PART V

THE OLD HABIT TRACK
Question—Why is it that when some persons start to study Metaphysics everything seems to go wrong for a while?

ANSWER-A beginner in metaphysics is reversing his thought processes. He is running back over the old habit track and encountering all those forms he would eliminate. He must blaze new thought trails, make new pictures of which he is the acting center or magnet. If he has formerly been vindictive, wrongly aggressive, selfish and arbitrary, these traits of character will rise before him continuously for the old recognition and indulgence. If he is off guard for a time, he will find them obtruding themselves at most inconvenient and embarrassing moments. If he does not understand how they happen to come into his consciousness, he will fight them with his will, and thus be on the wrong track to eliminate them. But if he realizes they are old pictures of his own creating, he may bid them depart and turn his attention to the conditions he wishes to see manifested.

The beginner in metaphysics is deliberately choosing a higher vibration or state of consciousness, and to attain it consciously, he has to clear out all the strangling, obstructing undergrowth of the old subjective field. Herein he proves that he has no fight—that his choice and his word have set the law into greater activity and he is automatically lifted to the plane of his desire. (page 149)

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