Fate In Your Life – Paul Twitchell

 

   The changes which take place in a life as a result of one's changed consept of one's self always appear to the unenlightened to be the result, not of a change of consciousness, but of chance, outer cause, or coincidence.

 

   However, the only fate governing that life is the fate determined by one's own concepts or assumptions; for an assumption, though wrong, if persisted in will harden into fact. The ideal one seeks and hopes to attaint will not manifest itself, will not be realized, until he who wants to create it, imagines that they are already that ideal.

 

   There can be no escape other than by a radical psychological transformation of one's self, by his assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Therefore, make results or accomplishments the crucial test of your ability to use your own imagination.

 

   Everything depends on the attitude towards the self. That which you will not affirm as true for yourself, can never be realized by you, for attitude alone is the necessary condition by which you realize or do not realize your goal.

 

   In the teachings of ECKANKAR, all transformation is based upon helpful suggestion, and this can work only where you lay yourself completely open to an influence. You must abandon yourself to ECK as a lover abandons himself to his love, for complete abandonment of self to IT is the way toward a union with your ideal. This is what the mystics call surrender to God. In a relationship between a man and a woman, it's one lover's feelings of surrender to the other.

 

   You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled until the assumption has all the sensory vividity of reality. You must imagine that you are already experiencing what you desire to be. That is you must assume the feeling of the fulfillment of your desire until you are possessed by it and this feeling crowds out all lesser ideals from your consciousness. In ECK we call this the "As If principle."

 

   The person who is not prepared for the conscious plunge into the assumption of the wish fulfilled – in the faith that it is the only way to the realization of his dreams – is not yet ready to live consciously by the Law of Assumption, although there is no doubt that he does live by the Law of Assumption unconsciously. But for anyone who accepts this principle and is ready to live by consciously assuming that his wish is already fulfilled, the adventure of life begins. To reach the higher initiations, one must assume a higher concept of himself.

 

   If one will not imagine himself as other than what he is, then he remains as he is. This is true of all people.Napolean believed he could be the king of Europe, and truly he became the king of the continent.

 

   If you do not believe that you are he (the person you want to be ), then you remain as you are. Through the faithful and systematic cultivation of the feeling of the wish fulfilled, desire becomes the promise of its own fulfillment. The assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled makes the future dream a present fact.

 

   Therefore the drama of life is a psychological one in which all the conditions, circumstances, and events of your life are brought to pass by your assumptions.

 

   Since your life is determined by your assumptions, you are forced to recognize the fact that you are either a slave to your assumptions or their master. To become the master of your assumptions is the key to dreams of freedom and happiness. You can attain this mastery by deliberate conscious control of your assumptions – rather, imagination. You determine your assumptions in this way: Form a mental image, a picture of the state desired, the person you want to be. Concentrate your attention upon the feeling that you are already that person. First, visualize the picture in your consciousness. Then feel yourself to be in that state as though it actually formed your surrounding world. By your imagining, that which was a mere mental image is changed into a seeming solid reality.

 

   The great secet is controlled imagination and well sustained attention firmly and repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished. It cannot be emphasized too much that, by creating an ideal within your mental sphere, by assuming that you already are that ideal, you identify yourself with it and thereby transform yourself into its image. This was called by the ancient teachers "subjection to the will of God" or "resting in the Lord." The only true test of "resting in the Lord" is that all who do rest are inevitably transformed into the image of that in which they rest. You become according to your resigned will, and your resigned will is your concept of yourself and all that you consent to and accept as true. You, assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and continuing therein, take upon yourself the results of that state; not assuming the feeling your wish fulfilled, you are ever free of the results.

 

   When you understand the redemptive function of the imagination, you hold in your hands the key to the solution of all your problems. Every phase of your life is made by the exercise of your imagination. Determined imagination alone is the means of your progress, of the fulfilling of your dreams. It is the beginning and end of all creating. The great secret is a controlled imagination and a well sustained attention firmly and repeatedly focused on the feeling of the wish fulfilled until it fills the mind and crowds out all other ideas in the consciousness. What greater gift could be given you than to be told the truth that will set you free?

 

   The truth that sets you free in ECK is that you can experience, in your imagination, what you desire to experience in reality, and by maintaining this experience in imagination your desire becomes an actuality.

 

   You are limited only by your uncontrolled imagination and lack of attention to the feeling of the wish fulfilled. When the imagination is not controlled and the attention not steady on the feeling of the wish fulfilled, then no amount of prayer or piety or invocation can call up at will whatsoever image you please, when the forms of your imagination are as vivid to you as the forms of nature, you are the master of your fate.

 

   By identifying yourself with your wish fulfilled you become it.

 

From the book, Letters to Gail © 1990 Eckankar – Sri Paul Twitchell