The Mental Picture

A Mental Picture is a scene played upon the screen of the mind. By means of a story or anecdote, the mind is helped to see a certain truth. The thinking process itself is largely a projection of mental scenes, which is why constructive visualizations are essential to health and happiness.

A Mental Picture becomes a sturdy bridge: it helps us cross from the known to the unknown, from literal understanding to psychological insight. Because stories are pleasant to read, they permit the truth to pass with a minimum of resistance.

How Mental Pictures Work for You

An absorbed Mental Picture goes to work at once, like a powerful current beneath the surface of the sea, supplying energy and wisdom even when we are not consciously aware of it. You need not strain with these pictures; they become your silently faithful servants, working day and night.

Happiness is a ridding process. Inner freedom is not a matter of adding anything — it is purely a ridding process. As self-understanding removes the mental weeds, the path appears. The Four Golden Keys — sincere desire, workable principles, self-honesty, persistence — supply the accurate guidance.

The Transfer Technique

Find some area of everyday life where you have already succeeded, and transfer the same realistic principles — realism, honesty, persistence — to an inner area where you want a new success. You will transfer your success also.

Anxious Effort vs Natural Coasting

Anxious effort gives you nothing for something. Natural effort, harmonized with the laws of life, gives you something for nothing. You need not strive to create contentment or energy; you need only claim them. Your lamp is already lighted; you need only remove its covering.

True Self and False Self

Everyone has both a True Self and a False Self. The True Self is the essential you, entirely free of negative emotion, never lost. The False Self is your acquired attitudes and beliefs — the old nature, the negatively conditioned self. All action springing from the False Self does damage; all action from the True Self enriches.

The entire process of becoming happy consists in gradually weakening the False Self so that the True Self regains its rightful position. Once you see the difference between the real and the artificial, you no longer value the false.

The Mental Millionaire

Every person really is a mental millionaire; we really do possess happiness and wisdom and peace, but we never know it because we pretend to be something we already are. Dropping all pretense reveals the richness that was there all along.

Don't Decide to Relieve Pressure

A decision based on relief alone is almost always against your best interests. Indecision is a pressure; do not make a decision merely to relieve that pressure. Wait, be calm, think. Let the right answer come to you.

Raise Your Level

A village troubled by floods and boulders in a valley was told by a Man with Insight to build above the valley. By moving their residence, they removed the problems. There is no crisis in your life that a higher level of thinking cannot cure.

The Power of Not Thinking

A problem existing on the level of conditioned thinking cannot be solved by conditioned thinking. Awareness dissolves it once and for all. By refusing to chase around mentally, you weaken the power of useless thoughts and leave room for the voice of wisdom from within.

Non-Identification

You are not the same thing as your habit, any more than you are the green jacket you wear. Refer to a habit as 'it' rather than 'I.' Once your mind glimpses that a habit is merely acquired, it also sees it need not be permanent.

Your Level Attracts Your Life

Your level of mental awareness attracts the habitual life you lead. By uplifting your level, you attract a wider variety of prosperities. You receive whatever you perceive; seeing a new height returns the profits of that height.

Psycho-Pictography Changes Your Past

By teaching you to see past events through enlightened eyes, bothersome events lose their power to harm. Guilt — a self-centered emotion — is dissolved by not identifying yourself with the past mistake. Your False Self made the mistake; you are not your False Self.

To Change Others, First Change Yourself

There are definite psychological laws governing human relationships. The all-powerful principle: to change others, first change yourself. Your trapped feeling with people springs from your need of approval; stop seeking it, and other people act better toward you.

See the Difficult Person as Frightened

Whenever encountering a troublesome person, do not identify him as cruel or stupid. See him as a frightened person — which is exactly what he is. All negative emotions have a foundation of fear. Your calmness then impresses him; you transfer your positiveness to him.

The Invisible Magician

The False Self is the average man who always gets insulted and hurt. The True Self is the magician who can make himself invisible: the storm passes right through and cannot strike him. Ask, 'Which self do these outer storms fall upon?'

Put First Things First

Success is personal happiness. The first things are always those related to the inner life; secondary goals are the outward ones. By placing the inner life first, you then enjoy the outer. There is nothing wrong with money; it is just more important to have lots of inner quietness.

Self-Unity Is Will-Power

A person without inner unity is like children who can't agree on a direction. By winning self-unity you awaken will-power. Gather your positive parts into a working unit; then you have genuine will.

Three Magic Words

Try another way. There is an answer to every problem; if it eludes you, try another way. Many timidly hold back because they fear there is nothing better than their present method. To get to the moon we must first put the earth at our backs.

Launch From Correct Mental Positions

The ideas from which you think are the springboards that make your life whatever it is. Launch your daily actions from correct mental positions: the True Self is not subject to depression; all negative emotions can be dissolved; there is a way out.

The Power of Discard

You speed confidently forward not by acquiring something but by first discarding something. Our growth into full personal power is basically a process of discard — of unrealistic beliefs, unworkable assumptions, painful imaginations, false conclusions. As we discard the false, we make room for the true.

Handling the Unexpected

Don't dress up in the wrong mental clothing. Be totally flexible; let the situation be whatever it wants to be. A cheerfully flexible mind is a comfortable mind.

Who Is Living Your Life?

You picked up your attitudes from other people in your early years; they are not part of your original self. You are living according to acquired viewpoints — in a sense, living their life. Discard the conditioned ideas and, for the first time, you live your own.

Return to Yourself

Like a spy who lived years under a false identity and returns home confused, you can wisely drop acquired acts and return to who you are. It is perfectly possible for you to discover who you really are.

The Greatest Inspiration on Earth

The greatest inspiration on earth is something that really works. There is nothing more practical than the truth-that-inspires. The positive virtues — love, patience, humility — appear spontaneously when you find yourself; they are not something you do, they are something you are.

The Power of Attention

Attention is a personal power for your benefit. Select a basic principle and give it your wholehearted attention; reflect on it as you go through your day. No effort at attending to the right things is ever lost.

Mental Detachment

Be a calm beholder of life. Mentally detach yourself; stand back and quietly observe everything that happens. Do not resist it; merely observe. This detachment is not retreat from reality; it is a healthy perception of it. You are free because you do not participate.

Don't Label

Do not place fixed negative labels on anything. When you mechanically slap a negative label on an event, you cause an emotional reaction that corresponds to the label. Withdraw the label and you withdraw the pain. The magical word is comparison — use it to find alternatives to darkness.

Thought vs Awareness

Thought is memory in action — repetition of acquired viewpoints that may be mistaken. Awareness is a revelation of the truth about a thing; when aware, you are never wrong. Thinking goes in a maddening circle; awareness dissolves it.

The Boat on Hidden Rails

Most people glide around the lagoons of life thinking they steer, but beneath the surface hidden rails — frozen attitudes, unrealistic conclusions, habitual thoughts — dictate the course. To see that you are not presently free is the beginning of freedom.

Take Orders from Headquarters

A truthful idea is an order from your inner headquarters — your True Self. Maintain clear communications between the inner self and exterior affairs, and supplies arrive wherever the call: wisdom, understanding, strength, cheer.

Fear Is the False Self

All mental fear springs from the False Self. The True Self is never afraid. When you fear, ask 'Just who is afraid?' — and you find it is always the False Self, not the real you. Do not try to discover who you really are; find out who you are not.

The Horror Film in the Mind

Millions start each day with their own horror film — negative imagination — and it runs all day. The war is already over; the soldier who didn't know kept fighting. Lay down your rifle and go home.

Knowledge and Knowing

Knowledge is the observation of a fact; knowing is the inward experience of that fact. Turn acquired knowledge into personal knowing by living it. Then you experience the miracle of daily peace.

Be Receptive

A rare flower must hold its cup open to receive the rain that revives it. Be receptive to healthy ideas and impressions; they come a thousand times a day, but unless you open your mind they cannot enter.

Self-Awareness Doubles Energy

Catch yourself acting under pressure. The very awareness separates a calm observer from the frantic state and gives command. By slowing deliberately, you crack the frantic pattern and double your efficiency — your energies are no longer drained in negative emotion.

Smile at What Once Made You Ill

Change direction and you feel different, body and soul. You cannot lose anything because, psychologically speaking, you never really owned anything. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose — and yet you own everything.

Happiness Is Inner Liberty

Forget the word happiness; substitute inner liberty. Excitement always has an opposite; inner liberty does not. You are happy whether or not the new home or the daydream comes true.

Non-Resistance

Resistance implies a belief in the power of the thing resisted. By not resisting, you dissolve the false belief and the suffering. The knight who fought dragons in the dark woods found, at dawn, that there were none — understanding lowers the sword.

The Seed and the Rose

A seed becomes a rose because it offers no resistance to earth and sun. Surrender the False Self to higher powers — and grow as intended. Love is first a state of being, then an outer action; it must come in this order.

Dissolving Is Easier Than Solving

You will not solve your problems by changing your occupation or residence; you must exchange the False Self for the True Self. Then problems cease to exist. The True Self has no problems whatsoever.

Rise Above the Problem

From the riverbank the passage looks dangerous; climb a tree and the surface is clear — no painful choice remains, only knowing. We attain this high level by dropping stubborn viewpoints and false prides.

You Are Approved

There is no disapproval. Other people may make remarks the False Self interprets as disapproval, but they have no power to hurt the person living from the True Self. The answer you seek is already within — like the mystery book found behind a lamp in your own home.

Tested Techniques

Establish a regular reading program. Take one idea and think it through, night and day. A new truth is like a captured corporal's 'enemies' — resist it, and you later find it is your friend. Do not resist a new idea; be quietly receptive.

Study Groups

Form your own Psycho-Pictography Study Group: meeting place, attracting members, weekly schedule, a 30–40 minute talk followed by questions and open discussion. As a teacher, remember that behind a person's fierce attacks is a suffering individual; your patience and understanding help more than argument.

You Were Made to Conquer

Theseus was given a magic ball of thread that led him through the labyrinth, past the Minotaur, and back to freedom. So the magic thread of Truth guides and protects the individual who really wants to find the way. You are not alone. And you were made to conquer.