by Michael Maciel

Alexander the Great once said that anyone who can concentrate on one thing for three minutes could conquer the world. He would know. Anyone who has ever attempted to see a vision to fruition knows that nothing saps effectiveness like inconsistent thinking. Those who know what they want tend to get it. Nothing metaphysical about that.

Imagine what would happen if you sat down once a day and held a single thought for three minutes straight—not a static thought, not the repetition of a statement, like an affirmation, but a living thought, one that you actively think about. For example, instead of repeating a phrase, such as “let there be world peace,” you actually entertain the concept of world peace. You think about what world peace would look like, what it would feel like, and what the overall effects of world peace would be.

Such a visualization—or vision—would have a profound effect on your mood, would it not? And what is your mood but your vibration, your statement to the world? It would be like saying, “I SAY that there IS world peace.” You don’t say that there will be world peace, because the only feeling that produces is a feeling of hope, and hoping never changed anything. But when people turn themselves into broadcasting stations, pumping out the vision of world peace with all of its feeling and descriptions of what it would look like, then that has power. That has the ability to change the way people think and believe.

If you’re honest with yourself, you know that big changes happen in your life as a result of something that changes the way you see the world, right? People experience that all the time. Big changes don’t come because of new ideas, but because of new perspectives. They happen when people see the same old world through new eyes. And people who walk around with new eyes firmly in place have a tremendous effect on those around them. Their vision becomes contagious. And visions that become contagious have a name. They’re called MOVEMENTS.

Prayer is our statement to the world. It’s what we tell reality to be. The world, by its very nature, is plastic—it molds itself to our thoughts. If you doubt this, look at the world and ask yourself whose thoughts are you looking at? Whose worldview are you seeing? What beliefs have shaped the world you live in? When you go to work, who created the mindset of that environment? And what effect does that mindset have on the way you experience your job? We’re talking about real things here, not some quack ideas.

When we see prayer as our statement to the world, we begin to take it seriously. One meme currently circulating through the Internet is that prayer is not enough. Rightly so, especially if prayer is defined as petitioning a non-existent god, or simply expressing one’s hopes and wishes. Hopes and wishes never accomplish anything. But major changes in the world come about as a result of visions, visions that become contagious and then become a movement. And what is a movement if not a statement, a collective statement powered by consistent thought?

But, it all begins with you. Your first job is to hold the vision; your second job is to speak that vision into reality. You talk about it, and you broadcast it mentally out into the greater mind of your community. Like a cell phone, you connect with other people through the network—the higher network of MIND.

The more established a vision is in mind, the easier it is for people to talk about it openly, and the harder it is for opposing visions to appear credible, to be blindly accepted as the way things are. Your statement, your speaking your vision into the world, telling it what it’s going to be, changes the way things “are,” because mass-assumptions support prevailing conditions. Undermine a mass-assumption, and people begin to ask questions. If your vision is already in place, it will be the first thing they see when they start to imagine alternatives.

Be the alternative. Don’t just lament the problems of the world—actions without vision never succeed. Hold the vision, speak the vision, radiate the vision. Invest it with your feeling. And what is the most powerful feeling known to humanity? Victory. It’s the feeling of victory. It’s the feeling you have when justice prevails, when goodness prevails, when compassion and empathy prevails, along with the desire to heal the world and not just wait for it to end. The survival instinct is the most powerful instinct we have. As human beings—as spiritual beings—we have the ability to raise that instinct up, so that it’s not just an individual concern, but one that encompasses the entire planet and every living thing upon it.

Be a spiritual being.