The law of life is this: All things both good and evil are constructed from an image held in mind

Here’s “Take 2” from U.S. Andersen.  (See my prior post: Most people only exist, never truly are at all…).  Andersen’s book The Magic In Your Mind was originally published in 1961 – – well before Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Rhonda Byrne (The Secret) became household names.  This man could write and he’s genius…his thought leadership is still as pertinent today as it was more than 40 years ago.

“…It is astounding and sad to see the many thousands of people whose mental machinery keeps delivering to them the very effects they say they do not want.  They bewail the fact that they are poor, but that doesn’t make them richer.  They complain about their aches and pains but they keep right on being sick.  They say that nobody likes them, which means they don’t like anybody.  They aren’t bold, they aren’t aggressive, they aren’t imaginative; mental they quiver and quake and are bound to negative delusions.  It simply doesn’t matter what the picture in your mind is, it is delivered nonetheless with the same amount of faithfulness and promptness if it is a picture of poverty or disease or fear or failure as it would be if it were a picture of wealth or health or courage or success…

…any picture we hold in our minds is bound to resolve in the material world.  We cannot help ourselves in this.  As long as we live and think, we will hold images in our minds, and these images develop into the things of our lives, and so long as we think in a certain way we must live a certain way, and no amount of willing or wishing will change it, only the vision we carry within…

…The law of life is this: All things both good and evil are constructed from an image held in mind…

…Nothing illustrates this fact better than the current experiments with hypnosis.  A man may be in such excruciating pain that even narcotics will not relieve him, but he can be put under deep hypnosis and told that there is no pain at all, and presto, there is no pain.  He may have a deep and abiding fear of crowds, but under hypnosis it can be suggested to him that he like crowds, and lo and behold, he enjoys them most of all.  He can become stronger, healed of disease, smarter, more aggressive, possessed of endurance and indomitableness, all because these things are impressed upon his psyche as facts and the image in his mind grows from them…

…you need no hypnotist to put the power of the mind to constructive work in your life.  No hypnotist can overcome the negative image making of your mind unless he is with you 24 hours a day.  You are the only one in constant rapport with yourself, and thus you are the only one able to police the thoughts and images you entertain.  If you let the image be prompted by something outside of you, then you exercise no control over your life.  If you accept images only in accord with your desires, then life will deliver your inner goals.  In any case, the magnificent promise of the Secret Self is this: you can change your life by altering the images in your mind, for what comes to you in the end is only that which you have been accepting in consciousness…

…you may not be able to alter the positions of the stars, to stop the earth from revolving; to cause the winds to blow or the sea to calm, but you can choose what you will think.  You can think what you want to think.  You can think only in response to an inner vision and a secret goal, and if you take your stand with a firm heart and a high resolve you will be successful and you will not be intimidated…”

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Image: Thank you Feel Some Inspiration for Beili Liu, Red Thread Legend Series, 2010