The breath of life — and a warning about willpower

A knowledge of your relation and oneness with this Principle that governs the Universe and the simple method whereby you can consciously identify yourself with it gives you a scientific understanding of a law whereby you may free yourself from disease, from lack or limitation of any kind. In fact, it enables you to breathe the “breath of life” into your own nostrils.

This “breath of life” is a superconscious reality. It is the essence of the “I am.” It is pure Being or Universal Substance, and our conscious unity with it enables us to localize it, and thus exercise the powers of this creative energy.

Thought is creative vibration, and the quality of the conditions created will depend upon the quality of our thought, because we cannot express powers which we do not possess. We must “be” before we can “do” and we can “do” only to the extent to which we “are,” and so what we do will necessarily coincide with what we are, and what we are depends upon what we think.Every time you think, you start a train of causation which will create a condition in strict accordance with the quality of the thought which originated it. Thought which is in harmony with the Universal Mind will result in corresponding conditions. Thought which is destructive or discordant will produce corresponding results. You may use thought constructively or destructively, but the immutable law will not allow you to plant a thought of one kind and reap the fruit of another. You are free to use this marvelous creative power as you will, but you must take the consequences.

This is the danger from what is called Willpower. There are those who seem to think that by force of will they can coerce this law; that they can sow seed of one kind and by Willpower make it bear fruit of another, but the fundamental principle of creative power is in the Universal, and therefore the idea of forcing compliance with our wishes by the power of the individual will is an inverted conception which may appear to succeed for a while but is eventually doomed to failure because it antagonizes the very power which it is seeking to use.

It is the individual attempting to coerce the Universal, the finite in conflict with the Infinite. Our permanent well-being will be best conserved by a conscious cooperation with the continuous forward movement of the Great Whole.