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Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Will and the Imagination

I have been used to thinking that will is the greatest force we have as  a human being and yet, reading and studying Emile Coue there is another way to look at the two powers. He gives the example of walking a piece of 2 x 4  placed on the ground and concludes that imagination is the greater power. Paracelsus (a 16 Century healer) also thought imagination the key to success. He said, "Man is a star. As he imagines himself to be so he is."

Here's Coue's example: Place a 2 x 4 on the ground and most people have no trouble walking it. Place the same piece of 2 x 4 100 feet off the ground between two buildings, and people will imagine what might happen if they fall, and consequently will not be able to, as an act of will, walk the same two by four due to their own fear of what might happen.

This makes a perfect case that in a case of will versus imagination, imagination will win. It is the same thing with stage fright. A person can sing a song in front of their family, but put that same person in front of an audience, and they will not be able to perform 

So what are we to do?

What we are to do is to use our will to subtly enlist the aid of our imagination, because the will is immediately available to our conscious mind and the imagination is the path to the powerful Unconscious. Certainly Coue's suggestion that we can do something by telling ourselves "I can do this and I am going to do it" instead of passively thinking "I can't do it" helped me through some difficult times with my recent rehab in regaining my body strength. So I use "I can do this and I am going to do it" to follow Coue's instructions as to how evoke the imagination without conscious effort through autosuggestion.

I must say that my progress since using these instructions has been much faster in the last two weeks than the previous 8 weeks. So I continue to practice EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY I AM GETTING BETTER AND BETTER.   A. B. Curtiss






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