The Great Within, Chapter Sixteen
by Christian Daa Larson
The entire human personality is being constantly renewed; there is nothing about mind or body that can possibly become old, except the appearance, and the appearance of age is caused by a wrong subconscious process.
The process of perpetual renewal is carried on by the subconscious, but it is what the conscious mind gives to the subconscious that determines both the quality and the appearance of the personality.
To constantly give the subconscious better ideas, better desires, better thoughts and better mental states is to cause the improvement of character, mentality and personality to become perpetual.
To provide better material for the subconscious, the conscious mind, before going to sleep, should eliminate everything but those ideas, thoughts and desires that have quality and worth, and every effort should be made during the waking state to form the most superior ideas possible on every subject with which the mind may come in contact.
Never go to sleep discouraged, nor with the thought of failure in mind. To fear failure while going to sleep is to impress the subconscious with the idea of failure, and the subconscious will respond by producing conditions in the system that are failures; the system will, consequently, fail to be its best, and will lose ground, more and more, until real failure takes place.
To go to sleep discouraged, disappointed, worried or depressed, is to impress the subconscious with weakening tendencies; these will cause the subconscious to express conditions of weakness in every faculty and in every part of mind or body.
The tendency downward in any career originates invariably in depressed subconscious states, the majority of which are taken into the subconscious as the mind goes to sleep.
Every tendency upward and onward toward higher attainments and greater achievements, originates in constructive subconscious states and it is possible for anyone to produce such states at will.
By going to sleep with strong, clear ideas of health, harmony, power, advancement and success, clearly held in mind, the causes of those things will be formed in the subconscious and the effects will invariably appear in external life. Your health will at once begin to improve; more power will appear in mind and body: capacity will increase; all your talents and faculties will be filled with the spirit of success, and will consequently, do far better work than ever before.
To continue, for weeks and months, the practice of giving superior ideas of all kinds to the subconscious, upon going to sleep, will cause the character, the mentality and the personality to improve to such an extent that, in comparison with your former self, you will actually become a superior being.
When the subconscious is given something special to do every night sleep will become more restful; the subconscious always works during sleep, but will work more orderly when given something definite to do.
After the subconscious has been properly directed no anxiety should be felt as to results; perfect faith in the law, with that quiet assurance that knows, will give the law the proper conditions through which the desired results can be produced.
When we go to sleep in states of discord the mental material becomes confused and incoherent mental formations are produced; these are sometimes remembered as disagreeable dreams.
All such formations are produced by confusion among the subconscious creative energies and indicate that the true state of sleep was not entered completely, also that the subconscious was not properly impressed the night before.
Orderly and coherent dreams may indicate what tendencies are at work in the subconscious and whether desirable or undesirable conditions are being formed, because a dream is always a partial memory of what is taking place in the subconscious.
By noting this fact, undesirable conditions may be counteracted and removed before they advance sufficiently to produce tangible results.
An undesirable dream should always be counteracted at once by impressing the opposite, desirable conditions and qualities upon the subconscious; tendencies, however, that are indicated in good dreams, should be given added power. This can be done by directing the subconscious to work more thoroughly for the promotion of the greater good beforehand.
Every good dream is a prophecy; that is, it indicates what the subconscious can do, what it is ready to do, or what it is about to do along certain lines, and this prophecy can be made to come true by directing the subconscious to proceed along those lines with greater power and determination than ever before.
These directions should be given to the subconscious as frequently as possible during the waking state, as well as before going to sleep.
Every desirable indication among the greater, interior life forces, whether it be discovered through dreams or intuition, should be taken advantage of at once, and all the forces of mind should be concentrated upon the goal that the vision has placed within reach; a successful termination will invariably be the result; the dream will come true, the prophecy will be fulfilled, the ideal will be realized.