He Can Who Thinks He Can

Kaye: This is an absolutely crucial excerpt from Christian Daa Larson's book Your Forces and How to Use Them. I urge you to ponder upon these concepts, because it is indeed, in my own experience, a good chunk of why students fail.

The discovery of the fact that man is as he thinks, has originated a number of strange ideas concerning the power of thought. One of the principal of these is the belief that thought is a domineering force to be used in controlling things and in compelling fate to come our way. But that this belief is unscientific in every sense of the term has been demonstrated any number of times.

Kaye: Here we see effectively an emphatic denial of the popular version of the Law of Attraction. I too have found this to be true. You can indeed change reality, but for every change there is a price. To think that you can change and compel reality without changing first yourself is an illusion. The very act of compelling from a position of mental weakness is asking for trouble. It either won't work or won't work in the long run.

Those who have accepted this belief, and who have tried to use thought as a compelling force, have seemingly succeeded in the beginning, but later on have utterly failed, and the reason is that the very moment we proceed to apply thought in this manner, we place ourselves out of harmony with everything, both within ourselves and in our environment.

Kaye: I would reread that sentence many, many times. We have a riddle here - to try to force change is to go against nature, and thus create disharmony. But to create change, surely things must change? The answer is that we must change ourselves, our attitude, and our beliefs. It is like a snowball stuck in a hole. If we try to pull it out, it will exhaust us. Instead, if the ice melts and seeps away, it will naturally escape the hole. So the question is, what constitutes melting and seeping away?

The seeming success that such people have had in the beginning, or for a season, is due to the fact that a strong compelling force can cause the various elements of life to respond for awhile, but the force that compels, weakens itself through the very act of compelling, and finally loses its power completely; and then, whatever has been gathered begins to slip away.

Kaye: Scary enough for you to pay attention yet? Trying to manipulate the universe is like a weakling trying to lift a boulder whilst standing on a three-legged stool. Through supreme effort it might be done, but once strength is lost the poor sod may find the boulder crashing down on him. What you want to do is 1. Remove the stool. 2. To put the weakling into a regimen of training 3. Give him a lever.

This explains why thousands of ardent students of metaphysics have failed to secure the results desired, or have succeeded only in spurts. They have taken the wrong view of the power of thought, and therefore have caused their power to work against them during the greater part of the time.

Kaye: First we have to remove the stool. That is the insecurity that is present when the metaphysician articulates his desire. It is the wish that is tainted by uncertainty. When a mighty manifester selects his target, there is no question of attaining it. There is only an intention that it be achieved. Thus, we have to work on belief in one's ability, or the ability of the mind.

The power of thought is not a compelling force. It is a building force, and it is only in the latter sense that desirable results can be produced.The building capacity of thought, however, is practically unlimited. Therefore there is no end to what might be accomplished, so long as this power is employed intelligently.

To apply the full building power of thought, we should proceed upo the principle that he can who thinks he can, and we should act in the full conviction tht whatever man thinks he can do, he can do, because there is no limit to the power that such thinking can bring forth. The majority among intelligent minds admit that there is some truth in the statement that he can who thinks he can, but they do not, as a rule, believe it to be a very large truth. They admit that we gain more confidence in ourselves when we think that we can do what we have undertaken to do, and also that we become more determined, but aside from that, they see no further value in that particular attitude of mind. They do not realise that he who thinks he can, develops the power that can; but this is the truth, and it is one of the most important of all truths in the vast metaphysical domain.

Kaye: So we build belief that a thing is possible. This is parallel to the Desire Belief Expectancy axis in the Silva Method. However, receptivity is also key, as is faith. In training, we are training our thoughts to be silent, to be at rest. Only when activity becomes minimal does the mind have space to create vast change. This is the equivalent of alpha. In visualisation and imagination, it is important to use the present tense sense, for that bypasses many of the blocks which are created by the conscious mind.

At the conscious level, it is useful to imagine the thoughts employed at the alpha level having vast power, and constantly affecting what they need to affect in order for something to manifest. Keep this attitude, and you will be in faith. Keep humble and receptive at the conscious waking level, and the subconscious will act all the faster.