Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion Part 3

The cure still holds good and I am convinced that it will always do so.

Before closing, I should like to say a few words on the application of my method to the training and correction of children by their parents.

The latter should wait until the child is asleep, and then one of them should enter his room with precaution, stop a yard from his bed, and repeat 15 or 20 times in a murmur all the things they wish to obtain from the child, from the point of view of health, work, sleep, application, conduct, etc. He should then retire as he came, taking great care not to awake the child. This extremely simple process gives the best possible results, and it is easy to understand why.

When the child is asleep his body and his conscious self are at rest and, as it were, annihilated; his unconscious self however is awake; it is then to the latter alone that one speaks, and as it is very credulous it accepts what one says to it without dispute, so that, little by little, the child arrives at making of himself what his parents desire him to be.

CONCLUSION

What conclusion is to be drawn from all this?

The conclusion is very simple and can be expressed in a few words: We possess within us a force of incalculable power, which, when we handle it unconsciously is often prejudicial to us. If on the contrary we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves and allows us not only to escape and to aid others to escape, from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative happiness, whatever the conditions in which we may find ourselves.

Lastly, and above all, it should be applied to the moral regeneration of those who have wandered from the right path.

THOUGHTS AND PRECEPTS OF EMILE COUe

_taken down literally by Mme. Emile Leon, his disciple._

Do not spend your time in thinking of illness you might have, for if you have no real ones you will create artificial ones.

When you make conscious autosuggestions, do it naturally, simply, with conviction, and above all _without any effort._ If unconscious and bad autosuggestions are so often realized, it is because they are made without effort.

Be sure that you will obtain what you want, and you will obtain it, so long as it is within reason.

To become master of oneself it is enough to think that one is becoming so... . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear.

It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can cure you. My part simply consists in teaching you to make use of that force.

Never discuss things you know nothing about, or you will only make yourself ridiculous.

Things which seem miraculous to you have a perfectly natural cause; if they seem extraordinary it is only because the cause escapes you.

When you know that, you realize that nothing could be more natural.

When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the imagination which wins. Such a case is only too frequent, and then not only do we not do what we want, but just the contrary of what we want. For example: the more we try to go to sleep, the more we try to remember the name of some one, the more we try to stop laughing, the more we try to avoid an obstacle, while _thinking that we cannot do so,_ the more excited we become, the less we can remember the name, the more uncontrollable our laughter becomes, and the more surely we rush upon the obstacle.

It is then the imagination and not the will which is the most important faculty of man; and thus it is a serious mistake to advise people to train their wills, it is the training of their imaginations which they ought to set about.

Things are not for us what they are, but what they seem; this explains the contradictory evidence of persons speaking in all good faith.

By believing oneself to be the master of one's thoughts one becomes so.

Everyone of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete, materializes, and becomes in short a reality.

We are what we make ourselves and not what circ.u.mstances make us.

Whoever starts off in life with the idea: "I shall succeed", always does succeed because he does what is necessary to bring about this result. If only one opportunity presents itself to him, and if this opportunity has, as it were, only one hair on its head, he seizes it by that one hair. Further, he often brings about unconsciously or not, propitious circ.u.mstances.

He who on the contrary always doubts himself, never succeeds in doing anything. He might find himself in the midst of an army of opportunities with heads of hair like Absalom, and yet he would not see them and could not seize a single one, even if he had only to stretch out his hand in order to do so. And if he brings about circ.u.mstances, they are generally unfavorable ones. Do not then blame fate, you have only yourself to blame.

People are always preaching the doctrine of effort, but this idea must be repudiated. Effort means will, and will means the possible entrance of the imagination in opposition, and the bringing about of the exactly contrary result to the desired one.

Always think that what you have to do is easy, if possible. In this state of mind you will not spend more of your strength than just what is necessary; if you consider it difficult, you will spend ten, twenty times more strength than you need; in other words you will waste it.

Autosuggestion is an instrument which you have to learn how to use just as you would for any other instrument. An excellent gun in inexperienced hands only gives wretched results, but the more skilled the same hands become, the more easily they place the bullets in the target.

Conscious autosuggestion, made with confidence, with faith, with perseverance, realizes itself mathematically, within reason.

When certain people do not obtain satisfactory results with autosuggestion, it is either because they lack confidence, or because they make efforts, which is the more frequent case. To make good suggestions it is absolutely necessary to do it _without effort._ The latter implies the use of the _will,_ which must be entirely put aside.

One must have recourse _exclusively_ to the imagination.

Many people who have taken care of their health all their life in vain, imagine that they can be immediately cured by autosuggestion. It is a mistake, for it is not reasonable to think so. It is no use expecting from suggestion more than it can normally produce, that is to say, a progressive improvement which little by little transforms itself into a complete cure, when that is possible.

The means employed by the healers all go back to autosuggestion, that is to say that these methods, whatever they are, words, incantations, gestures, staging, all produce in the patient the autosuggestion of recovery.