“Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?”And the prophet replied, “All poets believe that it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removed mountains: but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.”
. . . Blake

“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”Persuasion is an inner effort of intense attention. To listen attentively as though you heard is to evoke, to activate. By listening, you can hear what you want to hear and persuade those beyond the range of the outer ear.Speak it inwardly in your imagination only.Make your inner conversation match your fulfilled desire. What you desire to hear without, you must hear within. Embrace the without within and become one who hears only that which implies the fulfillment of his desire, and all the external happenings in the world will become a bridge leading to the objective realization of your desire.Your inner speech is perpetually written all around you in happenings. Learn to relate these happenings to your inner speech and you will become self-taught.

By inner speech is meant those mental conversations which you carry on with yourself. They may be inaudible when you are awake because of the noise and distractions of the outer world of becoming, but they are quite audible in deep meditation and dream.

But whether they be audible or inaudible, you are their author and fashion your world in their likeness.

“There is a God in heaven [and heaven is within you]
that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king
Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy
dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these.”

Inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire is the way to create an intelligible world for yourself.

Observe your inner speech for it is the cause of future action. Inner speech reveals the state of consciousness from which you view the world. Make your inner speech match your fulfilled desire, for your inner speech is manifested all around you in happenings.

“If any man offend not in word, the same
is a perfect man and able also to bridle the
whole body. Behold, we put bits in the horses’
mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn
about their whole body. Behold also the ships,
which though they be so great, and are driven by
fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a
very small helm, whithersoever the governor
listeth. Even so the tongue is a little member,
and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a
matter a little fire kindleth!”

The whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of the Word . . Inner Speech.

An uncritical observation of our inner talking will reveal to us the ideas from which we view the world. Inner talking mirrors our imagination, and our imagination mirrors the state with which it is fused.

If the state with which we are fused is the cause of the phenomenon of our life, then we are relieved of the burden of wondering what to do, for we have no alternative but to identify ourselves with our aim, and inasmuch as the state with which we are identified mirrors itself in our inner speech, then to change the state with which we are fused, we must first change our inner talking.

It is our inner conversations which make tomorrow’s facts.

“Put off the former conversation, the old man,
which is corrupt… and be renewed in the spirit
of your mind… put on the new man, which is
created in righteousness.”
Our minds, like our stomachs,
are whetted by change of food.
. . . Quintillian

Stop all of the old mechanical negative inner talking and start a new positive and constructive inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire.

Inner talking is the beginning, the sowing of the seeds of future action. To determine the action, you must consciously initiate and control your inner talking.

Construct a sentence which implies the fulfillment of your aim, such as

“I have a large, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit”, or “I AM happily married”, “I AM wanted”, “I AM contributing to the good of the world”, and repeat such a sentence over and over until you are inwardly affected by it.

Our inner speech represents in various ways the world we live in.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder
fields! The sesamum was sesamum, the
corn was corn. The Silence and the Darkness
knew! So is a man’s fate born.
. . . The Light of Asia

Ends run true to origins.
Those that go searching for love only
make manifest their own lovelessness.
And the loveless never find love, only
the loving find love, and they never have
to seek for it.
. . . D. H. Lawrence

Man attracts what he is. The art of life is to sustain the feeling of the wish fulfilled and let things come to you, not to go after them or think they flee away.

Observe your inner talking and remember your aim. Do they match? Does your inner talking match what you would say audibly had you achieved your goal?

The individual’s inner speech and actions attract the conditions of his life. Through uncritical self-observation of your inner talking you find where you are in the inner world, and where you are in the inner world is what you are in the outer world. You put on the new man whenever ideals and inner speech match. In this way alone can the new man be born.

Inner talking matures in the dark. From the dark it issues into the light. The right inner speech is the speech that would be yours were you to realize your ideal.

In other words, it is the speech of fulfilled desire.

“I AM that.”

There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon
man alone, and on no other mortal creature. These
two are mind and speech; and the gift of mind and
speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man
uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing
from the immortals… and when he quits the body,
mind and speech will be his guides, and by them he
will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls
that have attained to bliss.
. . . Hermetica, Walter Scott’s translation

The circumstances and conditions of life are out pictured inner talking, solidified sound.

Inner speech calls events into existence.

In every event, is the creative sound that is its life and being. All that a man believes and consents to as true reveals itself in his inner speech. It is his Word, his life.

Try to notice what you are saying in yourself at this moment, to what thoughts and feelings you are consenting. They will be perfectly woven into your tapestry of life.

To change your life, you must change your inner talking, for “life”, said Hermes, “is the union of Word and Mind”.

When imagination matches your inner speech to fulfilled desire, there will then be a straight path in yourself from within out, and the without will instantly reflect the within for you, and you will know reality is only actualized inner talking.

“Receive with meekness the inborn Word
which is able to save your souls.”

Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious exercise of his imagination matching his inner speech to his fulfilled desire. Because man does not perfectly match them, the results are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain.

Persistent assumption of the wish fulfilled is the means of fulfilling the intention.

As we control our inner talking, matching it to our fulfilled desires, we can lay aside all other processes. Then we simply act by clear imagination and intention. We imagine the wish fulfilled and carry on mental conversations from that premise.

Through controlled inner talking from premises of fulfilled desire, seeming miracles are performed.

The future becomes the present and reveals itself in our inner speech. To be held by the inner speech of fulfilled desire is to be safely anchored in life.

Our lives may seem to be broken by events, but they are never broken so long as we retain the inner speech of fulfilled desire. All happiness depends on the active voluntary use of imagination to construct and inwardly affirm that we are what we want to be.

We match ourselves to our ideals by constantly remembering our aim and identifying ourselves with it. We fuse with our aims by frequently occupying the feeling of our wish fulfilled. It is the frequency, the habitual occupancy, that is the secret of success. The oftener we do it, the more natural it is. Fancy assembles. Continuous imagination fuses.

It is possible to resolve every situation by the proper use of imagination. Our task is to get the right sentence, the one which implies that our desire is realized, and fire the imagination with it. All this is intimately connected with the mystery of

“the still small voice”.

Inner talking reveals the activities of imagination, activities which are the causes of the circumstances of life. As a rule, man is totally unaware of his inner talking and therefore sees himself not as the cause but the victim of circumstance.

To consciously create circumstance, man must consciously direct his inner speech, matching “the still small voice” to his fulfilled desires.

“He calls things not seen as though they were.”

Right inner speech is essential. It is the greatest of the arts. It is the way out of limitation into freedom. Ignorance of this art has made the world a battlefield and penitentiary where blood and sweat alone are expected, when it should be a place of marveling and wondering.

Right inner talking is the first step to becoming what you want to be.
Speech is an image of mind, and mind
is an image of God.
. . . Hermetica, Scott translation

On the morning of April 12, 1953, my wife was awakened by the sound of a great voice of authority speaking within her and saying, “You must stop spending your thoughts, time, and money. Everything in life must be an investment.”

To spend is to waste, to squander, to layout without return.

To invest is to layout for a purpose from which a profit is expected.

This revelation of my wife is about the importance of the moment. It is about the transformation of the moment. What we desire does not lie in the future but in ourselves at this very moment.

At any moment in our lives, we are faced with an infinite choice:

“what we are and what we want to be”.

And what we want to be is already existent, but to realize it we must match our inner speech and actions to it.

“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching
anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for
them of My Father which is in heaven.”

It is only what is done now that counts. The present moment does not recede into the past. It advances into the future to confront us, spent or invested.

Thought is the coin of heaven. Money is its earthly symbol. Every moment must be invested, and our inner talking reveals whether we are spending or investing. Be more interested in what you are inwardly “saying now” than what you “have said” by choosing wisely what you think and what you feel now.

Any time we feel misunderstood, misused, neglected, suspicious, afraid, we are spending our thoughts and wasting our time.

Whenever we assume the feeling of being what we want to be, we are investing.

We cannot abandon the moment to negative inner talking and expect to retain command of life. Before us go the results of all that seemingly is behind.

Not gone is the last moment . . but oncoming.
“My word shall not return unto Me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

The circumstances of life are the muffled utterances of the inner talking that made them . . the word made visible.

“The Word”, said Hermes,

“is Son, and the Mind is Father of the Word.
They are not separate one from the other;
for life is the union of Word and Mind.”
“He willed us forth from Himself
by the Word of Truth.”

“Let us be imitators of God as dear children”

and use our inner speech wisely to mold an outer world in harmony with our ideal.

“The Lord spake by me, and His
Word was in my tongue.”

The mouth of God is the mind of man. Feed God only the best.

“Whatsoever things are of good report…
think on these things.”

The present moment is always precisely right for an investment, to inwardly speak the right word.

“The word is very near to you, in your mouth,
and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I
have set before you this day life and good,
death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life.”

You choose life and good and blessings by being that which you choose. Like is known to like alone. Make your inner speech bless and give good reports.

Man’s ignorance of the future is the result of his ignorance of his inner talking. His inner talking mirrors his imagination, and his imagination is a government in which the opposition never comes into power.

If the reader asks,

“What if the inner speech remains subjective and is unable to find an object for its love?”,

the answer is: it will not remain subjective, for the very simple reason that inner speech is always objectifying itself.

What frustrates and festers and becomes the disease that afflicts humanity is man’s ignorance of the art of matching inner words to fulfilled desire. Inner speech mirrors imagination, and imagination is Christ.

Alter your inner speech, and your perceptual world changes.

Whenever inner speech and desire are in conflict, inner speech invariably wins. Because inner speech objectifies itself, it is easy to see that if it matches desire, desire will be objectively realized.

Were this not so, I would say with Blake,
“Sooner murder an infant in its cradle
than nurse unacted desires.”

But I know from experience,

“The tongue… setteth on fire the course of nature.”