CONTROLLING YOUR THOUGHTS

Uell S. Andersen
Modern day Mystic

CONTROLLING YOUR THOUGHTS

[The following excerpts are from Three Magic Words by U. S. Andersen]

THE BAD HABIT

It is often a very fantastic thing to observe a man accept temporarily the premise that positive thinking can change his life, then discard this transcendent truth as unworkable after the most perfunctory trial. He might, for instance, decide today to alter his thinking and approach to life. He might actually change his outlook and attitudes very considerably for a period of a week or even a month.

If at the end of that time, however, he has not been witness to a miracle, he all too often raises his hands in despair and shouts, "It doesn't work!" and falls immediately into his former habits of thinking.

A lifetime of negative thinking will not be undone in a week! Don't for a moment fall into the trap of thinking that unless results are immediate you are on the wrong track. It is a case of faith or fear, and fear is only the negative use of faith.

No matter how you choose to think, you are calling into existence those very things you believe in. The choice then is simple: good or evil. There is in this life no alternative to faith other than fear and evil. No sane person, understanding this, will dally with his choice.

But how to undo the habit? That is the problem. A bad habit seldom yields to half-hearted measures, and negative thinking is certainly the most persistent and destructive habit ever assimilated into the mind and nature of mankind. To get at this fellow requires measures as sure and aseptic as the surgeon's knife, and thus it is we offer you the only tool possible.

BREAKING THE BAD HABIT

If a doctor discovers that your body is not receiving the proper nutrition, he puts you on a diet. His reasoning on this is simple. He discovers that certain elements and vitamins and minerals are lacking in the chemical composition of your body, therefore he would restore their proper balance by having you eat certain foods that contain them in abundance.

In any event, he asks you to exercise a conscious choice in the foods you eat, selecting some and rejecting a great many more. It is just such a procedure, confined entirely to the mind and spirit, which we shall ask you to adopt for the next thirty days. In other words, we are asking that you go on a thirty-day mental diet.

For thirty days, one month, you are not to accept a single negative thought nor dwell on a single negative premise. This does not mean that such thoughts or ideas will not occur to you. They most certainly will occur, as frequently or even more so than they have all your life.

This simply means that you will refuse to accept any of them, discarding them immediately as they occur, as fictional ideas, without basis in truth, delusions that are without foundation for they have no roots in your mind.

In this manner, by consciously exercising a choice of that which you allow to become part of your mind, by deliberately planting only positive seeds in the garden of the Subconscious, you will not only set about an eventual harvesting of the greatest bumper crop of good ever to enter your life, but more important, you will be building up a habit of positive thinking that will become easier and easier, day by day.

Eventually, you will no longer have to struggle with positive and negative, good and evil, truth and illusion. You will ally yourself with the forces for good in the universe and achieve an attunement and an effortlessness in life that once seemed impossible of imagining.

THE MENTAL DIET

What are these thoughts that we are going to refuse to entertain? They are any thoughts that might in the smallest or greatest manner cast into a pessimistic or poor light yourself, your family, your friends, your social group, your state, your nation, or the entire human race. They are, in short, negative thoughts of any type, regardless of whether they seem personally aimed at you yourself, or even at an inanimate object.

Now don't be blind about this and say, "Oh, I never think negatively." And don't be fearful about it and say, "I couldn't manage to concentrate on that sort of thing for thirty days." Don't say you haven't got time. Don't say it won't work. We needn't even point out how and why each of these attitudes destroys the goal even before the experiment has begun.

Before you start the thirty-day mental diet, spend a day or two observing how your mind is working. Carry a notebook and pencil with you if you will, and keep a record of each negative thought you entertain for a period of two days. The result will astound you and convince you beyond all doubt of the absolute necessity of embarking on the mental diet.

This is going to be no easy time, discarding every negative thought for a period of thirty days, but it is something you absolutely must do. Until you become master of your thinking, you will never become master of your fate.

If you fall from the path of your resolve and entertain negative thoughts, become depressed, apprehensive, pessimistic, there is nothing to do but start over. You must negotiate thirty days of positive thinking without any serious intrusion of negative thought. It is exceptionally important that you do this thing. Let nothing stand in your way.

During the period of your mental diet, you will be helped by understanding exactly what it is you are doing. You are training your mind to obey you rather than you obey it. You are training yourself to think more of less and less of more. In other words, you are developing the habit of concentration as well as the habit of positive thinking.

TOO MANY THOUGHTS

We humans think altogether too much on altogether too many things. In the space of a single moment our minds may embrace a hodge-podge of unrelated ideas and half-formed conceptions such as could not be found on the printed page outside of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

We jump helter-skelter from one idea to the next, unguided, unguarded, seizing on whatever is presented to us across the moving screen of mind and declaring it to be real. We start the Subconscious Mind moving in one direction, halt it, start it off in another, recall it, send it off again, recall it, literally hundreds of times each day.

We have developed habits of absolutely undisciplined thinking, and very often where any discipline at all is present it is aimed at negative thinking. One moment we are happy and entertain happy thoughts. Then a shadow crosses the face of the sun, and we entertain unhappy thoughts.

A friend pays us a compliment, and we feel important and vain. An acquaintance castigates us, and we entertain thoughts of resentment and bitterness. Always we wait for impetus from outside to determine what thoughts we will accept and which we will reject, and thus we become victims of every wind that blows and every twig that falls, and the temper of our lives is determined by countless unending streams of circumstances over which we have no control.

Scarce indeed is the man who sets himself up to accept only certain thoughts and beliefs and, firm in his faith and foundation, outwaits the world to achieve his ends. The sea and the mountain, the storm and the stars shall not persevere against such a man, and he shall move the very ends of the earth.

DO WE THINK?

As human beings we have been tricked into believing that we think. In other words, we believe we make thoughts. It is a peculiar thing that we believe this, since no one has ever been able to say whence a thought comes and from what it is made, but nevertheless most treatises on the mind hold that man thinks up things and makes up thoughts.

Yet if you carefully analyze the process of thought, you will find that it is not you who thinks at all, but it is rather you who observes thoughts as they flit across your consciousness. Stated differently, it is as if the real you occupied a still and guarded position in the very recesses of your being, from which you observe a purely mental world that consists entirely of thoughts.

These thoughts parade across your consciousness in a never-ending stream, following one upon the other unceasingly. Some you select and add to you, others you reject and send on their way. But the plain and irrevocable fact is that it is not you who sets the stream of thoughts in motion. If you doubt this, try to stop it!

You will find that all your efforts cannot stop your thinking, for the essence of being is observation, contemplation, and choice; and though you may slow the stream of thoughts a very great deal, and examine each thought presented to you with much more care, still they come, these thoughts from out of nowhere, exhibiting themselves before your consciousness, demanding of you that you establish a position and accept some while you reject others.

A writer who sits down and writes a novel does not "think up" his story and his characters. He simply puts himself in the position of someone who is going to write a story, then he observes the thoughts and ideas that cross his consciousness. On and on they come and he rejects them, until finally there comes an idea which appeals to him.

This idea he takes unto himself and examines and then accepts. Now instead of just being in a position to write a story, he is in the position of writing a story about a man who is, let us say, alone on a desert island.

He wonders how the man got there, and on the stream of thoughts come, and he accepts one, and now he is writing a story about a man who was marooned on a desert island by pirates. And so it goes with each of the facets and details of his story.

In no case does he "think them up." His entire story, once assembled and written, is simply evidence of the thousands of choices he has made from the thoughts that have streamed through his mind. He has not thought up a thing; he has simply exercised choice. His story tells you what he has accepted; nothing will ever tell you the millions of ideas and thoughts which he has rejected.

WE CHOOSE THOUGHTS

Like the writer who authors a story, each of us authors his own life by his choice of what thoughts he will accept and which he will reject. Each of our lives is a story, unfolded by the silent contemplative author who dwells within us, who does nothing more than accept and reject, who is involved only in making choices.

This indwelling Self says, "This is so," "This is not so," "I believe this," I feel fine in this circumstance," "I feel badly in this circumstance," "I am great," "I am nothing," "There is hope," "There is despair." And each of these choices is manifested in the physical world.

We are today living testimonies to the choices we have made from the thoughts that have streamed through our minds. We are literally products of the thoughts we have chosen to accept. We are what we believe we are, that only, nothing more or less.

So it is that the mental diet upon which we are about to embark is so important. We have assured the indwelling Self that it can be anything it accepts and has faith in, and we are now about to develop in it the habit of choosing only those thoughts and ideas that will constructively add good unto it.

We are teaching ourselves to accept only good. We are teaching ourselves to reject all evil. We are deliberately compelling ourselves to accept all love, all kindness, all hope, all joy, all expansion, all abundance, all health, all vigor.

We are deliberately compelling ourselves to reject all suffering, all sorrow, all depression, all morbidness, all inferiority, all aches and pains. We are saying nothing is true but the great and the good and the beautiful, only these will we add unto ourselves.

For thirty days we stand guard while the habit forms. Thereafter, though we may relax a little, we will not let go our sentinel, for we know that we are only what we accept from the thoughts that come to us, and more than ever the wisdom of Jesus is brought home, "As ye believe, so shall it be done unto you."

St. Augustine wrote:
"I, Lord, went wandering like a strayed sheep, seeking Thee with anxious reasoning without, whilst Thou wast within me. I went round the streets and squares of the city seeking thee; and I found thee not, because in vain I sought without for him who was within myself."

Heed the silent dweller in the recesses of your being. Know that to him all things are possible, according to what he accepts. You are what you choose to be, and your choice is made in the mind. Seek the high and forsake the low. A man adds all things unto himself simply by taking a position with impregnable faith.

RISING ABOVE CIRCUMSTANCE

The world is too much with us, and we think far too much. In the process of our thirty-day mental diet, we must learn to slow the stream of our thoughts and we must learn to deny the final reality of the physical world about us. The first of these aims may be accomplished by a simple breathing exercise and meditation; the latter is far more difficult.

It is a fine thing to awake in the morning full of the exaltation of a vision that has come to us in the night, to arise from bed full of a vague remembrance of a brilliance and a peace that surpassed everything. We are uplifted, quickened with new faith and new resolve. For a few minutes we are nearly convinced that we have found the way, but how easily we let go of our faith, and how stupidly.

There is a spot on the suit we had decided to wear, or our best dress has sprung a seam. The toaster isn't working properly and our toast is burned. We spill our milk or our coffee, or somebody else does. The car doesn't start or we miss our bus. We receive a fancied slight on the street. It is a bad day.

Nothing ever seems to go right for us. The vision is long gone, and we seem to be little ants in a limitless universe, hemmed in on all sides by destructive and malicious forces and by designing and preying beings. We are angry and resentful.

Thus we are victimized. Thus we deny the magnificent indwelling Self. Thus we are prompting the Universal Subconscious Mind in those very directions we do not wish to go. Thus, because we have accepted the physical world about us as having a higher reality than that world that exists only in mind, we have become pawns in a game of physical fate over which we have no control.

It matters not whence the thought comes, whether it filters to your consciousness in the silence of your bedroom, or whether it comes to you in the clatter of a busy workaday world; if you accept it, then it becomes a part of you and will be added to you in the physical world.

Thus you are continually accepting premises and convictions that are forced upon you by the circumstances and the people and the events you meet, even though they are often very contrary to what you really desire. It is this we mean when we say the world is too much with us.

"Judge not by appearances," said Jesus. If you would win your way to the manifestation of those things that are your goals, you must not be swayed from your conviction and faith by any of the events or circumstances you meet in your daily life.

Whatever is contrary to your belief you must reject as not having reality, as being only a temporary thing, a detour on the road you follow, not a setback at all but a necessary path to follow; for the whole plan rests in Universal Mind and though it may seem at the moment to be going against your desires, have no fear.

We will accept from the thought-things in the world around us only those which add to our faith and our conviction in the goals we have set or in ourselves. All other thought-things we reject as being only temporary and lacking final reality.

Thus in the inner recesses of our beings we maintain a place of quiet assurance and contemplation, steadfast always in our knowledge that our faith will become manifest in our lives. It is then we who set the temper of our thoughts. It is then we who achieve mastery over our fates. Our positions are unassailable; we create from within and are never victims of circumstance.

THOUGHT CONTROL

Equally important in arriving at mental control and faith is our ability to slow down the helter-skelter streams of thoughts that flow across our consciousness. It is the flittering haphazard Conscious Mind, never unified in purpose, always prompting the Subconscious Mind in dozens of different directions, that produces chaos in our surrounding world.

We must harness the Conscious Mind, control it, guide it in the paths we would follow.

Daily, just prior to your meditation period, you must practice the process of slowing your thought stream. Seek a place of quiet and solitude. Find a comfortable, restful seat. Relax every muscle. Start at the top of your head and move downward over your whole body.

Relax the muscles around your eyes and forehead, your cheek and lip and jaw muscles, the muscles in your neck. Let your head loll. Move it slowly around in a circle on your relaxed neck. Relax the muscles in your shoulders, in your arms, in your hands. Let your hands hang loosely.

Relax your stomach muscles, your abdomen, carefully relax all the muscles in your back, your thighs, your calves, feel the weight of your legs. Rest like this for several minutes and know that you are fully relaxed. Then concentrate on your breathing.

Gradually begin to slow the taking of each breath. Make each inhalation a little deeper. Breathe comfortably and peacefully, pausing at the end of each inhalation and exhalation, but do not pause so long that you begin gasping.
Slowly your respiration will reduce itself until your breathing is scarcely noticeable.

Slowly there will come over you a sense of peacefulness and drowsiness and security and comfort. Your mind will glide like a boat into a calm lagoon of unruffled and placid waters, and you will feel a sense of contentment. It is quiet there, so quiet that you can hear the voices of the soul.

Think very slowly. Deliberately watch your thoughts as they cross your consciousness. Hold onto them and examine them, but let them go. Neither accept nor reject them. Notice how each thought follows one upon the other in an endless stream of traffic.

Now ask yourself, "Who is it that observes this?" It will come upon you then that it is not you who thinks at all; it is you who observes and decides that only.

WHO IS "I?"

Ask yourself who this observer is that you refer to as "I." It is not thought. It is not body. It simply is, has being, observes. In the contemplative sense in which you feel it now, it is neither past nor present nor future, but simply exists. I am. I observe. I decide.

Here is your true being. Here is your real Self, the unfettered, untrammeled, eternal spectator. To find this point of consciousness from which all things and thoughts and moods are a matter of observation is to find the spiritual center of gravity, is to know yourself in all your true freedom and joy.

This "I," this observer, is the indwelling God, the real Self, the personal consciousness that is in all things and all life. To know it truly and at all times is to have the consciousness of Jesus the Christ.

Thus, in your daily practice of thought control, when you have slowed the thought stream after relaxation and breath control, turn always to the Self that dwells deep within you. Find the point of consciousness from whence all things are but observations. Then ask, "Who is this that observes?" Of this point of consciousness did Jesus speak when he said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all things shall be added unto you."

The arrival at this point of consciousness is the attainment of "the peace that passeth all understanding," and is the position from which all things are possible, without effort, without the exercising of will, but simply through contemplation and choice.

These things, then, we will do in our thirty-day mental diet. We will first reject all negative thoughts and ideas and circumstances, and refuse to add them to ourselves. We will entertain only positive thoughts of good and abundance and joy and love and kindness and success.

We will daily engage in a period of thought control which we will achieve with the aid of breathing exercises, always aiming at arriving at that point of consciousness where all things and thoughts are a matter of observation. From there we will engage in our meditations each day.

This will prove to be one of the most rewarding times of your life, not only because of the manifestations you meet within the physical world, but also because of the towering sense of peace and strength that will come to you as you grow to know the magnificence that is yours. You will sense the unity of all things, come to understand that nothing is done by man alone but all things are done by the Universal Subconscious Mind, or the mind of God.

You will further see that all of that mind is in you now and all the days to come, and you will understand that you have nothing to do but decide each of the issues of your life and put your faith and trust in the wisdom and omnipotence of this all-knowing mind.

LEAVE IT TO GOD

We are a civilization of people who suffer from a "I have to do it" complex. We believe that the responsibility for all things settles on our shoulders. Being materialists, we have great difficulty in analyzing anything except in a material sense, and our problems are largely confined to those of finding jobs, getting better jobs, and making more money.

We sense our inadequacy as we set out to beat the world, and this makes us all the more frantic in our rushing around, hurrying back and forth, worrying about this, worrying about that. Though the slogan on America's silver coins says, "In God we trust," we deny this as we set out to collect as many of these coins as we can.

Henry David Thoreau wrote:
"Whatever we leave to God, God does; and blesses us;
The work we choose should be our own, God lets alone."

Perhaps the most difficult thing each of us has to learn is to,"Let go and let God." As long as we keep our problems with us, dwelling on each aspect of them, lending reality to each negative quality we can perceive or construe, we are defeating our own ends.

The mighty power of the Universal Subconscious Mind, recognizing our command that we are determined to do things by ourselves, filters into our lives in a tiny trickle, over the dam we have built against it.

But once turn your problem over to the Universal Mind with the request," Here, you handle it," and the dam is removed and the torrent flows and miracles are wrought before our very eyes, such miracles that we can only wonder with awe at how lucky we are or how beneficent are the circumstances that surround us.

DO NOT DWELL ON YOUR PROBLEMS

Never keep any problem in your mind for more than a few minutes at a time. Consider the issues and the possible paths or courses of action you might take. If you cannot decide what to do, turn the problem over to Subconscious Mind with the sure knowledge that the correct answer will be returned to you.

You may return to your problem daily, thinking on its various aspects once again. It may be during one of these periods that the answer will come to you, though just as likely it will come upon you at any moment of the day, all unsuspecting.

Whenever the moment comes, you will entertain not the slightest doubt but what the answer is truth. It will burst upon you like a light, and very likely you will chastise yourself for not having been aware of it before; it will suddenly seem so simple.

Once you have made your decision, forget about your problem altogether, secure in the knowledge that its execution rests in the most capable hands in the universe. Reaffirm your faith in your goal by meditation, but under no circumstances try to predict the manner in which the Subconscious Mind will make it manifest.

If you yourself have forecast certain steps that must be accomplished by a certain time, and you find that such steps are not taken and even opposite or conflicting ones are taken, don't turn craven and lose your faith.

You have turned the execution of your problem or your work over to the wisest intelligence in all creation, and it is not your part to tell it what it should do or what it ought to have done in order to get where you both are going.

If you really think you would be a better pilot, then there is nothing for you to do but take the helm. But if, like most of us, you have spent many years at that helm without chart or compass or navigational instruments, only to founder on the rocks and shoals of life, you will wisely leave the helm and the navigation up to one who knows, and not keep trying to tell Him where He ought to steer or saddle yourself with emotional upset and antagonistic thinking when He doesn't steer where you think He ought to.

FAITH IS TRUST

All of us are much too likely to predict the way things should happen, and when they fail to follow the pattern of our predictions we are sure our goals will be denied us; thus we defeat ourselves.

A man decides to write a book. Assuming that his image and faith are clear, he actually sits down and after a period of time gets the book done. He sends it off to a publisher, and a while later receives the manuscript back with a rejection slip. He can now decide that the book is no good, do no more about it, and thus bring failure upon himself.

Or he can entertain a respect for the publisher's decision, look the manuscript over carefully, and decide whether or not it needs rewriting. If it doesn't (and this is a rare case indeed), he should reaffirm his faith and send it off to another publisher, and keep sending it until the book is finally accepted, for accepted it will be if his faith remains true.

More likely, however, he will rewrite it after each rejection, for what he has affirmed to the Subconscious Mind is that he will write a book good enough to be published, and his rejection slips are only part of the means by which he will turn the book into his best possible effort.

Faith is actually in the end little more than persistence, and a drop of water will wear a rock away if it keeps beating at it endlessly. Nothing stands against repeated effort. Bare feet wear cobblestones away. The soft morning dew repeated over years will dissolve iron. He who holds his image clear and true will arrive safely in harbor no matter the unsuspected seas or storms he weathers en route.

But wherever we go, whatever we do, we must always know that the Subconscious Mind is our mighty and invisible partner. The Subconscious is our executive vice-president, our crew and staff, advisor and confessor. We have nothing to do but lean back in our chairs and observe and decide, and the mightiest force in the universe leaps to do our bidding.

But we must delegate to our great partner full authority. He is the ways and means committee, and His nature is to work secretively. We cannot second guess Him, countermand His various moves.

He requires complete trust and confidence, and once He sets about a task we have given Him we must leave everything up to Him. Interference at any point He interprets as meaning a new goal, and He immediately sets about achieving this new one instead.

We must learn to leave Him alone, to let go of our problems as soon as He has taken them. Once we have learned to do this we will find that His nature is to wind things up in jig time and in the most marvelous manner. Once we have completely given over to Him any one of our problems and been witness to the manner in which He solves it, we will never again doubt or disbelieve.

FAITH VERSUS HOPE

One of the traps we so often fall into is the confusion of hope with faith. Hope has scarcely any relation to faith at all, and though many times more desirable than despair, nevertheless is a frail instrument indeed for moving the Subconscious Mind.

Hope is a pessimist looking at things optimistically. Hope is a querulous wish for something better. Hope says evil is more real than good, with the timid reservation that everything might turn out all right anyway. It is no wonder that those who seek to better their lives through hope are very seldom witness to improvements.

It is an understandable thing that most of us set about the projects of our lives with hope instead of faith. Hope is a dimly perceived light, now flickering faintly in the darkness, now obscured by the gloom.

Hope is wishing. Faith, on the other hand, is a radiance that bathes all things in illumination. Faith is knowing. Because we tend to attach primary importance to the material world, because we fail to perceive the design and purpose of our lives, because we refuse to let go of our problems, and labor under burdens of tremendous responsibility, it is extremely difficult for us to know and thus is extremely difficult for us to have faith.

Whatever we know to be a fact we have complete faith in, whether we understand how it works or not. You throw the lever on a switch with complete faith that the lights in the room will illuminate, yet the methods by which electricity is picked up in generators, transmitted over lines, distributed to your home and finally achieves the miracle of light by heating a tiny filament in a vacuum sealed by transparent glass are most probably little known to you.

You know that the lights will go on when you throw the switch because you have tried it before and it works! Thus you have complete faith.

Similarly, on the intangible planes of human existence, we need not achieve the full knowledge of why and how everything works and is constructed; we need only try working with spiritual law, discover that it works, and thus come into complete faith through knowing.

But dealing with the spiritual and mental forces of the universe is far different than dealing with things of the physical world where our five senses are constantly giving sharp definition and substance to everything with which we come in contact. We are sure of the physical things we see, feel, hear, smell and taste. We have complete faith in the reality of their existence.

Far less faith do we have in the reality of mind and the great forces of spiritual existence. We hope for them. We timidly experiment with them. But because they do not follow the same pattern of demonstration as the physical world, we abandon them usually at the first failure.

FAITH IS MENTAL LAW

The truth is that the physical world has accustomed us to the wrong use of faith. In material things our faith habitually follows demonstration; while in spiritual or mental things faith must always precede demonstration.

The constant analogy that we draw between things physical and things mental causes us to believe that mental law must parallel physical law, and we omit to notice the great difference. Physical law does not need our faith to be operative. Mental law follows our faith exactly, indeed, is faith; thus the difficulty in perceiving the great world of mind and spirit in which we dwell.

It sometimes sounds extremely childish to say to a person who is distraught with problems and griefs that he may overcome them all by simply having faith.

The reason for this is that the person who is in such a position is acutely aware of physical circumstance and has denied the reality of the realm of mind and spirit. Knowing the physical so well, he has denied his true being and has lost faith.

It becomes almost Pollyannaish to insist that a person use faith under such circumstances, for faith is knowing, and at the moment he cannot know. Only by communion with the indwelling Self, the quiet assured place in the recesses of his being, will he come into the possession of true knowledge and thus complete faith.

So it is that one man can never insist with success that another man have faith, nor can any man insist that he himself have faith when he is beset by doubt and fear. Faith only comes through knowledge, and the precepts that are contained in the pages of this book, plus your daily meditations (Three Magic Words, Secret of Secrets) and communions with the indwelling "I," will bring this knowledge home with full force and achieve for you a faith that will turn life into glorious adventure.

REVIEW

Here are the points covered in this chapter:

1. All things are rooted in faith, which is the single most important tool of man's existence.

2. The Subconscious Mind turns every conviction of the Conscious Mind into physical reality.

3. The Subconscious Mind knows specific time and place circumstance only through the convictions forwarded to it by the Conscious Mind.

4. Whatever the Subconscious Mind knows, the Subconscious Mind creates.

5. Thought plus faith creates.

6. Faith in negative things is delusion but nevertheless moves the Subconscious Mind to create them in physical actuality.

7. Negative faith or delusion is caused by man isolating himself from the Universal Subconscious Mind, and making fear and resentment and hate his companions through his sense of separateness.

8. Faith is attained through complete trust and confidence in the power of Universal Mind.

9. The unity of all things and all people indwelling in the immortal Self of the universe is the essence of faith.

10. Faith is a spiritual value and must be maintained in a spiritual manner; therefore it can never be dictated by the circumstances that surround you.

11. He whose faith vacillates with the events of his life allows himself to become a victim of every wind that blows and every twig that falls, and is never his own master.

12. Faith is sustained effort.

13. Faith is persistence.

14. Faith is knowing, while hope is little more than wishing.

15. Don't fall into the trap of hoping for things; it will avail you little.

16. Positive thinking is the cornerstone of faith.

17. Refuse to add negative thoughts and circumstance unto yourself. Choose only the good and the great and the beautiful. The rest is delusion.

18. The mind may be trained in the habit of positive thinking through a training period called a thirty-day mental diet.

19. The inner Self does not make up thoughts; it only observes and chooses. Your life today is a result of the thoughts you have chosen to accept.

20. Turn your problems over to Universal Subconscious Mind; you will find the answers and be guided in the right paths.

21. Don't, under any circumstances, tell the Subconscious Mind how to do things. Let go and let God.

22. When negative circumstance arises, know that it is but temporary, a necessary route to the goal you inevitably will achieve as long as your faith remains with you.

23. Daily seek the consciousness of the indwelling spectator, the place of calm and unruffled quiet, where all things are known and understood.

24. Seek to know. Subordinate all things to faith, for faith must precede all demonstration.

Peace at the end of the road.

THE ROAD AHEAD

You now have arrived at the crossroads of understanding. There is much to do. There is, first, the thirty-day mental diet which you must perform faithfully and assiduously and which must be carried to successful completion no matter how many false starts you may make.

There is, second, the breathing exercises and period of communion with the indwelling Self in which you seek contact with the eternal "I," your true being.

And, of course, there are the meditations which you must perform directly after the breathing exercises and communion.

Once again may we caution you that failure to carry out the work will lose for you the greatest value that can be gained from your study—demonstration of good in your life. Only through such demonstration will the full knowledge come to you of your own self-mastery.

Without this you are simply performing mental exercises. Knowledge without faith is like a ship without a sea; it may be beautiful to behold, but it does very little good. Do the work! Perform the meditations! Keep the faith!