Thoughtless people sometimes say that our affirmations and meditations are foolish because we state what is not so. “To claim that my body is well or being healed when it is not, is only to tell a lie,” said one distinguished ‘man some years ago.

This is to misunderstand the whole principle. We affirm the harmony that we seek in order to provide the subconscious with a blue print of the work to be done.

When you decide to build a house, you purchase a vacant piece of ground and then your architect prepares drawings of a complete house. Actually, of course, there is no such house on the lot today, but you would not think of saying that the architect was drawing a lie. He is drawing what is to be, in order that it may be. So, we build in thought the conditions that will later come into manifestation on the physi¬cal plane.

To wait for things to “turn up” is foolish, because you will probably die before they do so .. What is your intelligence for if not to be used in building the kind of life that you want? Very primitive men in prehistoric times rejoiced when they found food growing anywhere, and then they waited, perhaps for years, until they happened to find another crop. Today we use our intelligence, and plant in good time the actual crops that we want, and the amount that we consider necessary. We do not sit about hoping that wheat or barley may fortunately come up somewhere. If we did that, civilization would collapse.
The time has come when intelligent men and women must understand the laws of Mind, and plant consciously the crops that they desire; and just as carefully pull up the weeds that they do not want.

The object of treatment is to produce a certain state of mind. That state of mind constitutes a true understanding concerning the problem in question and freedom from fear in connection with it. When this state of mind is attained, the demonstration must and does follow.

Whatever produces the required state of mind is a good treatment. Repeating certain affirmations, reading certain verses in the Bible, using the “Presence Card” or the “Golden Key, or any other “method” of producing that state of mind is a good treatment.

Note, however, that using the affirmations or reading spiritual literature is not an end in itself. It is the uplifted state of mind that is the end. Many sincere Christians have come to mistake the means for the end, and think that praying mechanically or going through certain forms constitutes the spiritual life; but this is not so. The spiritual life is the search for higher states of consciousness and nothing else.