***The first lesson on the Spiritual path: Owning your Personal Power

"The single most important quality to achieving psychological and spiritual health is learning to own your personal power." Dr. Joshua David Stone

The conscious mind is the reasoning mind, whereas the subconscious mind is the non-reasoning mind. The superconscious mind is the all-knowing mind. Another metaphor is that the conscious mind is the captain of the ship, computer programmer, decision maker, gardener. If the conscious mind is the captain, then the subconscious mind is the shipmate below the deck who follows whatever orders the captain gives. The subconscious mind is the computer or tape recorder.

Thirdly, the subconscious mind is the soil. If the conscious mind is the gardener, the gardener plants the seeds (thoughts), and the soil grows whatever kind of seed is planted, be it a weed or a beautiful flower. The subconscious mind will store information and follow orders whether the orders are rational or irrational. The subconscious mind doesn't care, as it has absolutely no reasoning ability.

The subconscious mind is a paradox. It has no reasoning and yet it has an incredible number of amazing abilities and intelligence factors. The best metaphor to understand this is the computer analogy. A computer is an incredible piece of equipment, yet it doesn't care whether it's programmed to solve the energy crisis or to create a nuclear war. It has the intelligence to do either job efficiently, but doesn't have the reasoning to not want to create nuclear war

The subconscious does whatever it is programmed to do, no matter what. A good example is that the subconscious mind completely operates and runs the physical body. This can be proven by the effects of hypnotic suggestions given to a person concerning the body.

The only problem is that the subconscious mind is as happy to destroy the body as it is to create perfect health. The subconscious mind has the intelligence to create perfect health or create cancer. It will create whatever it is programmed to do.

No one consciously programs cancer, but many people unconsciously program cancer into their bodies with self-hatred, victim consciousness, revenge, giving up, and so on. The idea is that you want to tell yourself or your subconscious mind constantly that you are in perfect radiant health and that every day in every way you are getting healthier and healthier.

The subconscious mind works entirely separate from the functioning of the conscious mind. It works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, while you are sleeping and awake, and never gets tired. It is constantly doing whatever it has been programmed to do.
Intelligence Factor of the Subconscious Mind

The basic function of the subconscious mind is to store information. It is the storehouse and memory bank of all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, imagination, habit patterns, impulses and desires. From the time we have been little infants, we have been programmed by our parents, grandparents, television, peers, teachers, ministers, and extended family.

As little children we are all victims. By this, I mean that children's reasoning minds have not developed enough to be able to discriminate and protect them from negative programming. As little children we were totally open. Our subconscious minds are filled with mental poisons, faulty thinking and faulty beliefs. Just as the body can be filled with physical toxins from poor eating, the subconscious is filled with mental toxins from improper programming and education.

This book will teach you how to get rid of the faulty thinking in the subconscious mind and how to reprogram it with new positive spiritual programming. For now, however, let's continue with delineating the intelligence factor of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind also creates our dreams every night. There are occasions when the super consciousness creates dreams. However, most dreams are created by the subconscious mind. A dream is basically a mirror of the way we think, feel, and act during our conscious daily life. A dream is like a newspaper we receive every night, depicting the organization and dynamics of our internal energies.

The only difference between dreams and a real newspaper is that dreams are in the universal language of symbols. To understand our dreams is to understand that every part of our dream is, in reality, a part of us. By examining the relationship of the symbols we can gain insight and understanding of the patterns that are manifesting in our lives.

A dream is an automatic process that the subconscious mind brings to us as feedback. This feedback is essential because very often we are all manifesting patterns in our lives that we are not consciously aware we are manifesting.

The subconscious mind can also be termed the habit mind. It stores all our habits, both positive and negative. A lot of people think habits are bad. This is not true. We want to get rid of only bad habits. Ideally we want to strive to create good habits.

A good example of this is learning to drive a stick shift car. When we first learn how, it takes a lot of conscious effort and will power. After we learn how, it becomes automatic. If we didn't have a subconscious mind to store our developed abilities, it would always take great focus and concentration.

There is a basic psychological or metaphysical law that states that it takes twenty-one days to cement a new habit into the subconscious mind. You can learn something in a day, but to make a habit in the subconscious mind takes twenty-one days. This ability by the subconscious mind of storing habits allows us to grow continually and develop new abilities without worrying about old ones.

The subconscious mind is where the Law of Magnetism and Attraction operates. The subconscious mind is continually attracting and repelling things to and from us according to what has been programmed into it. A master is someone who uses this law to his own conscious benefit.

Lets take the example of money and prosperity. If you have the belief in your subconscious mind that you will never have money, you won't. If, on the other hand, you think you will, the subconscious mind will attract those opportunities and possibilities to you. Whatever you want in life, all you have to do is affirm or visualize this into the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind will attract and magnetize it to you.

Carl Jung spoke of this when he talked about the collective unconscious. The subconscious mind is interconnected with all other subconscious minds. You might say that all the sons and daughters of God have one great subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind also has the ability to sense radiations of energy. We all automatically use this ability in our daily lives. This ability can be specifically used in areas such as water dowsing, or water witching. The subconscious can be programmed to search for any physical substance, not just water. It can sense the radiation of energy of any substance for which it is programmed to search.

The subconscious mind is also the seat of our psychic abilities. The subconscious has five inner senses that are the subtler counterparts of our five external senses: Inner sight (clairvoyance), inner hearing (clairaudience), inner smell, inner taste, and inner touch.

Have you ever noticed that when you dream you have your five senses available to you? How can this be if you are sleeping? This is because you are utilizing your five inner senses of the subconscious mind. All people have psychic abilities and can develop them further. It is just a matter of practice and proper training as with any external ability.
How the Conscious Mind Works in Relationship to the Subconscious Mind

The key function of the conscious mind is to be the computer programmer, protector and master of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is meant to be the servant or servomechanism of the conscious mind. Most people, not understanding these psychological laws, let their subconscious mind run them. When this happens, people become victims and start having a lot of problems.

The subconscious mind was never meant to direct your life. It will run you into oblivion if you let it, not because it is bad, but because it has no reasoning. In and of itself it is divine. Why would you let a non reasoning mind run your life? Strangely enough, this is what most people do.

The ideal is that every time a thought, feeling, or impulse arises out of the subconscious mind, it should be checked or rationalized. You might imagine an inner gate or inner bubble that protects you from your own subconscious mind. When a thought or feeling or impulse arises, it is the job of the conscious mind to use its powers of reasoning, discernment and discrimination to check that thought at the gate. If the thought or impulse is positive and spiritual, you let it into your mind. If it is negative, you push it out.

Psychological health is the process of letting into your mind positive spiritual balanced thoughts. Psychological health is like physical health. If you want to be physically healthy you put good healthful food into your body. If you want to be psychologically healthy you put good healthful thoughts into your mind.

By pushing the negative thoughts out of your mind, you are refusing them energy. This is much like a plant that is not being watered. It eventually withers and dies from lack of water (attention and focus). The second step is to affirm the opposite positive thought or spiritual thought. This is called positive thinking and the use of positive affirmations.

By continually disregarding the negative thought and affirming the positive thought, a new habit is formed in the subconscious mind. The old habit dies because you are not giving it energy; and the new habit is formed because you are continually affirming and thinking positively. Within twenty one days a new habit can be formed.

You must remember that the subconscious is filled with all these old tapes that your parents and other people programmed into you when you were young. If the conscious mind isn't making choices, then all this old program-ming from early childhood is programming your present life.
Development of the Outer Bubble or Shield to Protect You From Other People's Negative Energy

Just as it is essential to develop an inner bubble to protect you from your own subconscious mind, it is also essential to develop an outer bubble or shield to protect you from other people's negative energy. The ideal, as I have already mentioned, is for you to be the computer programmer of your subcon-scious mind.

Always remember that, if you don't take responsibility for this, then the subconscious mind or other people will run your life. The ideal is to be the cause, creator and master of your own life. If these psychological laws aren't clearly understood, then other people will be your computer programmers.

Let's take the example of someone criticizing or judging you. The ideal is to have an imaginary bubble, shield, or light around you so that, when criticism comes toward you, it hits the bubble or shield and slides off like water off a duck's back. You can imagine its bouncing off like a rubber pillow.

You make a conscious choice or discrimination as to whether to let it into your subconscious mind or not. It must be understood that this bubble is a semipermeable bubble. In other words, it allows in positive energy but keeps out negative energy.

If you don't have this bubble of protection available to you at all times, then you can be victimized by another person's comments, statements or energy. There is a time to be open and a time to be closed. It is necessary to close down and protect yourself if other people are being negative. If someone would throw an actual physical spear at you, I am sure you would physically try to get out of the way if you could.

It is the same thing psychologically. When other people are directing negative energy towards you it is like a psychological spear. You will be poisoned if you let it in. You wouldn't let a person shove physical poison down your physical mouth. So don't let people shove mental poison into your mind. You don't want the subconscious mind to run your life and you don't want other people to run your life either.

Another way of saying this is that you want to respond instead of react. To respond is to choose how to deal with the incoming energy. To react is to let the incoming energy go right into your subconscious mind, solar plexus, or emotional body and lash back. If someone judges or attacks you and you let it in, you will either be hurt, withdrawn and cry, or lash back. You are letting another person be the cause of your emotions. You want to cause your emotions.

Another way of saying this is that you are letting yourself be hypnotized. I am licensed as a hypnotist, as well as being a licensed counselor. However, most of my work as a counselor is not hypnotizing people but de hypnotizing them. Many people are in hypnosis, and I am trying to get them out of it.

You are in hypnosis when you are a victim. You are letting another person program your emotions in a waking state. You are hyper suggestible when you don't make a choice as to how you want to respond. In reality we all are invulnerable psychologically. This is a very profound statement. To be invulnerable means that we can't get emotionally hurt unless we choose to be.
My Favorite Metaphor of All

My favorite metaphor is likening psychological health to physical health. If a person you know catches a cold or the flu, you certainly don't want to get it. You do everything in your power not to get it. You stay away from that person. You take extra Vitamin C. You tell yourself you are not going to get sick. You eat well and try to get enough sleep. In other words, you build up your resistance. If you keep your resistance up you don't get sick.

Doctors and nurses don't get all the sicknesses of their patients. How come? The reason is that there is no such thing as a contagious disease. There are only people with "low resistance".

This analogy is exactly the same on the psychological level. There is no such thing as a contagious psychological disease. There are only people with low resistance. How do we keep up our psychological resistance so we don't catch the infectious diseases of anger, depression, jealousy, judgment, attack, grudges, hatred and so on? We keep our psychological resistance up by maintaining a positive mental attitude.

The protective bubble is one main positive attitude technique. Other key techniques are maintaining one's personal power, maintaining unconditional self love and self worth, faith and trust in God.

These are a few of the main attitudes. In following chapters I will explore some of the others. The main point is that we are here in this world to set a better example. We are here to bring other people up, not to let ourselves be sucked down. So in essence the earth is like a hospital that is run by the patients. There are very few healers or doctors. The purpose of life is to be a healer or doctor.

When you allow other people to victimize you to the negative, you have become one of the patients again, and now you are in need of healing. This is okay if it happens. The lesson is to get yourself back to your centered self and be the doctor and healer as soon as you can, for this is the mission and purpose in this lifetime for all of us.
The Development of Personal Power The First Golden Key

Of all the attitudes and qualities that need development in the healthy personality none is more important than personal power or the development of will. This last statement and point cannot be emphasized enough. Everything I have spoken of so far in this book will not work if you don't have personal power. Personal power is the key that makes the theory and ideals work. Personal power, or will power, is the first golden key.

What is personal power? Personal power or will is the guiding force of the healthy personality. Personal power is first an attitude. We can choose to hold an attitude of weakness or strength as we begin each day. Your power is the energy that you use to enforce your decisions.

For example, let's say you want to exercise at 3 o'clock. When 3 o'clock comes it is a good bet that you will need your power to make yourself do what you have committed yourself to do. Your power is also needed to control your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind will push you around unless you own your own power, so personal power is the enforcing agent of the conscious mind. It is the energy that mind musters to command and direct that personality. Personal power in its external usage is assertiveness.

Personal power is also very much tied in with decisiveness. It is intrinsic in the attitudes of "piss or get off the pot" and "fish or cut bait." If you are not decisive, then the subconscious mind or other people will make your decisions for you. The subconscious mind has no reasoning, and other people's decisions are not always in your best interest.

How can you be the master of yourself and your life if you do not have personal power? If you don't own your power, then you end up giving it to the subconscious or to other people. We know that God has power. The fact is that we are co creators and mini gods, so we have power, too. God helps those who help themselves. You can't help yourself if you don't own your power.

There is and has always been total personal power available to you. Personal power is nothing more than energy in your physical body and subconscious mind that you are using to control your life. Part of owning your power is being a spiritual warrior in life. Never giving up, and the will to live is really the will to fight.

Yoga teaches that life is not only a school but also a battlefield. We are trying to get to the top of a mountain. Progress entails taking three steps forward and slipping back two, or seven steps forward and slipping six, ad infinitum, until the top is reached. This is the nature of life for everyone on the spiritual path. The most important thing is not to be a quitter.

Paramahansa Yogananda, the great Indian sage, said, "A saint is a sinner who never gave up." Part of owning your power is to keep plugging away. It is also having faith in God's power, as well as your own personal power. When all outer security is stripped away, you always know that you have your power and God's power available to you and with you all the time. This is true safety and security.

You power is the energy that you use to take risks. If you don't own your power, you are going to have a hard time keeping your bubble of protection up. Your power is what allows you to "fake it until you make it". Your personal power, in essence, is your center. When you are in charge you feel more centered.

When you use your power over a long period of time you have what is called discipline. Owning your power is what allows the conscious reasoning mind to stay in control and not to be overwhelmed by subconscious or environmental forces. When you don't own your power you get depressed. Anyone who is depressed is not owning his power.

There are two opposing forces in life: Good and evil, light and darkness, positive and negative, illusion and truth, egotistical thinking and spiritual thinking. Your power is your weapon with which to fight the negative and identify with the positive. As Edgar Cayce said, "There is no force in the universe more powerful than your will or power."

The conscious reasoning mind, with the will or power, then directs all the incoming forces. If we don't have will or power we would be overwhelmed. People in the extreme state of giving up their power, control and mastery have become psychotic. The conscious mind has abdicated all responsibility for control, mastery, orchestration and directorship. The subconscious mind and the environment totally take over.

You don't have to be afraid of your power because you are going to use it only in a loving way to serve God, yourself and other people. Whenever you are in power you will feel good. When you have your power, you are challenging and asserting yourself. When you don't have your power, life is clobbering you. The essence of what I am trying to teach in my work is that we are causes of our reality. To be the cause of our reality all the time, we must own our power.
How Do You Claim Your Power?

You claim your power by choosing every morning, the second you get up, to affirm the attitude in your mind that you have it. The diagram at the end of this chapter, lists some personal power affirmations that you can say to yourself to cultivate and build this energy. I have also included some emotional invulnerability affirmations to build your protective bubble since this is so much involved with owning your power.

Edgar Cayce, the great sleeping prophet, made another very important statement involving power. He talked about the importance of developing positive anger. I emphasize the term "positive" anger. Positive anger is controlled anger that is not directed at other people or yourself but rather at the dark force that is trying to push us down. It is used to catapult us toward the light and positivity.

There is enormous power tied up with anger. The idea is to channel this power constructively and creatively. Jesus turned to one of his disciples when he started to complain and said, "Get thee behind me, Satan." I think positive anger has to do with having some real emotion and feeling behind your power.

When you say the affirmations to yourself, say them with emotions and real power or they won't work. The subconscious mind and other people will victimize you to the degree that you do or do not own your power. As soon as you mean business the subconscious will become your servant. You have to make it serve you, not ask it to serve you. It should also be noted here that God is not going to control your subconscious mind for you, no matter how much you pray. That is not His job. That is your job.

Every morning when get up, claim your power, and commit yourself to becoming the master of your life. Be loving, serve God, and have a great day, and let nothing in this universe stop you from your appointed task. This is how to live properly. Once you have established your power, then pray for God's help and do some affirmations and visualizations to program your subconscious mind the way you want it to work for you. This is the ultimate power in the universe.

Do you realize the power that is at your disposal? How can you not win this war? How can you not eventually get to the top of the mountain? How can you not be successful with all this power? Add to this the fact that we are each the sons and daughters of God in truth and are each one with God. Can God and the sons and daughters of God lose a battle with Satan, which is another name for ego, illusion, negative thinking?

My Two Favorite Spiritual Affirmations

1. God, my personal power and the power of my subconscious mind are an unbeatable team.

2. Be still and know that I am God.

Another method of charging up your power is to visualize some symbol you are holding that denotes your full power maybe a sword, a crown, the Rod of Moses, a baseball bat. Combine this kind of imagery with your affirmations and you will feel even more power.

Psychological Disidentification and Identification Exercise

Suggested instructions:

Every morning and every night for twenty one days repeat this page of affirmations out loud three times until they fully sink into your conscious and subconscious mind.

Disidentification Exercise:

I have a body, but I am not my body. My body may find itself in different conditions of health or sickness. This has nothing to do with my real self, or the real "I".

I have behavior, but I am not my behavior. All my behavior comes from my thoughts. If I have not developed self mastery and I am operating on automatic pilot, I sometimes behave inappropriately. Even though I behave well or poorly, I am not my behavior. This has nothing to do with my real self, my real "I."

I have feelings and emotions, but I am not my feelings and emotions. If I have not yet developed self mastery, my feelings and emotions are sometimes negative and sometimes positive. As I become more of a cause, creator, chooser and master of my life this will change. Though a wave of feelings and emotions may overtake me, I know I am not my feelings and emotions. My true nature will not change. "I" remain the same.

I have a mind, but I am not my mind. My mind is my tool for creating my feelings, emotions, behavior, and bod, as well as what I attract into my life. If I have not developed self mastery, my mind sometimes runs me, instead of me running my mind. My mind is my most valuable tool, but it is not what "I" am.

Identification Exercise:

What am "I"?

After disidentifying myself (the "I") from the contents of conscious-ness, I recognize and affirm that I am a center of pure self consciousness. I am a center of will and personal power, capable of being the cause and creator of every aspect of my life. I am capable of causing, directing, choosing and creating all my thoughts, feelings, emotions, behavior, health or disease of my physical body, and the kinds of things I attract and magnetize into my life. This is who "I" am.