Concentration: The Road To Success & How To Control Fate Through Suggestion. Henry Harrison Brown
you desire, for you to put your finger into the work. You are to let the One in the sub-conscious materialize your ideal. Every time you interfere with Life, you get burnt fingers. Your entire business is to build in the Ideal. When you have created the mental image you are to concentrate upon that image and LET the MASTER BUILDER - LIFE (GOD), do the work while you enjoy the conditions that come to you.
I think this advice is plain; Concentrate upon the mental image and let that image, through the operation of mental laws, direct the Soul in the manifestation. Simply do your work in imagination; do your work by thinking. God will through necessity do the rest. Thinking is all you can do. Therefore watch your thoughts and when they are inclined to stray away from the chosen image, bring them back. Soon the Will by that faculty must body itself forth in the physical becomes so trained to the fact that it must hold to the chosen picture, that it will keep your thoughts from straying. This is the ultimate of Concentration; it brings REALIZATION"; then you and the mental image become one.
I give you in this connection a fine mental picture to hold of your power, from Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia!" Concentrate upon it till it becomes your thought of yourself, as body, as Will, and as Infinite Life.
Look upon Spirit as the rider! take The body for the chariot and the Will As charioteer! Regard the Mind as reins; The senses steeds, and things of sense The ways they trample on. So is the Soul The Lord that owneth spirit, body, will, Mind, senses, all. Itself unowned.
Thus think the wise! He who is unwise, drives with reins Slack on the neck o' the senses, then they romp Like restless horses of a charioteer. He that is wise, with watchful mind and firm, Calms these wild fires, so they go fair and straight Like well-trained horses of a charioteer.
The imagination is the real creator. The pictures it creates become objective realities. Henry Wood deserves a much greater recognition than he has yet received for the Principle he lays down in his "Ideal Suggestion." This form of Suggestion controls the life. The ideal is the real in Spirit and that which is spiritually created must take objective form. As every picture was first a mental image in the mind of painter, and painted itself; as each statue was first a mental picture in the mind of sculptor; as palace, hut, or stable in the mind of architect was once a mental picture; so every form of human expression is in the inception a mental image, created upon, or by, or through, the Imagination. What is once impressed upon the mind universe. Pictures created by Affirmations become, according to the fidelity with which they are held imaged forth in the body. "According to the fidelity with which they are held." Note this well. Rest here and give the thought time to affect the body. Rest an hour and it will have an hour's effect.
Make a mental habit of holding this thought constantly as a picture, to the exclusion of all pictures that mar, and it becomes reflected in the body as does the mental image in mind of artist or workman. "Let your yea be yea." This is why you are at all times to keep before yourself the picture of health, happiness, and success. "Think on these things." These pictures are to be held as realities in Principle; not to be wrought out in detail, save as day by day, the need of detail comes. As soon as mentally created, they are Powers and Realities in the Soul Realm. There alone you have creative power. Details are the objective conditions with which you are to deal with reason when the time for reasoning comes. "NOW is the accepted time" for you to deal with Principle. Principle will take care of the detail that now is, and with other details, when the evolution of the mental image brings them into the present. Make not the mistake of planning the how, and the way, in which this mental image will objectify. That is not your business. Do not think on these things. Give to Life the outline of what you desire and trust Life. Let Life carry out your desire. Life is omnipotent and is the only builder. Life will decide when to give the picture objective form.
Hold the picture in your mind and trust. Be yourself the architect; Life is the workman. Keep your hands off. The only work for you is: - Think, Concentrate, and Trust.
VII. The Will
The education of the Will is the object of our existence.
- Emerson.
O living Will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock.
- Tennyson.
The mind of a human organism can, by effort of will, properly directed, produce measurable changes in the chemistry of the secretions and excretions; in the vasor motor blood supply to areas and organs, and in the temperature selected areas, and so on. All of this goes to prove that the mind has a direct effect upon the functioning of the cells that compose an organ, and that if we can properly train the mind, we can produce definite effects upon any physiological function.
- Professor Elmer Gates.
An educated Will then is the first necessity to happiness, health and prosperity. The Will should be as subject to desire in us as are the muscles of the gymnast to his will. This can be done by creating right mental habits through voluntary concentration. The mechanic educates his hand to hold the saw; the engineer his to hold the throttle; the pianist, his fingers to play; till it is now "second nature" for them to obey. In like manner can the Will be cultivated in other directions. Its function is to obey; to carry out the orders of the judgment. When it has been trained to stick to a thought, it is easy, and we say, "A person of trained will!" But if the thought wanders then we say, "Weak will!" But the Will is equally strong in both cases. It takes as strong a Will not to do as it does to do; as much Will to sit in the chair as it does to get up; as much to stop walking as to start; as much to refrain, as it does to perform. "I can!" "I can't!" and "I won't!" require an equal expression of Will. But when we have trained the Will to our decision, "I can't!" then it is easy, "natural," for us to say "I can't." When we have trained it to our decision, "I don't," that is also easy; but when we have trained it to say, "I can," it is equally easy to say "I can," and to do.
The trouble with the majority of persons is that they never have been trained into habits of self-reliance and self-assertion. Lacking these it is natural, because it is habit to say, "I can't." In fact, it says itself, so accustomed are they to say and to think, "I can't." "I can't" is really "I won't try!" "Can't" means, I will not will to do. Therefore when you tell me that you do not concentrate because you "lack Will," this is not the fact. You really tell me that you have created a habit of letting yourself as Will drift without conscious direction. All you have to do to win your desires is to train yourself as Will through Affirmation, till it is as natural and easy for you to say "I can!" as it is now for you to fear, doubt and say, "I can't." This Affirmation, "I CAN!" is born of the consciousness of ability to do because you possess All-Life and All-Will, and may use as much as you desire. You do use at all times as much as you have trained yourself by thought to use. Would you possess the power of self-direction, you must have power to choose your thought, and to hold it as long as you choose; have power to shut out all thoughts that weaken or interfere; that make sick or timid; must have the power as trained Will to hold, because you choose, pleasant thoughts of health, success and happiness.
VOLUNTARY CONCENTRATION is the secret of personal power; is the secret of all who have won in life's battles. These victors decided to think success, and nothing but success, and to never give up, thus from the very jaws of defeat, to win the mead of victory.
Concentration is but sticking as Will to the thought you have chosen. It is thinking "I will." I am asked, "Shall I affirm all the time?" I answer, - Should you spend all your time thinking or saying "I can!" and "I will," you would do nothing else. Think "I can," and "I will" whenever opposite thoughts would enter the mind. Sit quietly a few minutes each day, by yourself with the chosen thought and hold it because you choose to hold it. While you thus concentrate voluntarily, keep all other thoughts out of your mind by willing them out. I will to think thus. This is not easy. You little realize how you have encouraged tramp thoughts, unwelcome thoughts, uncalled thoughts, "calling" thoughts, superficial thoughts, until you begin to direct your mind. You then find how unstable you are as Will. You find as one of my pupils said when she first tried to enter the Silence, "Every other thought, I ever had, came calling!" We have not been trained to choose our thoughts, and are too