Standard opening. Take turns reading chapter 1, "The Development of Personal Power and the Functioning of the Conscious and Subconscious Minds," from Soul Psychology. While reading this chapter ask to bilocate to El Morya's inner-plane ashram. Call upon him for guidance and help in your discussion. Conduct a discussion about how everyone either owns their personal power or gives it away to the subconscious mind, negative ego, inner child, emotional body, mental body, physical body, lower-self desire or other people.

Take a break, then set up the audio tape, "Ultimate Cosmic Ray Meditation" or read it, starting on page 31. Ask that El Morya guide the meditation. Personal sharing. Do standard closing. Social time.

Soul Psychology
Chapter 1
The Development of Personal Power and the Functioning of the Conscious and Sub-Conscious Minds

The single most important aspect of 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 nonreasoning mind. The superconscious mind is the all-knowing mind.

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.

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 - 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 ability and yet it does have an incredible number of amazing abilities and intelligence factors. The best metaphor for understanding this is that of the computer.

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. The subconscious does whatever it is programmed to do, no matter what. A good example is the way the subconscious mind completely runs the physical body. This can be proven by the effects of hypnotic suggestions given to a person concerning the body. The subconscious mind has the ability 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 through self-hatred, victim consciousness, revenge, giving up, and so on. The ideal is to tell yourself or your subconscious mind that you are in perfect, radiant health and that every day in every way you are getting healthier and healthier.

The subconscious mind works separately from the functioning of the conscious mind. It works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year while you are sleeping and awake, and it never gets tired. It is constantly doing whatever it has been programmed to do.

The 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 your thoughts, feelings, imaginings, habit patterns, impulses and desires. From the time you were a little infant, you have been receiving programs from your parents, grandparents, peers, teachers, ministers, extended family and television programs. When you are a child, your reasoning mind has not developed enough to be able to discriminate and thereby protect you from negative programming. As a child, you are totally open, so your subconscious mind can be 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 negative programming and education.

The subconscious mind also creates most dreams, although there are occasions when the superconsciousness creates dreams. A dream is basically a mirror of the way you think, feel, and act during your conscious daily life. A dream is like a newspaper you receive every night, depicting the organization and dynamics of your internal energies.

The difference between dreams and a real newspaper is that dreams are in the universal language of symbols. To understand your dreams is to understand that every part of a dream is, in reality, a part of you. By examining the relationship of the symbols you can gain insight into and understanding of the patterns that are manifesting in your life. A dream is an automatic process that the subconscious mind brings to you as feed- back. This feedback is essential because very often you are manifesting patterns in your life that you are not consciously aware of manifesting.

The subconscious mind can also be termed the habit mind. It stores all habits, both positive and negative. A lot of people think habits are bad. This is not true. You want to change only bad habits, while creating good habits.

A good example of this is learning to drive a stick shift car. At first, it takes a lot of conscious effort and will power but soon shifting is done without your having to think about it. If you didn't have a subconscious mind to store your developed abilities, shifting would always require great focus and concentration.

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

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

The subject of money and prosperity provides a good example. If you have the belief in your subconscious mind that you will never have money, you won't. If, on the other hand, you believe you will, your subconscious mind will attract those opportunities and possibilities to you. Whatever you want in life, you can affirm and visualize in your 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. You automatically use this ability in your daily life. It can be used specifically 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 energy radiation of any substance for which it is programmed to search.

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

When you dream you have your five senses available to you. How can this be if you are sleeping? It is because you are utilizing the five inner senses of the subconscious mind. You 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 but is not meant to direct it. If you don't understand these psychological laws, you are likely to let your subconscious mind run you. 'Why would you let a nonreasoning mind run your life? Strangely enough, this is what most people do. When this happens you can become a victim and have a lot of problems.

When a thought, feeling or impulse arises in the subconscious mind, it is the job of the conscious mind to use its powers of reasoning 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 healthful food into your body. If you want to be psychologically healthy, you put beautiful 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 and positive 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 this new habit can be formed.

You must remember that the subconscious is filled with many old tapes that you accepted when you were young. If the conscious mind isn't making choices, then all this old programming from early childhood is affecting 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 yourself from your own subconscious mind, it is also essential to develop an outer bubble, or shield, to protect yourself from other people's negative energy. 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.

Let's take the example of someone criticizing or judging you. The ideal is to be surrounded by an imaginary bubble, shield, or Light so that when criticism comes toward you, it hits the bubble or shield and slides off like water off a duck's back. You make a conscious choice 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 positive energy in but keeps negative energy out.

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 threw an actual physical spear at you, I am sure you would physically try to get out of the way if you could. 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 the subconscious mind, solar plexus, or emotional body and to lash back. If someone judges or attacks you and you let it in, you will either be hurt and withdrawn and cry, or you will lash back. You are letting another person be the cause of your emotions. You want to cause your emotions.

A different 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 consists not of hypnotizing people but of de-hypnotizing them. Many people are in a state of self-hypnosis, and I am trying to get them out of it. You are under hypnosis when you are a victim. You are hyper-suggestible when you don't make choices as to how you want to respond. In reality, you are invulnerable, psychologically. This is a very profound statement. To be invulnerable means that you can't be emotionally hurt unless you choose to be.

My Favorite Metaphor of All

My favorite metaphor likens 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 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 catch all the sicknesses of their patients. How come? Because there is no such thing as a completely 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 you keep your psychological resistance up so you don't catch the infectious diseases of anger, depression, jealousy, judgment, attack, grudges, hatred, and so on? You keep your psychological resistance up by maintaining a positive mental attitude.

The protective bubble is one positive attitude technique. Other key techniques are maintaining your personal power, maintaining unconditional self-love and self-esteem, and maintaining your trust in God.

These are a few of the main attitudes. In following chapters I will explore some of the others. The point is that you are here in this world to set a better example. You are here to raise other people up, not to let yourself be sucked down, In essence, the Earth is like a hospital that is run by the patients and in which there are very few healers or doctors. The purpose of life is to be a healer.

When you allow other people to victimize you, you have become one of the patients again, and then you are in need of healing. This is okay. The lesson is to get back to your centered self and become healer again as soon as you can, for that is the mission in this lifetime.

The Development of Personal Power: the First Golden Key

Of all the attitudes that need development in the healthy personality, none is more important than personal power, or the development of will. The techniques in this book will not work without personal power. Personal power, or will, is the guiding force of the healthy personality.

Personal power is an attitude. You can choose to hold an attitude of weakness or of strength as you begin each day. Your power is the energy that you use to carry out your decisions. For example, let's say you want to exercise at three o'clock. When three 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 run the show unless you own your own power, so personal power is the enforcing agent of the conscious mind. Personal power, in its external usage, is assertiveness.

Personal power is also very much tied in with decisiveness. 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 interests.

How can you be the master of your life if you do not own your power? You know that God has power. The fact is that you are a cocreator and mini-god, so you 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. The will to live is really the will to fight. Yoga teaches that life is not only a school but also a battlefield. You are trying to get to the top of a mountain. Progress entails taking three steps forward and slipping back two 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 having faith in God's power, as well as your own power. When all outer security is stripped away, you always know that you have your power and God's power available to you. This is true security.

Your power is the energy you use to take risks. If you don't own your power, you are going to have a hard time maintaining your bubble of protection. 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 be overwhelmed by subconscious or environmental forces. When you don't own your power you get depressed.

There are two opposing forces in life: good and evil, light and darkness, positive and negative, illusion and truth, egotistical thinking and spiritual thinking. Power is the 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, directs all incoming forces. Without power you would be overwhelmed. In an extreme state of giving up your power, you can become psychotic. The conscious mind can abdicate all responsibility, and the subconscious mind and the environment 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. When you are in your power you feel good, 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 you are the cause of your reality. To create what you want, you must own your power.

How Do You Claim Your Power?

You claim your power by choosing, every morning, to affirm that you have it. The diagram at the end of this chapter lists some personal power affirmations that will cultivate this energy. I have also included some emotional-invulnerability affirmations to build your protective bubble, since this shield is so much involved with owning your power.

Edgar Cayce, the great "sleeping" prophet, made another important statement involving power. He talked about the importance of developing positive anger, and I emphasize the word positive. 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 you down. It is used to catapult you toward the Light and positivity.

There is enormous power tied up with anger. The idea is to channel this power constructively. 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 behind your power.

When you say the affirmations you must say them with real emotional power or they won't work. 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 you get up, you can claim your power and commit yourself to becoming the master of your life. You can be loving, serve God, have a great day, and let nothing in this universe stop you from your appointed tasks. Once you have established your power, then you can 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.

You must 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 you are each a son or daughter of God, in truth, and are all 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 a symbol that denotes your full power - maybe a sword, a crown, the Rod of Moses, a baseball bat. If you combine this kind of imagery with your affirmations, you will feel even more power.

Psychological Disidentification and Identification Exercise

Suggested instructions: Every morning and every night for twenty-one days these affirmations should be repeated out loud three times until they fully sink into your conscious and subconscious minds.

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 emotions, but I am not my emotions. If I have not yet developed self-mastery, my emotions are sometimes negative and sometimes positive. As I become more of a master of my life, this will change. Though a wave of emotions may overtake me, I know I am not my 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 emotions, behavior, and body, as well as what I attract into my life. If I have not developed self-mastery, my mind sometimes runs me, instead of letting me control 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 consciousness, I affirm that I am a center of pure selfconsciousness. 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 directing, choosing, and creating all my thoughts and emotions, my behavior, the health of my body, and the kinds of things I magnetize into my life. This is who "I" am.

Affirmations
Personal Power and Becoming a Creative Cause

I am the power, the master, and the cause of my attitudes, emotions, and behavior.

I am 100% powerful, loving, and balanced at all times.

I am powerful, whole, and complete within myself. I have preferences but not attachments.

I am 100% powerful and decisive in everything I do.

I have perfect control over all my energies in service of a loving spiritual purpose.

I am the master of my life, and my subconscious mind is my friend and servant.

I am a center of pure self-consciousness and will, with the ability to direct my energies wherever I would have them go.

I am powerful, centered, and loving at all times.

I am powerful and centered at all times and I allow nothing in the external universe to knock me off balance.

I have 100% personal power and I vow never again to give that power to my subconscious mind or to other people.

I have perfect self-control and self-mastery in everything I do.

Emotional Invulnerability

I am 100% invulnerable to other people's negative energy. Other people's negative energy slides off me like water off a duck's back.

I am the cause of my emotions, not other people. I will not give them this power over me ever again.

Other people's negative energy bounces off me as though I were a rubber pillow.

I hear what other people say to me. However, I internalize only that which "I" choose to internalize.

The only effect other people's negative energy has is the effect I let it have. I choose not to be affected ever again.