
This week in the MKE we juxtaposed two readings to help us think about the possibility of perfect health, ease not dis-ease. We’re applying what we’ve learned about mind and thought and emotion and vibration to still another aspect of life: health. Again it’s clear that “authentic” magic exists and is available to every one of us to use.
Over my lifetime I’ve known that there is a powerful mind-body connection we can tap into if we know how best to do that. I’ve always been intrigued by different healing modalities. Even recently I tried something suggested in a MindValley interview with Michael Bernard Beckwith, author and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center. The interviewer asked if “positive thinking” is powerful enough to heal his chronically painful right knee. Beckwith quickly asked about his other knee. Since it was fine, Beckwith told him to focus on that knee, and to stop thinking about the painful knee. I’m a born skeptic, but tested his advice on my own bothersome knee. I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised and delighted that it actually worked. After all, the low-key discomfort had lingered for two years after an injury and the discomfort completely disappeared over about two months of steadily thinking about my good knee.
Of course there’s room for skepticism that it was my following Beckwith’s advice that had made the bum knee like the good knee! Maybe it was the power of suggestion, the placebo effect? Maybe the discomfort was going to disappear on its own in a couple of months anyway? Maybe it was some other change I’d unknowingly made to my diet, my exercise, my rest? But Charles Haanel, in the Master Key reading for this week, points out why changing my thinking and my focus was likely what did it when nothing else I’d tried had:
27. There can be no doubt that few patients are aware how much they can do for themselves. What the patient can do for himself, the forces he can set in motion are as yet unknown. We are inclined to believe that they are far greater than most imagine, and will undoubtedly be used more and more. Mental therapeutics may be directed by the patient himself to calming the mind in excitement, by arousing feelings of joy, hope, faith, and love; by suggesting motives for exertion, by regular mental work, by diverting the thoughts from the malady.
Charles Haanel, Master Key Week 22
In the Scroll Marked VI that we are reading 3 times a day this month, Og Mandino suggests it is achieving balance in our emotions that gives us what Haanel calls for above: calming the excited mind by arousing positive feelings, suggesting motives for exertion, and doing mental work while diverting thoughts from the malady. Mandino cautions “Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.” Maybe this is how we achieve Haanel’s “mental therapeutics” mentioned above.
If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labor.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will remember past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.
…
If I become overconfident I will recall my failures.
If I overindulge I will think of past hungers.
If I feel complacency I will remember my competition.
If I enjoy moments of greatness I will remember moments of shame.
If I feel all-powerful I will try to stop the wind.
If I attain great wealth I will remember one unfed mouth.
If I become overly proud I will remember a moment of weakness.
If I feel my skill is unmatched I will look at all the stars.
…
From this moment I am prepared to control whatever personality awakes in me each day. I will master my moods through positive action and when I master my moods I will control my destiny.
Og Mandino, THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD, pp 80-81.
The two photos I chose to accompany my thoughts show the intricacy of the human cell on the one hand—isn’t it breathtakingly amazing? On the other side is the imagining of a very awake person, eyes open to the ancient wisdom represented by the stars, elevating those cells of her body to a higher vibration and achieving equilibrium and vibrant health. Haanel says:
6. Everything in the Universe is what it is by virtue of its rate of vibration. Change the rate of vibration and you change the nature, quality and form. The vast panorama of nature, both visible and invisible, is being constantly changed by simply changing the rate of vibration, and as thought is a vibration we can also exercise this power. We can change the vibration and thus produce any condition which we desire to manifest in our bodies.
7. We are all using this power every minute. The trouble is most of us are using it unconsciously and thus producing undesirable results. The problem is to use it intelligently and produce only desirable results. This should not be difficult, because we all have had sufficient experience to know what produces pleasant vibration in the body, and we also know the causes which produce the unpleasant and disagreeable sensations.
8. All that is necessary is to consult our own experience. When our thought has been uplifted, progressive, constructive, courageous, noble, kind or in any other way desirable, we have set in motion vibrations which brought about certain results. When our thought has been filled with envy, hatred, jealousy, criticism or any of the other thousand and one forms of discord, certain vibrations were set in motion which brought about certain other results of a different nature, and each of these rates of vibration, if kept up, crystallized in form. In the first case the result was mental, moral and physical health, and in the second case discord, inharmony and disease.
Charles Haanel, Master Key Week 22
I’m calling myself the Detective of Magic these days. I just love being a curious catalyst. I wake up eager to start a new day of learning more and more about “authentic” magic like this and using all the ways open to me to get the word out across our world to as many people as I can that we don’t have to be unwell, that we truly can be vibrantly healthy! We must simply follow the Laws of Nature and learn to better use the marvelous minds, bodies, and spirits we’ve been given!
Shirley, you are the Detective of Magic. From your blog rover friend John.
I just love it as an identity I found again and claimed because of the MKE process, John. THanks for the affirmation!