Week – #12 the Silence

In week twelve of Master Key, Haanel states, Knowledge does not apply itself; we as individuals must make the application, and the application consists in fertilizing the thought with a living purpose.

Most people live in their past, apply applications of past fertilizer and live a purpose designed by and given to them by someone else.

4. The only way to keep from going backward is to keep going forward. Eternal vigilance is the price of success. There are three steps, and each one is absolutely essential. You must first have the knowledge of your power; second, the courage to dare; third, the faith to do.

Going forward may still be backwards. Just because you have the car in drive doesn’t mean you are going forward or headed in the correct direction.  Faith is one of the words so overused it almost means anything and nothing at the same time.  Haanel could have used ‘conviction’ to be more specific.

5. With this as a basis you can construct an ideal business, an ideal home, ideal friends, and an ideal environment. You are not restricted as to material or cost. Thought is omnipotent and has the power to draw on the Infinite bank of primary substance for all that it requires. Infinite resources are therefore at your command.

The ideal here is YOURS.  Unfortunately, most of us we were given someone else’s ideals shortly after arrival on planet earth.  That is not to say they are not worthy or even ideals.  You may want to spend some time coming up with your own or ones that call your name and put you into action.  THEN you must determine if this is part of the Universal Minds intention for you.  If not, begin again.

9. This practical working method cannot come to you until you learn that the only real power which you can have is the power to adjust yourself to Divine and unchangeable principles. You cannot change the Infinite, but you can come into an understanding of Natural laws. The reward of this understanding is a conscious realization of your ability to adjust your thought faculties with the Universal Thought which is Omnipresent. Your ability to cooperate with this Omnipotence will indicate the degree of success with which you meet.

There are a lot of trainings for finding your passion, building a huge ‘why’ or discovering your ‘purpose’.  Haanel guarantees however, that until you learn to cooperate with Universal Thought, none of that will provide you what you desire.

18. The principle which gives the thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object, and therefore to master every adverse human experience, is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle, inherent in all things, in every system of Philosophy, in every Religion, and in every Science. There is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire, and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible.

The Law of Attraction is the Law of Love. It is some kind of feeling in everything and you cannot get away from it. Thinking with ‘it’ is invincible.  One plus one equals anything you desire.

23. Man is so constituted that he must first create the tools, or implements by which he gains the power to think. The mind cannot comprehend an entirely new idea until a corresponding vibratory brain cell has been prepared to receive it. This explains why it is so difficult for us to receive or appreciate an entirely new idea; we have no brain cell capable of receiving it; we are therefore incredulous; we do not believe it.

For those who say, ‘I will believe it when I see it.’ You will never see it! You must believe first to see second. The mind knows before the eyes can see. If you are using your eyes for vision as a guide, you may as well be blind.

25. The intention governs the attention. Power comes through repose. It is by concentration that deep thoughts, wise speech, and all forces of high potentiality are accomplished.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker. – David Hume

As long as something or someone else designs your intention you are a robot, affected naught but for the outcome, the production intended elsewhere.  Managing you to remain peaceful, happy with this is essentially the Medias job requirement.

26. It is in the Silence that you get into touch with the Omnipotent power of the subconscious mind from which all power is evolved.

As long as you bombard yourself with the noise of the past and present, the Media, you will never discover ‘the Silence’ or your power.  Yes, you may say you have power but it isn’t yours. Choosing a side is the allure and the world’s drug of choice.  Sheep choose sides.

27. He who desires wisdom, power, or permanent success of any kind will find it only within; it is an unfoldment. The unthinking may conclude that the silence is very simple and easily attained, but it should be remembered that only in absolute silence may one come into contact with Divinity itself; may learn of the unchangeable law and open for himself the channels by which persistent practice and concentration lead to perfection.

It is an unfoldment, an unconcealing of all that is hidden, concealed and collapsed.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR MIND!

“The first time I heard somebody say that, I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. What else could I be? I had taken for granted that the mental chatter in my head was the central “me” that all the experiences in my life were happening to.

I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. Thoughts are no more fundamental than smells, sights and sounds. Like any experience, they arise in my awareness, they have a certain texture, and then they give way to something else.

If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, who’s doing the observing?” – David Cain

I say, who says they are your thoughts? Most of them are old and moldy thoughts left behind by millennia of sheep or worse.  Few are worth noticing and even fewer are worth working on.  I am up for thinking new thoughts and new possibilities.

This week’s additional homework is to produce at least thirty successes, things we did right, our victories from the past.  A useful exercise where I see each event as a rock touching down as it skips across a pond. Each touch, each event or success may or may not have had anything to do with me. Each one ripples to some distant shore. If I could see each one from an unconcealed place, what was it that had me think then, that could be useful now and especially in the future for thinking that would assure victory, success?

Well-trained obedience was my childhood. Fast and immediate was the course or else.  However, blind obedience was never tolerated either. Discovering what to say yes to and when to say no is just tapestry we live life, becoming ordinary or special.  My successes were successful ‘no’ to the sheep. I said no to induction into the National Honor Society.  Just because I had a long series of A’s for every subject in school was insufficient reason to go along with the sheep.  I said no to Annapolis while later enlisting into the US Navy Nuclear program and spending years aboard submarines underwater.  I said no, to how everyone else was operating to succeed, producing records that appeared even then impossible.

Not learning from the past insures we repeat it. At the same time, placing the past into the future does the same.  Success is not permanent and failure is not fatal.

The truth of life is not a matter of self-perfection nor a lonely road to personal salvation, but a headlong plunge into the turmoil of complex reality, a loss of selfishness in the seething ocean of joys and sorrows, births and deaths, victories and defeats of the mass of humanity struggling toward its final and complete fulfillment. Yes, we still live in an imperfect, suffering, hurting world. No amount of love will ever do away with the pains of rebuke, frustration, ingratitude, misunderstanding, malice, or plain stupidity. But the difference is that, with love in our hearts, these miseries will no longer be overwhelming: we will have learned to swim in the moving, salty, treacherous but exalting sea of mankind, to live it in spite of everything. And if we ever do come to perfect wisdom, we will love it because of everything, for we will be able to see the striving behind the sin, frustrated hope behind despair, failures of love behind acts of malice, and infinite mercy covering them all. – Jose De Vinck

Silence is a true friend who never betrays. – Confucius

Silence is a source of great strength. – Lao Tzu

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom. – Francis Bacon

A man is known by the silence he keeps. – Oliver Herford

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross