Takeaway Points
My hope this that this collection will grant you new insights every time you return to it. Do not be afraid to change your ideas—refining old ideas, arriving at new ones, and discarding what proves unhelpful or unverifiable. Too often we approach spiritual teachings with an “all or nothing” attitude, feeling that we must be in total agreement with what we read or otherwise move on to another set of ideas. Allow Murphy’s insights, gathered over a lifetime, to sit with you for a time. Below are some points that I hope will help you on your journey.
—MH
1. Nearly every religious, psychological, and classical philosophy agrees: What you think dramatically affects your quality of life. That statement may mean different things to different people, but it is the closest we possess to a universal ethic.
2. We all possess a quality of mind that goes beyond the cognitive and analytic—a storehouse of emotive thoughts, mental pictures, and deep-seated memories. Call it the psyche, the subconscious, or the creative mind, this storehouse harbors deeply insightful and causative power, if properly harnessed. This suggestive power can solve problems and shape circumstances in ways that we do not always suspect.
3. You can tap the positive agencies of your mind by setting aside time just before going to sleep at night to reflect on a cherished aim, or the solution to a problem. This is a supple period in which to impress suggestions on your psyche or subconscious.
4. Form vivid, believable, emotionally charged mental pictures—and stick with them. Consistency is key in training your subconscious. You may be surprised by an uncanny symmetry between long-ago mental pictures and your current circumstance.
5. Never force a mental image. Forced effort invites failure. Be relaxed, calm, and confident when impressing the subconscious. If you find this difficult, take a break and return to it when you’re in a calm and confident mood. There is nothing wrong with stepping away from your efforts and returning when your emotions are on your side.
6. Once you have acted to impress your creative mind with an image or outcome, do not dwell on the ways and means of your accomplishment—these will reach your conscious mind in the form of hunches, “happy accidents,” fortuitous relationships, and breakthrough ideas.
7. Your solutions, however remarkable, are likely to reach you through established means. This is one of subtlest and most important points of practical spirituality. A desired thing is likely to arrive through channels and mechanics that are already established: something will not appear from out of the blue but may come in a manner that first seems ordinary or conventional. Hence you are apt to overlook it. A solution, condition, or object may reach you in ways that differ from your expectations. Be watchful and flexible.
8. Specialize in a field of work that you love, and strive to know more about it than anyone else. Passion, concentration of energies, and mental focus act powerfully upon your psyche. A deeply felt, well defined, and unconflicted aim is the surest way to harness the energies of your mind.
9. Do not get dejected or stuck if some of the methods and ideas that you encounter in your spiritual search seem paradoxical. Not everything will reveal itself along neat and stratified lines. Learning to live with paradox is one of the hallmarks of maturity.
If you want to make one definite and gainful investment in your future, cultivate a positive, meditative, and confident state of mind. Your sense of self-respect and capability will impress itself on your psyche and bring you unexpected opportunities, relationships, and ideas. You are as your mind is.