All causes are more positive than their effects. All the forces of life and intelligence of which the mighty Mind of God consults are positive, more positive than electricity, even more positive than the mind of humanity. Your mind must be tuned to supreme positiveness if you would realize the power of life. Your faith in the power of life to overcome every negative condition must be more positive than your belief in the lack of life and health if you would polarize the intelligent healing power of the divine life. Electricity flows freely through the copper wire, but when it meets the positive resistance of the wire in the glass bulb it instantly generates heat and light. The electricity glorifies that which is as positive as itself. Life will glorify you with its power of health and perfection as your faith becomes as positive as life. You will become Godlike with divine powers as you develop in the strength of I AM-ness which polarizes and radiates the life, intelligence and love of the universal Father to all. Always remember that one of the conditions of divine receptivity is humility toward the supreme Power. The most Godlike realize that their strength is the strength of the Father. As the friction between the electricity and the resistant wire generates light and heat, so the vibration of the wonderful forces of the universal mind against the positive center of your mind will generate the heat of divine love and the light of true wisdom which will make you a mighty power for good, a radiant center of all the divine attributes that you have developed.
The most inclusive name for Being is Jehovah God. Jehovah represents the individual I AM and God (Elohim) the universal Principle. When man thinks or says “I AM” he is potentially giving freedom to the seed ideas that contains in its spiritual capacity all of Being. The natural man in his narrowed mental comprehension barely touches the seed ideas that expand in the Christ man to infinite power. The more we dwell upon and expand our I AM the greater looms its originating capacity before us. When Jesus proclaimed, “Before Abraham, was I AM,” He realized that the I AM preceded all manifestation, however great, and was capable of infinite expression.
The universal Substance with which you are working in the Silence is the most sensitive Substance in the world. In its native state, it is unformed, but It solidifies or assumes any form possible to your belief. It distributes Itself through the visual power of your mind. The I AM sends its Substance into the picture that the directive power of yours will give. You use your will to train the imagination to see only those things which you wish to experience. The quickest way to blot out an adverse or disastrous thought is to ask yourself this question: Is this what I want to happen?
Before any manifestation appears, it must first come out of the invisible. We must first have the feeling of conviction in our own consciousness. Where were you before you were born? You are told in plain language you were in the I AM state. You were in the Absolute or Paradisiacal State. When your boy or girl is born, the child is the Universal Life, God, or I AM assuming the role of that particular child. It is the Unconditioned becoming conditioned. It is the Formless taking form. “I was naked and ye clothed me.”
Whenever you exercise the will, try to place the action of that will as deeply in the world of your interior mental feeling as you possibly can; that is, do not originate will-action on the surface, but in the depth of your own supreme individuality. Try to feel that it is the “I AM” that is exercising the power of the will, and then remember that the “I AM” lives constantly upon the supreme heights of absolute self-mastery. With this inspiring thought constantly in mind, you will carry the throne of the will, so to speak, farther and farther back into the interior realms of your greater mental world, higher and higher up into the ruling power of the supreme principle in mind. The result will be that you will steadily increase the power of your will, and appropriate more and more the conscious control of that principle in your greater nature through which all the forces in your possession may be governed and directed.
So don’t let anything that has happened in your life discourage you. Don’t let poverty or lack of education or past failures hold you back. There is only one power . . the I AM in you . . and it can do anything. If in the past you have not used that power, that is too bad as far as the past is concerned, but it is not too late. You can start NOW. “Be still, and know that I AM God.” What more are you waiting for? God can do for you only what you allow Him to do through you, but if you will do your part, He can use you as a channel for unlimited power and good. The difference between failure and success is measured only by your patience and faith . . sometimes by inches, sometimes by minutes, sometimes by the merest flash of time.
In the 64th chapter of the Book of Isaiah we read: “O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay. Thou art our potter; we are the work of thy hand.” When you hear the words Lord, Father, and potter, do you think of another? I certainly hope not. The word “Lord” is Jod He Vau He [pron. “Yod Hey Vav Hey”] which is defined as “I AM”. Your own wonderful I AMness is the Lord, your Father. And the word “potter” means “imagination; that which is shaping your world.” Imagination is the Lord, the potter, the shaper of your world, molding it into its present form.
The central and most vital fact that they must come to realize is that an idea has the power of building thought structures, which in turn materialize in the outer environment and affairs and determine every detail of their existence. Every man is a king ruling his own subjects. These subjects are the ideas existing in his mind, the “subjects” of his thought. Each man’s ideas are as varied and show as many traits of character as the inhabitants of any empire. But they can all be brought into subjection and made to obey through the I AM power that is the ruler of the kingdom. In your domain of mind there may be colonies of alien ideas . . the Philistines, Canaanites, and other foreign tribes, that the Children of Israel found in their Promised Land when they attempted to take possession of it. The story of the Children of Israel and how they gained the possession of that land is a symbolical representation of the experience of everyone who seeks to reclaim his own consciousness in the name of the Lord. The meaning in Hebrew of the name Canaanite is “merchant” or “trader”; in other words, a set of ideas that has to do with the commercial phase of life. Study the Children of Israel (spiritual ideas) in their experiences with these Canaanites and you will get many valuable hints on subduing and handling your own money-getting ideas.
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. The Truth can only be known as the entire consciousness is surrendered to the Universal Mind which is Oneness, Wholeness and Completeness. The Law must be fulfilled in our consciousness by the clear perception that God is all. Merely thinking the Truth never changes anyone. It is the conscious knowing of the Truth that changes man from a material to a spiritual basis. Knowing the Truth means to have the true idea of Principle or God and the true idea of man. The word Principle used so frequently in our lessons means the Law of God . . the I AM, Universal Mind, Spiritual Substance, the Omnipresent, Omnipotence and Omniscience of our own Minds. One cannot think of the word Principle without losing the thought of the personal. Since the true nature of God is impersonal, the word will gradually clear the concept of a personal God subject to all the limitations which personality connotes.
“Whom seek ye” means that we are always seeking Jesus, or the thing that would save us. The only way we can receive our good is on the basis of our understanding of the laws of mind and our consciousness of complete acceptance. The voice answered, “I AM He.”
This world is the sphere of the “I AM”; in other words, that state of being wherein you become actually conscious of the great truth that “I AM” is identical with you. When you can clearly think of yourself as “I AM,” and can actually feel that “I AM” is neither mind nor body, soul nor spirit, but is above all of these in the most supreme state of individualized being, you are beginning to enter within the sacred domains of absolute truth. Affirm as frequently as possible the statement, I AM THE REAL I AM, and try to realize, whenever you make that statement, that “I AM” is the reigning power in your being; that “I AM” is God individualized in your being; that “I AM” is the only begotten Son, the Christ enthroned in your being; and that “I AM” actually is the “real you” of your being. You thus not only recognize the supreme position of “I AM,” but you also recognize yourself as being “I AM”; you lift your consciousness of yourself out of “material thought” into the pure light of spiritual thought; you find your real self and you discover that you . . the real you, the whole of you, reigns on high, where all life is forever in purity, health, power, freedom, truth; you become conscious of yourself in the world of supreme spiritual consciousness, and your eyes are opened in “another and a better world,” to the great truth that you are, here and now, not only the likeness of God, but the individualized spirit of God. You find that the only difference between the “I AM” that is you and the “I AM That I AM,” is that the former is individualized while the latter is infinite.
In short, when you say or think “I AM,” you are conscious of the existence of your real self, and feel the growth of a new sense of power within you. This recognition of the self may be but faint; but encourage it and it will grow, and whilst growing will manifest itself to your mind by impressing upon the latter the knowledge of the proper plan for further development. It is an example of “to him who hath shall be given, and to him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” The mere calling of the attention to the fact may awaken the recognition in some, whilst others will find it necessary to reflect upon the idea and awaken to a recognition of the truth more slowly. Some will not feel the truth. To such I say: The time is not yet ripe for your recognition of this great truth, but the seed is planted and the plant will appear in time. This may seem like the veriest nonsense to you now, but the time will come when you will admit its literal correctness. To those who feel the first indications of the awakening of the real self, I say: Carry the thought with you and it will unfold like the lotus, naturally and gradually; the truth once recognized cannot be lost, and there is no standing still in nature. To those who recognize the truth, I would like to say more, but this is not the place.
Difficulties may beset you, obstacles get in your way, and ill health hold you down. Bless them! Know that there is only one God (I AM) and He is good, therefore anything evil that may trouble you is GOOD in disguise. You have heard the old aphorism that . . “When Fortune means to man most good; she looks upon him with a threatening eye.” If you can bless every seeming evil, know that it is really Good working for you in another guise and that it is working with all else of life for your own good, it will quickly show you the silver lining underneath. It is only as you RESIST evil that it turns to harm.
You can be the man (or woman) you want to be, but not by simply wishing. You must make the effort to look at the world mentally and see it reflect your fulfilled desire. And when it does you must remain in that state until you reach the inner conviction that what you are seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing is true, clothe yourself in the feeling of its reality . . and explode! Do that and you are pregnant. And what do you do after pregnancy? Nothing! You simply wait for its birth to appear in its own appointed hour. And it will! When you least expect it your desire will objectify itself in the world for you to enjoy, whether it be health, wealth, or fame. That’s how God’s (I AM) law works.
All Quotes from David Allen’s The Power of I AM Volume 3 Are Attributed to…
Benjamin Johnson, Charles Fillmore, Charles Haanel, Christian Larson, Edna Lister, Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes, Eugene Del Mar, Fenwicke L. Holmes, Florence Gloria Crawford. Frances Larimer Warner, Franklin Fillmore Farrington, H. Emilie Cady, Helen Wilmans, Henry Harrison Brown, Jane Woodard, Joseph Murphy, Nancy McKay Gordon, Neville Goddard, Orison Swett Marden, Robert A. Russell, Walter C Lanyon, William Walker Atkinson / Yogi Ramacharaka