This relationship between your thinking and the world you create is a universal law of manifestation. The proof that it is a law lies in your demonstrating the law. That is, when you begin to see how your controlled thinking creates what you set out to create, you no longer doubt the validity of this law. In fact, even little demonstrations inspire you to greater levels of achievement. Later we’ll talk more specifically about how to create greater good for yourself with your thinking, but in this chapter we are concerned with the preliminary steps that will prepare you to become a consciously creative thinker.
Everything external in life was first internal in thought, so no permanent change can come about merely by attempting to fix or rearrange external conditions. Yet, that’s usually what we try to do. When we see the symptoms of something wrong in our lives, we usually try to get rid of the symptoms instead of getting rid of the mental condition that’s causing the symptoms. Unfortunately, we tend to look only at the surface of most situations. Why? Because searching for the cause of a situation requires more insight than is obvious at first glance; it takes time and effort to search below surface appearances.
For example, a friend who shares my interest in gardening had an expensive plant that was dying. The leaves were turning yellow and dropping, so she spent considerable effort giving it more light, then more shade, then more plant food, then more water, then less water, and on and on. Frustrated, she brought the plant to me. I recognized that the symptoms had nothing to do with any surface problem, but were from bacteria attacking the roots. I had to pull the plant out of the soil to get at the real problem. To her amazement, when I uprooted the plant, cleaned it, and replanted it, the problem disappeared. What I proved to her was that the cause of any problem must be identified before we can treat the problem effectively.
We can see other examples of our tendency to treat symptoms rather than causes in our everyday lives. A person may divorce an unsatisfactory marriage partner, only to attract another person with the same unsatisfactory characteristics, or worse. Another person may have a cancer surgically removed completely, only to find that it grows back again. In both instances, the thinking (which includes attitudes and emotions as well as thoughts) that caused the condition was not changed; therefore, the external condition did not change.
But what happens? We most likely hear the first person declare, “You see, another failed relationship! It’s like I told you, there are no good people left in this world. I have the worst luck in relationships. Even if there is somebody good for me out there, either they won’t like me, or I’ll never find them.” We may hear the second person say, “You see! Cancer is an incurable, fatal disease. I may as well accept it and live as well as I can until it kills me.”
In both examples, these persons are voicing the very limitation – and false information about themselves – that we are here to overcome. They are basing their statements on outward material evidence. They believe their statements are true because they don’t realize they created the evidence with their own thinking! They don’t realize that their statements are actually excuses for failing to challenge life and change themselves.
Yes, it takes a lot of work to challenge your beliefs, a lot of courage to ask yourself if you’re making true statements about yourself or simply making excuses for being lazy or weak-minded and refusing to change yourself. (pg 20)
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