Manuscript 18 De Werkelijke Kracht Van De Denkgeest - a podcast by Een Cursus in Wonderen

X. The Real Power of the Mind

Everyone experiences fear, and nobody enjoys it. 2Yet it would take very little right thinking to know why it occurs. 3Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind, and nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. 4This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. 5However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize fully, at least some of the time.

2 The mind is a very powerful agent, and it never loses its creative force. 2It never sleeps. 3Every instant it is making or creating, and always as you will. 4Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. 5For example, when you say, “Don’t give it a thought,” you are implying that if you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. 6This is true enough.

3 On the other hand, many other expressions are clear expressions of the prevailing lack of awareness of thought power. 2For example, you say, “just an idle thought,” and mean that the thought has no effect. 3You also speak of some actions as “thoughtless,” implying that if the person had thought, he would not have behaved as he did. 4You also use phrases like “thought provoking,” which is bland enough, but the term “a provoking thought” means something quite different.
4 While expressions like “think big” give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. 2You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you really don’t believe it. 3It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge which can literally move mountains.117 4It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant. 5But that is not the real reason why you don’t believe it. 6People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally afraid of them.

5 Therapists try to help people who are afraid of their own death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. 2They even attempt to “free” the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants without any real effect at all. 3There is a real dilemma here, which only the truly right-minded can escape. 4Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they do kill spiritually.118 5All destructive thinking is dangerous. 6Given a death wish, a person has no choice except to act upon his thought or behave contrary to it. 7He can thus choose only between homicide and fear (see previous notes on will conflicts).119

6 The other possibility is that he depreciates the power of his thought. 2This is the usual psychoanalytic approach.120 3This does allay guilt, but at the cost of rendering thinking impotent. 4If you believe that what you think is ineffectual, you may cease to be overly afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it either. 5The world is full of endless examples of how people have depreciated themselves because they are afraid of their own thoughts. 6In some forms of insanity, thoughts are glorified, but this is only because the underlying depreciation was too effective for tolerance.121

7 The truth is that there are no “idle thoughts.” 2All thinking produces form at some level. 3The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they know that thoughts can hurt them. 4Their own thoughts have made them vulnerable.122

8 You who complain about fear still persist in producing it most of the time. 2I told you in the last section that you cannot ask me to release you from it, because I know it does not exist.123 3You don’t. 4If I merely intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, in fact the most fundamental one there is in this world. 5I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. 6This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course.

9 It is certainly much more useful for me to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts at all carefully, except for a relatively small part of the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then. 2You may feel at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. 3Human beings are not used to miraculous thinking, but they can be trained to think that way.

10 All miracle workers have to be trained that way. 2I have to be able to count on them. 3This means that I cannot allow them to leave their minds unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. 4Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought and real avoidance of miscreation. 5Otherwise, the miracle would be necessary merely to set the mind itself straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. 6Nor would it induce the healthy respect which every miracle worker must have for true cause and effect.124

11 Miracles cannot free the miracle worker from fear.125 2Both miracles and fear come from his thoughts, and if he were not free to choose one, he would also not be free to choose the other. 3Remember, we said before that when electing one person, you reject another.126 4It is much the same in electing the miracle. 5By so doing, you have rejected fear. 6Fear cannot assail unless it has been elected.

12 You have been afraid of God, of me, of yourself, and of practically everyone you know at one time or another. 2This can only be because you have miscreated all of us and believe in what you made. 3You would never have done this, if you had not been afraid of your own thoughts.127 4The vulnerable are essentially miscreators, because they misperceive creation.

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