16.
“Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve”
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.
Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
17.
When William Blake wrote,
What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be,
he was only repeating the eternal truth,
there is nothing unclean of itself; but to
him that esteemeth anything to be unclean,
to him it is unclean.
Because there is nothing unclean of itself (or clean of itself), you should assume the best and think only of that which is lovely and of good report.
It is not superior insight, but ignorance of this law of assumption, if you read into the greatness of men some littleness with which you may be familiar . . or into some situation or circumstance an unfavorable conviction.
Your particular relationship to another influences your assumption with respect to that other and makes you see in him that which you do see. If you can change your opinion of another, then what you now believe of him cannot be absolutely true but is only relatively true.
18.
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.
19.
The changes which take place in your life as a result of your changed concept of yourself always appear to the unenlightened to be the result, not of a change of your consciousness, but of chance, outer cause, or coincidence.
However, the only fate governing your life is the fate determined by your own concepts, your own assumptions; for an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.
The ideal you seek and hope to attain will not manifest itself, will not be realized by you until you have imagined that you are already that ideal.
There is no escape for you except by a radical psychological transformation of yourself, except by your assumption of the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Therefore, make results or accomplishments the crucial test of your ability to use your imagination.
Everything depends on your attitude towards yourself. That which you will not affirm as true of yourself can never be realized by you, for that attitude alone is the necessary condition by which you realize your goal.
20.
Prayer is the art of assuming the feeling of being and having that which you want. When the senses confirm the absence of your wish, all conscious effort to counteract this suggestion is futile and tends to intensify the suggestion.
Prayer is the art of yielding to the wish and not the forcing of the wish. Whenever your feeling is in conflict with your wish, feeling will be the victor.
The dominant feeling invariably expresses itself. Prayer must be without effort. In attempting to fix an attitude of mind which is denied by the senses, effort is fatal.