Master Key Experience Week 16: Word Power

Have you, like me, never thought of the word spell as having to do with spiritual power, as in “casting a spell?” Clearly people closer to the origins of language knew the power of words in a way we moderns don’t connect with. My Master Key Experience is showing me we ignore the power of the word at our own peril. Let me explain.

Spell in our common use has to do with language, right? It’s something those of us of a certain age grew up with everywhere. “Have you practiced your spelling words?” “When is the spelling bee?” “How do you spell that?” “Spell that out for me, please.” These days even the Microsoft Word program has a feature so we can spell check our Word document.

“Spell referring to magic incantation is of different origin,” reports the Merriam-Webster website in an article they title “Spelling out the History of ‘Spell:’ Language is Magic!” They say spell “is strictly Germanic (from the noun spel) and refers to talk, storytelling, gossip, and a sermon. It also is the derivative of gospel (which translates to “good tale”) and is the source for the magical power and enchantment senses of spell.”

Weeks 15 and 16 of our MKE reading assignments from Charles Haanel talk a lot about the power of the word in the second sense and meaning of the word spell. After all, in the Gospel we learn that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Because I love words and think of myself as a wordsmith, I just loved the additional power of the word unveiled here.

20. We know that the universal Thought has for its goal the creation of form, and we know that the individual thought is likewise forever attempting to express itself in form, and we know that the word is a thought form, and a sentence is a combination of thought forms, therefore, if we wish our ideal to be beautiful or strong, we must see that the words out of which this temple will eventually be created are exact, that they are put together carefully, because accuracy in building words and sentences is the highest form of architecture in civilization and is a passport to success.

21. Words are thoughts and are therefore an invisible and invincible power which will finally objectify themselves in the form they are given.

22. Words may become mental places that will live forever, or they may become shacks which the breeze will carry away. They may delight the eye as well as the ear; they may contain all knowledge; in them we find the history of the past as well as the hope of the future; they are living messengers from which every human and superhuman activity is born.

23. The beauty of the word consists in the beauty of the thought; the power of the word consists in the power of the thought, and the power of the thought consists in its vitality…

28. There can be no question but that he who ‘is wise enough to understand’ will readily recognize that the creative power of thought places an invincible weapon in his hands and makes him a master of destiny.

MKE Lesson Week 15 by Charles Haanel

So we have the “creative power of thought” forming into word(s). We learn “the power of the word consists in the power of the thought, and the power of the thought consists in its vitality.” How careful we ought to be with words that have that kind of power of thought behind them!

Then in Week 16 we explore more about what that vitality consists of in the thought and the word(s) that give it form:

21. And finally, the vitality depends upon the feeling with which the thought is impregnated. If the thought is constructive, it will possess vitality; it will have life, it will grow, develop, expand, it will be creative; it will attract to itself everything necessary for its complete development.

34. The psychologists have come to the conclusion that there is but one sense, the sense of feeling, and that all other senses are but modifications of this one sense; this being true, we know why feeling is the very fountain head of power, why the emotions so easily overcome the intellect, and why we must put feeling into our thought, if we wish results. Thought and feeling is the irresistible combination.

MKE Lesson Week 16 by Charles Haanel

So the thought takes form in the word(s) and the vitality of both depends upon the feeling with which the thought and word(s) are impregnated. We must put feeling into our thought (and the word that gives it form) if we want results because thought into word with feeling is the “irresistible combination.”

Sixteen weeks into this process I understand more than ever why from Day 1 we have been taught to read the assignment thoughts-into-words with incredible enthusiasm! I understand why the guides returned the 400-word Definite Major Pupose statement so that its words captured our thought and our imagined vision as perfectly and as powerfully as possible in precise evocative words. I understand why we add color and sound and press release and poster! Thoughts into words with feeling have power to transform lives! Sixteen weeks into the MKE I’m seeing the proof of this everywhere in my own life and in the others in the Master Mind Alliance. POWERFUL!!!!

I am so very grateful to Mark and Davene Januszewski who read and re-read and digested words like these that summarize the wisdom of centuries that Haanel brought together. They mastered volumes so that they could translate them into a system of learning and application to make it accessible to those for whom the language of bygone eras is difficult to absorb. I so appreciate their creating the next step to getting this out to the world. I’m so excited that you and I can be part of it!

I am also wowed by the verse at the end of Lesson 16 for the shining vision it paints. I have edited it slightly and made my edits in bold to perfectly conclude this post. Words have immense and shining power.

A wo/man might frame and let loose a star, to roll in its orbit, and yet not have done so memorable a thing before God as s/he who lets a golden-orbed thought word to roll through the generations of time.

H.W. Beacher