36.
All transformation begins with an intense, burning desire to be transformed. The first step in the
“renewing of the mind”
is desire. You must want to be different, and intend to be, before you can begin to change yourself. Then you must make your future dream a present fact.
You do this by assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled. By desiring to be other than what you are, you can create an ideal of the person you want to be and assume that you are already that person. If this assumption is persisted in until it becomes your dominant feeling, the attainment of your ideal is inevitable.
37.
“Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray believe that you have received them, and ye shall have them.”
The only condition required is that you believe that your prayers are already realized.
Your prayer must be answered if you assume the feeling that would be yours were you already in possession of your objective. The moment you accept the wish as an accomplished fact, the subconscious finds means for its realization.
To pray successfully then, you must yield to the wish, that is, feel the wish fulfilled.
The perfectly disciplined man is always in tune with the wish as an accomplished fact. He knows that consciousness is the one and only reality, that ideas and feelings are facts of consciousness and are as real as objects in space; therefore he never entertains a feeling which does not contribute to his happiness, for feelings are the causes of the actions and circumstances of his life.
38.
Over a century ago, this truth was stated by Emerson as follows:
As the world was plastic and fluid in the
hands of God, so it is ever to so much of
his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance
and sin, it is flint. They adapt themselves to
it as they may, but in proportion as a man has
anything in him divine, the firmament flows
before him and takes his signet and form.
Your assumption is the hand of God molding the firmament into the image of that which you assume. The assumption of the wish fulfilled is the high tide which lifts you easily off the bar of the senses where you have so long lain stranded. It lifts the mind into prophecy in the full right sense of the word; and if you have that controlled imagination and absorbed attention which it is possible to attain, you may be sure that all your assumption implies will come to pass.
39.
The principle of “Least Action” governs everything in physics, from the path of a planet to the path of a pulse of light.
Least Action is the minimum of energy, multiplied by the minimum of time. Therefore, in moving from your present state to the state desired, you must use the minimum of energy and take the shortest possible time.
Your journey from one state of consciousness to another is a psychological one, so, to make the journey, you must employ the psychological equivalent of “Least Action” and the psychological equivalent is mere assumption.
The day you fully realize the power of assumption, you discover that it works in complete conformity with this principle. It works by means of attention, minus effort. Thus, with least action, through an assumption, you hurry without haste and reach your goal without effort.
Because creation is finished, what you desire already exists.
It is excluded from view because you can see only the contents of your own consciousness. It is the function of an assumption to call back the excluded view and restore full vision.
It is not the world, but your assumptions that change. An assumption brings the invisible into sight. It is nothing more nor less than seeing with the eye of God, i.e., imagination.
“For the Lord seeth not as a man seeth,
for man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
The heart is the primary organ of sense, hence the first cause of experience. When you look “on the heart”, you are looking at your assumptions: assumptions determine your experience. Watch your assumption with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Assumptions have the power of objective realization.
40.
The assumption of the wish fulfilled is the ship that carries you over the unknown seas to the fulfillment of your dream.
The assumption is everything; realization is subconscious and effortless.
“Assume a virtue if you have it not.”
Act on the assumption that you already possess that which you sought.
“Blessed is she that believed; for there shall
be a performance of those things which were
told her from the Lord.”
As the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the Christian mysteries, so the Assumption is their crown.
Psychologically, the Immaculate Conception means the birth of an idea in your own consciousness, unaided by another.
For instance, when you have a specific wish or hunger or longing, it is an immaculate conception in the sense that no physical person or thing plants it in your mind. It is self-conceived.
Every man is the Mary of the Immaculate Conception and birth to his idea must give. The Assumption is the crown of the mysteries because it is the highest use of consciousness. When in imagination you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are mentally lifted up to a higher level.
When, through your persistence, this assumption becomes actual fact, you automatically find yourself on a higher level, that is, you have achieved your desire, in your objective world.
Your assumption guides all your conscious and subconscious movements towards its suggested end so inevitably that it actually dictates the events.
The drama of life is a psychological one and the whole of it is written and produced by your assumptions.
Learn the art of assumption, for only in this way can you create your own happiness.