I learned later that this little woman had been desiring and mentally picturing $500, while all the time ignorant of how it could possibly come to her. But she kept her vision and strengthened it with her faith.
In a recent issue of Good Housekeeping there was an article by Addington Bruce entitled “Stiffening Your Mental Backbone.” It is very instructive, and would benefit anyone to read it. He says, in part: “Form the habit of devoting a few moments every day to thinking about your work in a large, broad imaginative way, as a vital necessity to yourself and a useful service to society.”
Huntington, the great railway magnate, before he started building his road from coast to coast, said that he took hundreds of trips all along the line before there was a rail laid. It is said that he would sit for hours with a map of the United States before him and mentally travel from coast to coast just as we do now over his fulfilled mental picture. It would be possible to call your attention to hundreds of similar cases.
The best method of picturing to yourself that which you may desire is both simple and enjoyable, if you once understand the principle back of it well enough to believe it. First and above everything else, be sure of what it is you really want. Then specialize your desire along these lines.
Chapter 6 — Suggestions for Making Your Mental Picture
Perhaps you want to feel that you’ve lived to some purpose. You want to be content and happy, and you feel that with good health and with successful business you could enjoy this state of mind. After you have decided once and for all that this is what you want, you proceed to picture yourself healthy, and your business just as great a success as you can naturally conceive it growing into.
The best time for making your definite picture is just before breakfast and before retiring at night. As it is necessary to give yourself plenty of time, it may be necessary to rise earlier than is your usual habit. Go into a room where you will not be disturbed, meditate for a few moments upon the practical working of the law of visualizing, and ask yourself, “How did the things about me first come into existence? How may I find it helpful to get more quickly in touch with the invisible supply?”
Someone felt that comfort would be better expressed and experienced by sitting on a chair than on the floor. The very beginning of the meditation, the chair, was the desire to be at ease. With this came the picture of some sort of a chair. The same principle applies to the hat and the clothes that you wear. Go carefully into this thought of the principle back of the thing. Establish it as a personal experience; make it a fact to your consciousness.
If you are thorough in this, you will find yourself in the deep consciousness beneath the surface of your own thought-power. Then open a window, take about ten deep breaths, and during the time draw a large imaginary circle of light around you. As you inhale (keeping yourself in the center of this circle of light) see great rays of light coming from the circle and entering your body at all points, centralizing itself at your solar plexus.
Hold the breath a few moments at this central light of your body (the solar plexus) then slowly exhale. As you do this mentally, see imaginary rays, or sprays, of light going up through the body and down and out through the feet. Mentally spray your entire body with this imaginary light. When you have finished the breathing exercise, sit in a comfortable upright chair and mentally know there is but one life, one substance, and this life substance of the universe is finding pleasure in self-recognition in you. Repeat some affirmation of this kind, until you feel the truth and reality of the words that you are affirming. Then begin your picture.
Whether your desire is for a state of consciousness or a possession, large or small, begin at the beginning. If you want a house, begin by seeing yourself in the kind of house you desire. Go all through it, taking careful note of the rooms, where the windows are situated, and such other details as help you to feel the reality of your concept.
You might change some of the furniture and look into some of the mirrors just to see how healthy, wealthy and happy you look. Go over your picture again and again until you feel the reality of it, then write it all down just as you have seen it, with the feeling that, “The best there is, is mine. There is no limit to me, because my mind is a center of divine operation” and your picture is as certain to come true, in your physical world, as the sun is to shine.
Chapter 7 — Things to Remember
In Using Your Thought Power for the Production of New Conditions,
1. Be sure to know what conditions you wish to produce. Then weigh carefully to what further results the accomplishment of your desire will lead.
2. By letting your thought dwell upon a mental picture, you are concentrating the creative spirit to this center, where all its forces are equally balanced.
3. Visualizing brings your objective mind into a state of equilibrium which enables you to consciously direct the flow of spirit to a definitely recognized purpose and to carefully guide your thought from including a flow in the opposite direction.
4. You must always bear in mind that you are dealing with a wonderful potential energy — which is not yet differentiated into any particular mold, and that by the action of your mind you can differentiate it into any specific mold that you will. Your picture assists you to keep your mind fixed on the fact that the inflow of this creative energy is taking place. Also by your mental picture you are determining the direction you wish the sensitive creative power to take, and by doing this the externalization of your picture is a certainty.
5. Remember when you are visualizing properly that there is no strenuous effort on your thoughts to hold your thought-forms in place. Strenuous effort defeats your purpose, and suggests the consciousness of an adverse force to be fought against, and this creates conditions adverse to your picture.
6. By holding your picture in a cheerful frame of mind, you shut out all thoughts that would disperse the spiritual nucleus of your picture. Because the law is creative in its action, your pictured desire is certain of accomplishment.
7. The seventh and great thing to remember in visualizing is that you are making a mental picture for the purpose of determining the quality you are giving to the previously undifferentiated substance and energy rather than to arrange the specific circumstances for its manifestation. That is the work of creative power itself. It will build its own forms of expression quite naturally, if you will allow it, and save you a great deal of needless anxiety. What you really want is expansion in a certain direction, whether of health, wealth, or what not, and so long as you get it (as you surely will, if you confidently hold to your picture) what does it matter whether it reaches you by some channel which you thought you could count upon, or through some other of whose existence you had no idea. You are concentrating energy of a particular kind for a particular purpose. Bear this in mind and let specific details take care of themselves, and never mention your intention to anyone.
Remember always, that Nature from her clearly visible surface to her most arcane depths is one vast storehouse of light and good entirely devoted to your individual use. Your conscious Oneness with the great Whole is the secret of success and when once you have fathomed this you can enjoy your possession of the whole or a part of it at will, because by your recognition you have made it, and can increasingly make it yours.
Never forget that every physical thing, whether for you or against you, was a sustained thought before it was a thing.
Thought as thought is neither good nor bad, it is creative action and always takes physical form.
Therefore, the thoughts you dwell upon become the things you possess or do not possess.
Chapter 8 — Why I Took Up the Study of Mental Science
I have frequently been questioned about my reasons for taking up the study of Mental Science, and as to the results of my search, not only in knowledge of principles, but also in the application of that knowledge to the development of my own life and experience.
Such inquiries are justifiable, because one who essays the role of a messenger and teacher of psychological