Chapter 2-4: The Power from Within.

Chapter 2

A peaceful Mind Generates Power

A primary method for gaining a mind full of peace is to practice emptying the mind. At least twice a day, empty your mind of fears, hates, insecurities, regrets and guilt feelings. To prevent unhappy thoughts from sneaking in again, immediately fill your mind with creative and healthy thought. At intervals during the day practice thinking a carefully selected series of peaceful thoughts. Let mental pictures of the most peaceful scenes you have ever witnessed pass across your mind, as, for example the sea washing gently upon soft shores of sand. Such peaceful thought images will work upon your mid as a healing medicine.

Let nothing disturb you! Let nothing frighten you!

        There are other practical ways by which you can develop serenity and quiet attitudes. One way is through your conversation. In a group when the conversation takes a trend that is upsetting, try injecting peaceful ideas into the talk. To have peace of mind, fill your personal and group conversations with positive, happy optimistic, satisfying expressions.

            Another effective technique in developing a peaceful mind is the daily practice of silence. Insist upon not less than a quarter of an hour of absolute quiet every 24 hours. Go alone into the quietest place available to you and sit or lie down for 15 minutes and practice the art of silence. Do not write or read. Think as little as possible. Throw your mind into neutral. Conceive of your mind as the surface of a body of water and see how nearly quiet you can make it, so that there is not a ripple. When you have attained a quiescent state, listen for the deeper sounds of harmony and beauty and of God that are to be found in the essence of silence.

Chapter 3

How to Have Constant Energy

How we think we feel has a definite effect on how we actually feel physically. If your minds tells you that you are tired, the body mechanism, the nerves, and the muscles accept the fact. If your mind is intensely interested, you can keep on at an activity indefinitely. Religion functions through our thoughts. In fact, it is a system of thought discipline. By supplying attitudes of faith to the mind it can increase energy. It helps you to accomplish prodigious activity by suggesting that you have ample supports and resources of power.

Every great personality I have ever known who has demonstrated the capacity for prodigious work has been a person in tune with the infinite. Every such person seems in harmony with nature. They have not necessarily been pious, but invariably they have been extraordinarily well organized emotionally and psychologically. It is fear, resentment, the projection of parental faults upon people when they are children, inner conflicts and obsessions that throw off balance the finely tuned nature, thus causing undue expenditure of natural force.

To live with constant energy is also important to get your emotional faults corrected. Ypu will never have full energy until you do. Knute Rockne, one of the greatest football coaches this country ever produced, said that a football player cannot have sufficient energy unless his emotions are under spiritual control.

People who lack energy are disorganized by their deep, fundamental emotional and psychological conflicts, such as guilt and fear. But healing is ever possible.

    

     The surest way not to become tired is to lose yourself in something in which you have a profound conviction. A famous statesman who made seven speeches in one day was still boundless in energy.

“Why are you not tired after making seven speeches?” I asked.

“Because, I believe absolutely in everything I said in those speeches. I am enthusiastic in everything I said in” he said.

That’s the secret. He was on fire for something. He was pouring himself out, and you never lose energy and vitality in so doing. You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind, your mind gets bored and therefore tired doing nothing. You don’t have to be tired. Get interested in something. Throw yourself into it with abandon. Get out of ourself. Be somebody. Do something. Don’t sit around moaning about things, reading the papers and saying “why don’t they do something?” the man who is out doing something isn’t tired. If you’re not getting into good causes, no wonder you’re tired. You’re disintegrating. You’re dying on the vine. The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.

Chapter 4

Try Prayer Power

            You are dealing with the most tremendous power in the world when you pray. The secret of prayer is to find the process that will most effectively open your mind humbly to God. Any method through which you can stimulate the power of god to flow into your mind is legitimate. An illustration  of a scientific use of prayer is the experience of a man who opened a small business but in a few years he and his employee moved into a larger room and then into extensive quarters. It became a very successful operation. This man’s method of business as he described it was “to fill the little hole in the wall with optimistic prayers and thoughts”. He declared that hard work, positive thinking, fair dealing, right treatment of people and the proper kind of praying always get result.

The formula is: Prayerize, Picturize, and Actualize.

            To assure something worthwhile happening, first pray about it and test it according to God’s will. Then print a picture of it on your mind as happening, holding the picture firmly in consciousness. Continue to surrender the picture to God’s will-that is to say, put the matter in God’s hands-and follow God’s guidance. Work hard and intelligently, thus doing your part to achieve success. Practice believing and continue to hold the picture in your thoughts. Do this and you will be astonished at the strange ways in which the picture comes to pass. In this manner the picture “actualizes”. That which you have “prayerized” and “picturized” “actualizes” according to the pattern of your basic realizable wish when conditioned by invoking God’s power upon it, and if, moreover, you give fully of yourself to its realization. I have practiced this prayer method and find great power in it.

            I have known many other people who have successfully applied this technique. When sincerely and intelligently brought into situations, this has produced such excellent results that it must be regarded as an extraordinarily efficient method of prayer. People who take this method seriously and actually use it get astonishing results.

Source : Norman Vincent Peale, 1987. The Power of  Positive Thinking. Ballantine Books.