SELF-CONTROL 523No other animal has ever been endowed with such Self-Control
as you possess. You have been endowed with the power to use the most
highly organized form of energy known-that of thought. It is not
improbable that thought is the closest connecting link there is between
the material, physical things of this world and the world of Divinity.
You have not only the power to think, but what is a thousand times
more important still, you have the power to control your thoughts and
direct them to do your bidding!
We are coming now to the really important part of this lesson.
Read slowly and meditatively!
I approach this part of the lesson almost with fear and trembling,
for it brings us face to face with a subject which but few are qualified
to discuss with reasonable intelligence.
I repeat, you have the power to control your thoughts and direct them to
do your bidding!
Your brain may be likened to a dynamo, in that it generates or
sets into motion the mysterious energy called thought. The stimuli that
start your brain into action are of two sorts: one is autosuggestion and
the other is suggestion. You can select the material out of which your
thinking is produced, and that is autosuggestion (or self-suggestion).
You can permit others to select the material out of which your thinking
is produced, and that is suggestion. It is a humiliating fact that most
thought is produced by the outside suggestions of others, and it is
more humiliating still to have to admit that the majority of us accept this
suggestion without examining it or questioning its soundness. We read
the daily papers as though every word were based on fact. We are swayed
by the gossip and idle chatter of others as though every word were true.
Thought is the only thing over which you have absolute controL Yet
you permit other people to enter the sacred mansion of your mind and
there deposit, through suggestion, their troubles and woes, adversities
and falsehoods, just as though you did not have the power to close the
door and keep them out.