Art by Rebecca Campbell
Affirming in the face of contradictory evidence can have the appearance of forcing the issue – an act of will, not of faith. For example, saying “I am well” when you are obviously sick is trying to overcome the illness with a thought, as though the thought had a power of its own, which it does not. In order for a thought to have power, it has to have life moving through it, like an electric circuit has to have a current moving through it before it can produce an effect. Thoughts are circuits, and electric circuits are “thoughts.” In fact, an electric circuit is so exactly a thought that the word hardly needs quotation marks around it.
Saying “I am well” when you are not must be accompanied by a perfect thought before it can restore health. That’s the first requirement. You have to know what being healthy feels like, looks like, and sounds like, even when you feel like hell. You have to be able to visualize it and feel it with all of your senses while those same senses are inundated with the opposite. Easier said than done.
The second requirement is that you have to take your attention off of being sick and put all of it on your concept/experience of being well. This is kind of like “being part of the solution and not the problem.” As long as you are giving life to the problem with your attention, you are feeding it. Again, easier said than done.
Thirdly, you have to create it, and this has three parts. Briefly, you have to want to be
well, which means you have to want it more than any benefit you might get from being sick, such as being right or getting sympathy or time off from work. The second part is that you have to have sufficient willpower to override the inertia of the already established thought, which by now does have a life of its own – the one you have given it by your words, your actions, and your thoughts. And the third part is that you have to command all this to take place. It’s not enough to just have the thought; you have to say it. Saying it breathes life into it. And you have to say it as though there is no other option. The universe is continually asking us what we want, and any hesitancy on our part is a deal-breaker. We have to want it past wanting. We have to expect it the way we expect our paycheck. This is our contract with God (in the old language it was called covenant). This is what the centurion meant when he said, “Only speak the word, for I too am a man under authority. I say, ‘Do this,’ and it is done.'” Symbolically, the centurion is the executive mind; the Christ is the God Being in Its life aspect. Both are elements of us – the thought and the life within it, activated by the Word.
There is a way to get a leg up on this: be proactive. It’s easier to change outer conditions before they get started than after they have hit high gear. Usually we wait until a negative condition is going a hundred miles an hour before we start making affirmations. It is far easier to affirm the good than to negate the bad, which is the way affirmations are normally attempted. Here’s how to make it work for you: the next time you’re feeling great, I mean really great, say to yourself and the whole universe, “YES! This is good!” And it doesn’t have to be a good feeling; it can be a knowing, a sense that what just happened was perfect. Call it that. Let God know that it fits – the same feeling when you fit the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle or when you find something that was lost. This goes beyond gratitude, which is also good; this is putting your whole being into it. Seize the moment. Carve it into stone. Touch the earth. Stand in it. If someone were to ask you in that moment, “Who are you?” you would say, “This is what I am.”
What we affirm is what we are. What we create comes back and re-creates us.
The Mystical Christ 
Thank you sharing “Affrim”, something that’s been showing up for me is the force of the other ( what ever you call it, that illness which is no longer desired ? ) it may not be called a power or a unsustainable force, yet when we use something for any period of time, regardless of it’s origin we give it power and force. This is repeating what you’ve written, still it has been interesting to me how much one may miss….. JUNK ! Thank God for public storage ..or not .. haha…….LOVE THE WORK YOU DO ………..lovepeace……..joel
I felt like exploring your teaser that “Thoughts are circuits, and electric circuits are ‘thoughts.'”
When I think about an electric circuit, there is a generator, a conduit, and a machine. All three of these pieces are necessary for a working circuit. My meditation focused on the machine part of the circuit.
Most importantly, machines are built for some intention. For a lightbulb- to make light. For a refrigerator- to produce refrigeration. Just as “I am well” does not create wellness, nor does “I am a refrigerator” create refrigeration. There are 100 ways to implement “I am a refrigerator”- a machine could literally speak “I am a refrigerator”, or it could have LED display spelling out “I am a refrigerator”. We could even have an insulated box that looks like a refrigerator and has a lightbulb inside. All are machines. All use power. But the true test of “I am a refrigerator” is if the machine produces refrigeration.
From my point of view, if I am sick, I *am* sick. It’s an undeniable state of being for me in that moment. If I don’t want to be in that state anymore, maybe I should create some wellness thought machines- machines that create wellness. Maybe I have a thought that chicken soup will help me be well. Great! It would behoove me to get some “life moving through [that machine]” and start making some chicken soup. I like this idea. Now instead of “forcing the issue” through will alone, I get to use will and faith. Will to create the chicken soup, and faith to believe it will create health. Maybe this helps with the “easier said than done” dilemma. Instead of using lots of will, and getting discouraged when I notice my symptoms of illness, I could focus my will on a machine that I believe will improve my condition. Focus on something I can more easily have faith in. I like to incorporate faith into my work. It’s more fun than will alone.
In my meditation, I felt into the idea of holding two live wires, one in each hand, surging with an abundance of energy. I hadn’t yet created a good thought-machine to hook it up to, but it felt nice to feel the easy availability of that energy! Where does the energy that powers these machines come from? What is the generator? My thought is that, hopefully, God is the generator so we have an abundant supply of energy and don’t have to distract ourselves with the arduous task of creating energy.
So, what about subconscious thoughts, those thoughts in the background of our minds? These machines are producing effects, too. I remember how in computer science, we call things that run in the background “daemons.” Hmm. Daemon/demon. Related? Wikipedia tells me yes. (Wikipedia tells me other things that are interesting about daemons, so readers might like to browse over to there.)
So if I’m trying to produce wellness, I’d be wise to 1. find the machines that are working against wellness and unplug them, and 2. create some machines that produce wellness.
Thank you for the circuit that was your post. I think it did some interesting things when I hooked my circuits up to it!
I’m glad you’re getting a lot out of this post!
Focusing on a “machine” that you believe will help you is actually what the commandment “Honor your father and mother” is talking about. The 10 Commandments are a blueprint for this kind of thing, and this one says that you can’t stray too far from your native beliefs, or your mind will reject the input. Once you stretch the umbilical cord a little, you can venture farther afield and claim your divine right.