To clarify, the core process described earlier relies on 2 main factors, belief and intention. In actual practice, a third factor of imagination is often used to provide a “reason to believe” that what you do inside your mind will produce tangible results in the physical world around you.
Each of these three key factors have been written about extensively throughout history. We’ve all heard about the “Power of Belief”, the “Power of Will”, and the “Power of Imagination”. Although each of these are powerful in and of themselves, when you combine them as we will in this course, you end up with a system that is completely unstoppable.
Let’s take a moment and discuss each of these three key factors—belief, willpower, and imagination—and what each contributes to the key process.
Belief
The Power of Belief may be considered the foundation for the entire process, because what you believe tends to be reflected in the world around you.
Several religions have been built on the foundation of this one thing. In fact, the Christian Bible quotes Christ as saying, “According to your faith is it done to you,” and “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
In my own experience, after journaling for many years on what I did, how I felt, and what results were produced, I found that my beliefs were the primary cause of my experiences, even to the point where my efforts to manifest a desired goal were successful in the degree that I believed in the process used.
It was for this reason I wrote the book, Choose To Believe, in which I stated that beliefs were the ONLY causative element in the manifestation process.
And while I still believe this to be true, I also recognize that the other core factors we will discuss in this course are necessary to change our beliefs and thus create a new experience.
A working model I find highly useful to explain how beliefs work describes beliefs as a type of “mental template” stored in your subconscious mind which serves as a guide to direct the events in your life. For example, if you have a strong belief in success, this will cause you to have many more experiences of success than if you had a strong belief in failure.
Most of our beliefs are shaped from the memories which are also stored in the subconscious mind. This is why it can be difficult to believe in success if you’ve had a long history of failure. It’s also why repeated visualization of what you want aids in the formation of a new belief. The more you visualize the desired outcome in vivid detail, the more memories you have stored in your subconscious mind, and these memories serve to reshape your beliefs regarding future events.
This also explains why recent events have a greater impact on our beliefs than those in the distant past. Our memories of recent events are stronger, therefore they have a greater impact on our beliefs.
Experience and visualization are two of the main methods used to change beliefs. The use of affirmations is also a popular method, and one that works fairly well, although you have to repeat several related affirmations many more times for them to have the same effect as a single experience or visualization.
Hypnosis, which is often a guided visualization during a period of deep relaxation, is one of the quickest ways to change a belief. However, it is also one of the most difficult techniques to use on yourself.
Willpower / Intention
Willpower is rarely found mentioned in religious texts, which have often been used to control the masses. It is found more often in reference to systems of magick, where individuals take personal responsibility for the results they get from their efforts to manifest their desires.
While willpower is often thought of in relation to forcing yourself to do things you don’t want to do, at the foundation, it’s really nothing more than the ability to make decisions and then follow through with those decision to completion.
It’s just that this ability is needed more often when the ‘right’ decision is one that involves a short-term personal sacrifice to realize a longer-term benefit, such as when dieting to gain greater vitality, quitting smoking to extend your life, or saving money on a regular basis to have a rich retirement.
In the area of manifesting desired outcomes using spiritual power, willpower is used to set a strong intention (i.e. – to fully commit yourself to producing the desired outcome), hold a clear focus of what you want to experience, and choosing to believe that it will actually manifest.
In short, willpower is used to create the subconscious belief templates that are used to guide the events in your life.
Those who believe that willpower alone is responsible for manifesting desired outcomes tend to see it as a force that compels the Universe to act in accordance to the thought held in mind. In this working model, the use of willpower is often seen as an electro-magnetic force which is broadcast and amplified to whatever level is required to produce the desired results.
The main thing to keep in mind is that you use your willpower to set and hold a thought of what you want to manifest. While it often acts like a muscle, you don’t use it to actually move mountains directly. You use it to direct Universal Power to move the mountains for you. This is why many believe that they are giving commands to spiritual beings who are compelled to obey. This happens to also be a working model that gets results.
Imagination
Although not absolutely required, imagination serves to give the core process more ‘substance’ which in turn, makes it more believable, and thus, more likely to produce the desired result.
When we talk about working models, such as radiating thoughts into the Universe where they can be amplified to provide the force necessary to manifest your desired objective, we’re using imagination. Whether you see the process or merely feel it, it activates your imagination and gives you something to focus on.
Imagination can be seen as the tool used by willpower to reshape your beliefs. What you imagine provides a wealth of information, on both a large scale and in the minor details.
Imagination is also used to create new memories, which support new beliefs, which guide your life to include new experiences.
It’s also used to define the intentions you set through willpower. You first imagine what you want, then tell yourself, “THIS is what I am now creating.”
According to some working models, when you hold a thought in your imagination, the concept is broadcast out into the Universe where it grows stronger until such time as it can manifest. In this working model, your imagination itself is the causative element, and belief is not required. Of course, those who get results using this method believe in the process.
In this course, imagination is used to construct and define our objectives, impressing them upon both our subconscious minds and the Universe at large.