We can all bring a little magic into our own lives without recourse to elaborate magical rituals. This is done by the positive use of
The Mystic Mind
thought - positive visualisation - the controlled use of mind power. And its principles are really quite simple.
Thought becomes form. Change the thought, you change the form. Negative thoughts create negative actions. Positive thoughts create positive actions - and reactions . .
If you convince yourself you will fail, you will fail: I
�
yo�
convince yourself you can succeed, you will succeed. OphIDlsm IScontagious.
Michael Flatley, who wrote and choreographed the inspiring and passionate dance spectacles 'Riverdanc�', and 'Lord of t
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e Dance', and now a highly successful personahty and performer Inhis own right, came from a poor Irish family. Although Michael would spend most of his time at school staring out of the
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dow day dreaming, much to the annoyance of his teachers, he clalIDs he was busy visualising his future. 'I can't emphasis it enough,' h.e said: 'just keep visualising what you want in glorious colour and It will come to you.'Bill Gates, founder of the Microsoft Corporation visualised a computer in every home as a dream of things to come - when computers were still mainframe. His dream however came true. He just kept on visualising.
How much does will power and positive visualisation of one's own destiny affect that destiny itself? Can positive thinking really help us improve our lives and achieve extraordinary feats?
There are many New-Age self-help books now available that encourage us to 'think positive thoughts' and 'visualise' what we want for ourselves. We are told we can transform our lives in this way. Can thought really work in such a profound wa
y
? . .In recent experiments conducted in a US hospItal, posIhve thoughts and prayers were said for half of an
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xperimental group of patients, whilst the others had no prayers saId for them at all. In the meticulously controlled experiments, it was found that the group of patients, who had been prayed for, recovered quicker by far than the group who had not been prayed for. None of the patients were aware of which group they were in.In his book
The God Experiment
author Russell Stannard documents the experiments conducted at the Mind/Body Medical Institute, New England Deaconess Hospital, Boston, Mass achusetts, which is run by the projects chief investigator Dr Herbert Benson.Mind Over Matter
Dr Benson found crucial evidence to support the power of prayer, which was substantiated by a study performed by R.c. Bird who also found similar test results.
Prayer is the power of thought intensified and directed at a higher mind source than the individual self. People who pray in groups intensify the mind power considerably. Prayer, meditation or contemplation is used in nearly all religions as a medium to higher states of consciousness.
Of course, praying is not just about asking for material things, we can help people, protect people and help heal people with our positive, focused thoughts.
Lack of thought or care for a person has equally powerful effects. The official prayers of blessing and protection that were said for Princess Diana were stopped very shortly before her tragic death.
The prayer and blessing normally considered essential for the launching of new ships - 'God bless this ship and all who sail in her' - was omitted for
The Titanic, The Britannic
andThe Olympic.
White Star Line did not believe in such time-wasting formalities.Two of these giant vessels,
The Britannic
andThe Titanic, both
met dramatic fates, the latter of which sank on her maiden voyage to New York after colliding with an iceberg, losing over one 1,200 souls. The third, The Olympic, was involved in a dramatic mid-sea collision. Is it a coincidence that none of them were blessed andthat all three of them met dramatic fates? '
Thought is so powerful, that it can heal, it can destroy, and it can shape our lives in a remarkable way, both individual and collective.
Can our thoughts affect the outcome of events?
Recent research in the US has proved conclusively that in experiments where the volunteers had to
will
various numbers up on a random number-generating computer programme, the volun teers themselves were distinctly able to influence the outcome of what was apparently random number selection, bywill
power alone.Dr Lev Pyatnitsky, a physicist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, has been studying the ability of people's minds to affect t he environment. Using tap water, Dr Pyatnitsky proved in a study of 15 volunteers that six were able to focus their minds on the water sufficiently to cluster the molecules more tightly together. 'Statistically' he said, 'it is like tossing a coin and getting heads billions and billions of times.'
The Mystic Mind
, As we have already seen, the primary agitating factor on the pre-physical body is thought. Thoughts, moods and feelings project electromagnetic changes in the auric field, which eventually crystallises onto the material plane.
Now, a thought and an action do not just affect you: whatever you think and do will have a corresponding effect on the rest of the material plane. The vibrations that you set up for yourself, which are a direct result of your own thinking patterns, will eventually and absolutely result in the resonance within the universe which will attract like vibrations.
The more we believe in, and focus our mental power on the outcome of our efforts in a positive way, the more likely they are to happen. This is now scientifically proven. The vibrations you set up for yourself through your thought habits and patterns will, believe it or not, eventually manifest onto the material plane from the higher energy which is the source of thought, and you will then find that the world you inhabit, is a world of your own creation.
We can change it; improve it for the better, by using our powers
of visualisation (right brain), for, as we saw in the examples on hypnosis, the mind is very sensitive to suggestion.
It has recently been proved that activated nerve cells in the brain use oxygen at a faster rate than inactive ones, and so the draining of oxygen in a region indicates the presence of activity in the other. Repeated stimulation of one particular area actually creates new and more ingrained neural pathways. This is obvious when you think of any new task you have set yourself, which proves difficult and slow to begin with, playing the piano, for instance, but after constant practice and repetition, becomes second nature.
Mental visualisation actually changes the shape of the brain. In his book
Mind Sculpture, Your Brain's Untapped Potential
author and researcher Ian Robertson has proved that by repeating certain tasks over and over again, the brain actually creates new neural pathways for itself, and once the task has been repeated sufficiently, it actually becomes part of the brain's permanent neural network.He writes, 'Can we actually see what happens in the brain during mental practice? Fortunately we can. Using a PET scanner, a brain scanner that shows which parts of the brain are active
Mind Over Matter
during different mental and physical tasks, people were studied as they imagined themselves moving. The movements were based on a simple task - manipulating a joystick - and the brains were watched to see which areas were switched on when people imagined moving it. The results were compared with what happened when the same people simply got ready to move the joystick without actually moving it.
'It was also discovered that very similar parts of the brain lit up in these two different situations. In other words, mentally imagining a movement triggers much the same brain machinery as does preparing to make the same movement. It seems therefore, that imagining a movement is not very different from actually making the same movement as far as the brain is concerned.'
The act of positive visualisation actually affects the brain in a remarkable way. Imagine if you kept imagining it, and set up positive vibrations for yourself, and then it materialised for you.
The more we visualise a situation, the more likely it is to happen.
However, a cautionary note here: you should only ever apply positive thinking to your own life. Although you can always send positive thoughts to someone, such as love, support, friendship, you should never manipulate others with your own desires for them. This could obviously have negative consequences for both of you. As they say, be careful what you wish for. Because whatever you send out will eventually come back to you.
Positive thinking is a means of creating new opportunities for yourself. The power of positive thinking, the clear, controlled and creative use of imagination, represents the ability of the individual to harmonise with, and access universal energy.
As we have already seen, there are higher and subtler energies that exist within the individual energy matrix, which exist on increasingly finer levels of energy and vibration that is ultimately pure universal energy. You can tap into it.
These higher levels of energy, originally manifested from pure thought, are extremely sensitive to your thought vibrations and will actually and absolutely manifest as a virtual reality the physical manifestations of those thoughts, whatever they may be. ('As a man thinketh in his heart, so shall he be' - Proverbs 23:7.)
As we saw earlier, changes are firstly produced on the auric field (electromagnetic force field) before they manifest onto the physical
The Mystic Mind
dimension. By understanding this simple process, we can try to control and direct our thoughts through positive visualisation.
Positive thinking actually enables us to create new and more harmonious patterns for ourselves in our lives, as we consciously make use of the flexibility and impressionability of the unconscious mind in our attempt to harness the awesome power of mind over matter!
It was no doubt tapping into this power that enabled the brilliant New York showman, magician and illusionist David Blaine to accomplish his many legendary feats. These include being buried alive for seven days and entombed in a block of ice for three! However, his greatest feat was undoubtedly the almost biblical 44 days and 44 nights of self-imposed isolation and starvation he endured from 5 September to 19 October 2003 - suspended thirty feet above the ground opposite the Tower of London in a small plexiglas box, with only water to sustain him. He survived and proved exactly how much the human mind and body are capable of.
David Blaine very publicly and humbly reminded us all that there is more to our psyches and our souls than we dare imagine or believe. He dared to do both and came out smiling - purely with the power of love and mind over matter!