The Connecting Link
The Eleventh Step to Riches
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND consists of a field of consciousness in which every impulse of thought or sensation that reaches the objective mind through any of the five senses is classified and recorded, and from which thoughts may be recalled or withdrawn as letters may be taken from a filing cabinet.
The subconscious mind receives and files sense impressions or thoughts regardless of their nature. You may VOLUNTARILY plant in your subconscious mind any plan, thought, or purpose which you desire to translate into its physical or monetary equivalent. The subconscious acts first on the dominating desires which have been mixed with emotional feeling, such as FAITH.
Consider this in connection with the instructions given in Chapter 1 on DESIRE for taking the six actions there outlined, and also the instructions given in Chapter 6 on formulating and executing plans, and you will understand the importance of the thought conveyed in the preceding paragraph.
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND WORKS DAY AND NIGHT. Through a method or procedure that is not yet understood, the subconscious mind draws upon the forces of Infinite Intelligence for the power with which it voluntarily transmutes one’s desires into their physical equivalent, making use always of the most practical media by which this end may be accomplished.
You cannot entirely control your subconscious mind, but you can voluntarily hand over to it any plan, desire, or purpose which you wish transformed into concrete form. Read again the instructions for using the subconscious mind in Chapter 3. There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that the subconscious mind is the connecting link between the finite human mind and Infinite Intelligence. It is the intermediary through which one may draw upon the forces of Infinite Intelligence at will. It alone contains the secret process by which mental impulses are modified and changed into their spiritual equivalent. It alone is the medium through which prayer may be transmitted to the source which is capable of answering prayer.
The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe. I never approach the discussion of the subconscious mind without a feeling of littleness and inferiority, which is due, perhaps, to the fact that our entire stock of knowledge on this subject is so pitifully limited. The very fact that the subconscious mind is the medium of communication between the thinking human mind and Infinite Intelligence is in itself a thought which almost paralyzes one’s reason.
After you have accepted as a reality the existence of the subconscious mind and understand its possibilities as a medium for transmuting your DESIRES into their physical or monetary equivalent, you will comprehend the full significance of the instructions given in Chapter 1 on DESIRE. You will also understand why you have been repeatedly admonished to MAKE YOUR DESIRES CLEAR AND TO REDUCE THEM TO WRITING. You will also understand the necessity of PERSISTENCE in carrying out instructions.
The instructions involved in The 13 Steps to Riches are the stimuli with which you acquire the ability to reach and to influence your subconscious mind. Do not become discouraged if you cannot do this upon the first attempt. Remember that the subconscious mind may be voluntarily directed only through habit, using the directions given in Chapter 2 on FAITH. You have not yet had time to master faith. Be patient. Be persistent.
A good many statements in the chapters on faith and auto-suggestion will be repeated here for the benefit of YOUR sub-conscious mind. Remember, your subconscious mind functions automatically whether you make any effort to influence it or not. This naturally suggests to you that thoughts of fear and poverty and all negative thoughts serve as stimuli to your subconscious mind—unless you master these impulses and give your subconscious mind more desirable food upon which it may feed.
The subconscious mind will not remain idle! If you fail to plant DESIRES in your subconscious mind, it will feed upon the thoughts which reach it as the result of your neglect. It has already been explained that thought impulses, both negative and positive, reach the subconscious mind continuously from the four sources mentioned in Chapter 10.
For the present, it is sufficient if you remember that you are living daily in the midst of all manner of thought impulses which are reaching your subconscious mind without your knowledge or awareness. Some of these impulses are negative, some are positive. You are now engaged in trying to help shut off the flow of negative impulses and to aid in voluntarily influencing your subconscious mind through positive impulses of DESIRE.
When you achieve this, you will possess the key which unlocks the door to your subconscious mind. Moreover, you will control that door so completely that no undesirable thought will influence your subconscious mind.
Everything which human beings create BEGINS in the form of a thought impulse. No one can create anything which he or she does not first conceive in THOUGHT. Through the aid of the imagination, thought impulses may be assembled into plans. The imagination, when under control, may be used for the creation of plans or purposes that lead to success in one’s chosen occupation.
All thought impulses which are intended for transmutation into their physical equivalent and which are voluntarily planted in the subconscious mind must pass through the imagination and be mixed with faith. The mixing of faith with a plan, or purpose, intended for submission to the subconscious mind may be done ONLY through the imagination.
From these statements you will readily observe that the voluntary use of the subconscious mind calls for the coordination and application of all the principles of success explained in this book.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox1 gave evidence of her understanding of the power of the subconscious mind when she wrote:
You never can tell what a thought will do
In bringing you hate or love—
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings
Are swifter than carrier doves.
They follow the law of the universe—
Each thing creates its kind,
And they speed o’er the track to bring you back
Whatever went out from your mind.
Mrs. Wilcox understood the truth that thoughts which go out from one’s mind also embed themselves deeply in one’s subconscious mind, where they serve as a magnet, pattern, or blueprint by which the subconscious mind is influenced while translating them into their physical equivalent. Thoughts are truly things, for the reason that every material thing begins in the form of “thought-energy.”
The subconscious mind is more susceptible to influence by impulses of thought which are mixed with feeling or emotion than by those originating solely in the reasoning portion of the mind. In fact, there is much evidence to support the theory that ONLY emotionalized thoughts have any ACTION influence upon the subconscious mind. It is a well-known fact that emotion or feeling rules the majority of people. If it is true that the subconscious mind responds more quickly to, and is influenced more readily by, thought impulses which are energized with emotion, then it is essential to become familiar with the more important of the emotions. There are seven major positive emotions and seven major negative emotions. The negatives automatically inject themselves into the thought impulses, which ensures their passage into the subconscious mind. The positives must be injected, through the principle of autosuggestion, into the thought impulses which an individual wishes to pass on to his or her subconscious mind. (Instructions for accomplishing this are given in Chapter 3 on Autosuggestion.)
These emotions, or feeling impulses, may be likened to yeast in a loaf of bread because they constitute the ACTION element which transforms thought impulses from the passive to the active state. Thus may one understand why thought impulses which have been well mixed with emotion are acted upon more readily than thought impulses originating in cold reason.
You are preparing yourself to influence and control the “inner audience” of your subconscious mind in order to hand over to it the DESIRE for money, which you wish transmuted into its monetary equivalent. It is essential, therefore, that you understand the method of approach to this inner audience. You must speak its language or it will not heed your call. It understands best the language of emotion or feeling. Let me, therefore, describe here the seven major positive emotions and the seven major negative emotions, so that you may draw upon the positives and avoid the negatives when giving instructions to your subconscious mind.
The emotion of DESIRE
The emotion of FAITH
The emotion of LOVE
The emotion of SEX
The emotion of ENTHUSIASM
The emotion of ROMANCE
The emotion of HOPE
There are other positive emotions, but these are the seven most powerful and the ones most commonly used in creative effort. Master these seven emotions (they can be mastered only by USE), and the other positive emotions will be at your command when you need them. Remember, in this connection, that you are studying a book which is intended to help you develop money-consciousness by filling your mind with positive emotions. One does not become money-conscious by filling one’s mind with negative emotions.
(To be avoided)
The emotion of FEAR
The emotion of JEALOUSY
The emotion of HATRED
The emotion of REVENGE
The emotion of GREED
The emotion of SUPERSTITION
The emotion of ANGER
Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind. Here the LAW OF HABIT will come to your aid. Form the habit of applying and using the positive emotions! Eventually, they will dominate your mind so completely that the negatives cannot enter it.
Only by following these instructions literally, and continuously, can you gain control over your subconscious mind. The presence of a single powerful negative thought or feeling in your conscious mind is sufficient to destroy all chances of constructive aid from your subconscious mind.2
If you are an observant person, you must have noticed that most people resort to prayer ONLY AFTER everything else has FAILED! Or else they pray by a ritual of meaningless words. And because it is a fact that most people who pray do so ONLY AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE HAS FAILED, they go to prayer with their minds filled with FEAR and DOUBT, which are the emotions the subconscious mind acts upon and passes on to Infinite Intelligence. Likewise, those are the emotions which Infinite Intelligence receives and ACTS UPON.
If you pray for a thing, but have fear as you pray that you may not receive it or that your prayer will not be acted upon by Infinite Intelligence, your prayer will have been in vain.
Prayer does sometimes result in the realization of that for which one prays. If you have ever had the experience of receiving that for which you prayed, go back in your memory and recall your actual STATE OF MIND while you were praying, and you will know for sure that the theory here described is more than a theory.
The time may come when the schools and educational institutions of the country will teach the “science of prayer.” When that time comes (it will come as soon as humanity is ready for it and demands it), no one will approach the Universal Mind (Infinite Intelligence) in a state of fear, for the very good reason that there will be no such emotion as fear. Ignorance, superstition, and false teaching will have disappeared, and human beings will have attained their true status as children of Infinite Intelligence. A few have already attained this blessing.
If you believe this prophesy is farfetched, take a look at the human race in retrospect. Less than a hundred years ago, people believed that lightning was evidence of the wrath of God and feared it. Now, thanks to the power of FAITH, we have harnessed lightning and made it turn the wheels of industry. Much less than a hundred years ago, people believed the space between the planets to be nothing but a great void, a stretch of dead nothingness. Now, thanks to this same power of FAITH, we know that far from being either dead or a void, the space between the planets is very much alive, that it is filled with mysterious substances and pulsates with energy—the highest form of energy known, except perhaps for the energy of THOUGHT! Moreover, there is evidence that this living, pulsating, vibratory energy which permeates every atom of matter and fills every niche of space,3 connects every human brain with other human brains in mysterious ways we do not yet understand.
Why should we not believe that this same energy connects every human brain with Infinite Intelligence? There are no tollgates between the finite human mind and Infinite Intelligence. The communication costs nothing except Patience, Faith, Persistence, Understanding, and a SINCERE DESIRE to communicate. Moreover, the approach can be made only by each individual. Paid prayers are worthless. Infinite Intelligence does no business by proxy. You either go direct or you do not communicate. You may buy prayer books and repeat them until the day of your doom without avail. Thoughts which you wish to communicate to Infinite Intelligence must undergo transformation such as can be given only through your own subconscious mind. The method by which you may communicate with Infinite Intelligence is analogous to that through which the vibration of sound is communicated by radio. If you understand the working principle of radio, you know that sound cannot be communicated through the airwaves until it has been stepped up or changed into a rate of vibration which the human ear cannot detect. The radio processing and transmitting equipment takes the sound of the human voice and scrambles or modifies it by stepping up the vibration millions of times. Only in this way can the vibration of sound be communicated hundreds or thousands of miles away. After this transformation has taken place, the original vibrations of sound—now in the form of highly energized electromagnetic waves—are broadcast across the airwaves to radio receivers, which step that energy back down to its original state so that it is recognized as sound.
Similarly, the subconscious mind is the intermediary which translates one’s prayers into terms which Infinite Intelligence utilizes, presents the message, and receives back the answer in the form of a definite plan or idea for procuring the object of the prayer. Understand this principle and you will know why mere words read from a prayer book—while they may provide comfort and give one cause for re-flection and meditation—cannot and will never serve as an agency of active communication between the human mind and Infinite Intelligence. Before your prayer will “reach” Infinite Intelligence (a statement of this author’s theory only), it is transformed in some way from its original “thought vibration” into terms of “spiritual vibration.”
Faith is the only known agency which will give your thoughts a spiritual nature in this way. FAITH and FEAR make poor bedfellows. Where one is found, the other cannot exist.