He Had the Wrong Self Image
In counseling a young man whose basic problem was that he was chronically ill, it became apparent that as soon as he recovered from one ailment he acquired another sickness. He had had six operations in six years. He maintained an image of himself as being sick. He had been told when he was young that he was sickly and would always be weak. He accepted this and, as a result, learned to be unhealthy. His belief that he was always destined to be sickly was in his subconscious mind, and whatever he believed came to pass. Every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of Light, with Whom there is no change, neither shadow of turning. Where is the Father? How long will you look for Him in some far off locality? How long will you seek among the husks for the substance of life? Every gift that is to come to you as John Smith will proceed out of the center of the I AM consciousness within yourself. Behold, I AM He that should come. I AM That I AM has sent me into expression. It is wonderful, it is wonderful. Blessings, blessings, blessings. I AM the Son of the Living God. Claim your rights, and press your claim. Son of the Living God, I salute you! Arise! Leave your human reasoning and go unto your Father within. Let the filthy be filthy still. Let all those who wish to sell the Word of God continue to do so. Let those who what to argue continue their arguments. Let those judges and spiritual busybodies cast their stones. Go thy way; it is well with thee. The new secret has been revealed to you; do you hear?
It is written, “My house shall be called of all nations a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves” “. . .for Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people”. The thieves who rob you are your own false beliefs. It is your belief in a thing not the thing itself that aids you. There is only one power: I AM He. Because of your belief in external things, you think power into them by transferring the power that you are to the external thing. Realize you yourself are the power you have mistakenly given to outer conditions.
Stop asking yourself whether or not you are worthy or unworthy to claim yourself to be that which you desire to be. You will be condemned by the world only as long as you condemn yourself. You do not need to work out anything. The works are finished. The principle by which all things are made and without which there is not anything made that is made is eternal. You are this principle. Your awareness of being is this everlasting law. You have never expressed anything that you were not aware of being and you never will. Assume the consciousness of that which you desire to express. Claim it until it becomes a natural manifestation. Feel it and live within that feeling until you make it your nature. Here is a simple formula. Take your attention from your present conception of yourself and place it on that ideal of yours, the ideal you had heretofore thought beyond your reach. Claim yourself to be your ideal, not as something that you will be in time, but as that which you are in the immediate present. Do this, and your present world of limitations will disintegrate as your new claim rises like the phoenix from its ashes. “Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s”. You do not fight against your problem; your problem will only live as long as you are conscious of it. Take your attention away from your problem and the multitude of reasons why you cannot achieve your ideal. Concentrate your attention entirely upon the thing desired. “Leave all and follow me”. In the face of seemingly mountainous obstacles, claim your freedom. The consciousness of freedom is the Father of freedom. It has a way of expressing itself which no man knows. “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourself, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you”. “I AM the Lord”. I AM (your consciousness) is the Lord. The consciousness that the thing is done, that the work is finished, is the Lord of any situation.
Instead of looking for new places and new scenes in the without, whenever you feel the need of a change, look for new sensations and experiences in your own consciousness. What exists in the within is just as real as that which exists in the without, and it is of more importance to understand. Therefore, by training the mind to take journeys into the beautiful worlds within, you are not only acquiring the art of forming new mental impressions within; you are also enlarging mind and consciousness. You are gaining valuable information about many things that material man knows nothing of; and you are preparing the way for real freedom and much higher development. The real purpose, however, of these journeys to the within, should be the change of thought, and for that reason should be taken whenever the need of mental change is felt. To begin, realize that the larger life within is the fullness of life, and cannot in any way lack the real essentials of life. Realize that the worlds within are ideal worlds, and are therefore not imperfect in any way. Realize that the new inner states of consciousness that you may discern, contain the unlimited possibilities of absolute existence, and are therefore neither incomplete nor imperfect in any way whatever. Then realize that those inner places are not separated from you, but are necessary parts of your whole being, and also that the I AM, the real you, is at the very center of this whole being; and lastly, realize that whenever you turn your attention upon the potential, the within, the ideal, you are looking upon something that contains within itself all the elements of absolute perfection.
Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory. Freedom or imprisonment, satisfaction or frustration can only be differentiated by the consciousness of being. Regardless of your problem, its duration or its magnitude, careful attention to these instructions will in an amazingly short time eliminate even the memory of the problem. Ask yourself this question: “How would I feel if I were free?” The very moment you sincerely ask this question, the answer comes. No man can tell another the satisfaction of his desire fulfilled. It remains for each within himself to experience the feeling and joy of this automatic change of consciousness. The feeling or thrill that comes to one in response to his self questioning is the Father state of consciousness or Foundation Stone upon which the conscious change is built. Just how this feeling will embody itself no one knows, but it will; the Father (consciousness) has ways that no man knows; it is the unalterable law. All things express their nature. As you wear a feeling, it becomes your nature. It might take a moment or a year . . it is entirely dependent upon the degree of conviction. As doubts vanish and you can feel “I AM This”, you begin to develop the fruit or the nature of the thing you are feeling yourself to be.
So it is recorded that this Son and Savior of the world was born of a virgin. It is also recorded that this virgin mother was traveling through the night, that she stopped at an inn and was given the only available room among the animals and there in a manger, where the animals fed, the shepherds found the Holy Child. The animals with whom the Holy Virgin was lodged are the holy animals of the zodiac. There in that constantly moving circle of astronomical animals stands the Holy Mother, Virgo, and there you will see her every midnight of December 24th, standing on the eastern horizon as the sun and savior of the world starts his journey northward. Psychologically, this birth takes place in man on that day when man discovers his consciousness to be the sun and savior of his world. When man knows the significance of this mystical statement, “I AM the light of the world”, he will realize that his I AM, or consciousness, is the sun of his life, which sun radiates images upon the screen of space. These images are in the likeness of that which he, as man, is conscious of being. Thus qualities and attributes which appear to move upon the screen of his world are really projections of this light from within himself.
All the quotes in The Power of I AM are credited
to the following authors.
Neville Goddard, Joseph Murphy, Walter C. Lanyon, Walter Devoe, Lillian DeWaters, Emmet Fox, Ella Wheeler, Christian D Larson, Edna Lister, Thomas Troward