order not to have any confusion. Had we agreed to dream individually and all play solo parts, this would be the wildest, maddest play possible!

I invite you now to go all out and imagine you really are the man or woman you want to be. But do not doubt, for the minute doubt steps in, a mental division descends, as doubt is the devil. If you will believe that regardless of what the world tells you, you are the man you want to be, you won't go mad. Instead, you will become that man. Your dream world will rearrange itself to fit your new image into it without any difficulty or help on your part.

When someone born into poverty persists in dreaming he possesses great wealth and his dream comes true, his wealth seems perfectly natural to those who do not know his dream. You are dreaming. If you try to make your dream come true while doubting its possibility, you are heading toward a nervous breakdown. But if you go all out in your wonderful claim, you will fulfill it, for all things are possible to the God you are, for you are the God of whom the Bible speaks.

When the gods came down in the likeness of men, some found a female garment and some a male. Entering death's door with those who enter, and lying down in the grave with visions of eternity, the gods are dreaming the dream of life until they awake and see Jesus and the linen clothes which were woven with the cooperation of a male and female. These were emanations of the soul which is neither male nor female.

“As it was appointed for all men to die once and after that comes the judgment, so Christ was offered once for the sins of many and will appear a second time, not concerning sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” (Hebrews 9)

You may hear of someone's death, but he has not died to himself, as it was appointed that all men would die only once. We died when we left our heavenly home to come down and assume the limitations of the flesh. At that moment we were united with Christ in a death like his, with the promise that we would be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Your death is over. When you go through the gate called death, you don't die, but instantly emanate a young, unaccountably new body. Most of those who go through the gate do not even know it. They simply take their young body for granted, just as they do everything here.

All day long a miracle goes on in your body. Unknown to your conscious reasoning mind, tonight's dinner is being converted into blood, tissue, and bones. No man can make a drop of blood, grow a new heart, or make one hair on his head.

The other day it was recorded that a doctor had stated that his patient could not live three weeks without a heart transplant. He operated on the man, gave him a new heart, and the man lived 18 days! No matter what the doctors do, no man will live one hour beyond his span of time as told us in the Sermon on the Mount. “Who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life?” Yet man goes blindly on believing he can. All he is doing is publicizing his surgeons and the medical world. You are not the body you wear, so when its heart, liver, or lungs wear out, you will simply step out of it and emanate a new one.

Made in the image of God, you are God's prodigal son who came out from the Father. You have cleaved to the body you wear so tightly, you have become one flesh with it, so that whenever it is hurt, you are hurt. That is the Adam and Eve of scripture, therefore, it is not a myth. Your emanation does come out of you, but not from a rib. You have no body distinct from your soul. Your called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlet of soul in this age. You are now a living soul, destined to become a life-giving spirit.

Having fallen, you emanate a body, which is necessary to function in this world, and you automatically do it with not one part missing. I meet those who have left this time/space and do not even know they have died.

If I told you right now that you are not only sound asleep but you are also dead, you would think me mad and the possessor of a demon. That's what they said of the Risen Christ. “Why listen to him, he is mad and has a demon.” Taking up stones to stone him they said, “We stone you for blasphemy, for you being a man claim you are God.” Then he replied, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I say you are gods?’ If he calls you gods to whom the word of God came, then why do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world that he blasphemes?” (John 10)

Jesus never claimed he was greater than another. Those who heard him did not know they were God, and he was only trying to awaken them to the memory that they were the sons who came down. He said: “Go tell my brothers that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

He never claimed that his Father differed from theirs or that his God was different, but they could not understand the mystery. They tried to grasp it with the reasoning mind, yet everything takes place in the Imagination (mind), which is God. “Man is all Imagination (mind) and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The Eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God Himself.” (William Blake)

Now let us go into the silence…

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Neville Goddard,

From a lecture given on January 8, 1968