Your reality may be a mirror of your mind, but the reality you experience is not yours alone.
It is a shared or cooperative reality that includes the mirrors of other people's minds.
In a cooperative reality, one person's mirror will reflect onto another person's mirror, to some degree.
For example, the hate and friction you find in your reality of joy and love may be from someone else's mirror, not yours.
This cooperative interaction of each other's mirrors helps keep you from falling into the trap of stagnation.
If everything was a reflection of your mind alone, there would be no forces to create change and there wouldn't be much causes for growth.
Since reality is a shared one, you learn not only by your mistakes and merits, but by everyone else's mistakes and merits.
The physical universe is not only a mirror of your universe, but it is also a mirror of everybody else's universes.
Their universes reflect off from the physical universe with such a force and velocity that it is very hard for the creations from your own universe to get through the force emanating at your universe from the physical universe.
The physical universe is neither your enemy, nor your competition.
It is just a mirror reflecting the universes of all the other people who also want their way.
Get the idea that your universe is like a castle that is under attack.
The emanations coming from the physical universe are the attackers.
Somehow, you must defend your castle and at the same time fashion your own missiles to send toward the physical universe.
The secret here is not to agree with what is coming from the physical universe.
Well, some might say, "Oh, that's easy.
I already disagree.
I don't like the government.
I don't like the war.
I hate poverty, etc.
" Well, my friend, this is not disagreeing.
This is being disagreeable.
This is actually completely agreeing with the physical universe and then complaining about it.
Actually, disagree means to maintain the separateness of your universe from the physical universe.
I guarantee you that, if you run your car into a tree it is going to get damaged.
If you jump your body off a building, in the physical universe, it is going to get injured.
Make sure you do all your disagreeing in your own universe which will enable you to disagree with the physical universe safely and make your hopes and dreams materialize faster than you ever thought possible.
Create your dreams in your own universe and realize they are true there.
Because physical reality is a cooperative reality and because your mirror can affect another person's mirror, so can your thoughts affect another person's fate.
There will always be a discrepancy in your thoughts and your created reality.
This discrepancy is caused by the impact of other people's reality onto yours.
Because other people's thoughts and actions will affect your reality and you cannot fully control them, you have to trust God that He will work things out for you and everything will be under control of the greater one than you.
You can tell the difference between your own reality creation and the discrepancy of other people's reality creation in your reality mirror by observing which situations happen more of the time and which ones happen only some of the time.
The ones that happen more of the time in accordance to your thoughts are situations that you create, the ones that happen some of the time that you believe are not in accordance to your thoughts are the discrepancies of other people's reality creation.
Total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life, simply because it is in your life, is your responsibility.
In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.
Anything you experience and don't like, is up for you to heal.
Whatever you experience, some part of you helped to create it.
Because some part of you wanted it, maybe not the thing itself but something else that it gives you.
To change it, you have to change you.
If you want to cure anyone, you do it by healing you.
You heal others by healing the part of you that created them.
As you improve yourself, your improve your world.
In giving a treatment, you talk to yourself about somebody else.
A treatment begins and ends within the thought of the one giving it.
The practitioner must do the whole work within himself.
He must know the Truth, and as he does that, he sets in motion the Law of Mind.
A thing which is known by any part of the Universal Mind is known by every part of It, for It is an Undivided Whole.
When you know in one place, you know everywhere.
When you give a treatment you do not send out a thought, you simply know it within you.
When you know it within yourself, your thought operates in the subconscious of another, no matter where that person may be.
There is no such thing as an absent treatment, as opposed to a present treatment.
The mental connection is nonlocal.
In mental treatment, the practitioner deals with thoughts and does not treat bodies or conditions.
He never manipulates, nor need he lay his hands on his patients.
He does not hypnotize them, he does not care where they are when he is treating them, or what they are doing, for this would be a limited concept.
The practitioner's work begins and ends within his own consciousness.
We do not argue to make principle work but to convince our own thought that it already is operating.
If you desire to help someone destroy some form of lack, limitation or error, the correct method is not to think of the person whom you wish to help.
The intention to help them is entirely sufficient, as this puts you in mental touch with the person.
Then drive out of your own mind any belief of lack, limitation, disease, danger, difficulty or whatever the trouble might be about the person's situation.
As soon as you have succeeded in doing this the result will have been accomplished, and the person will be free.
If one wishes to treat a patient, he must first treat himself.
As he treats himself, that is, as he treats his own mentality, he reaches the mentality of his patient.
The practitioner cannot erase the thought in the patient's mentality until he has first neutralized the idea in his own thought.
The practitioner does not try to hold a thought or send out a thought, he simply tries to convince himself of the perfection of his patient.
Never say "Here is a patient whom I must heal".
For, if you see him from this angle, how are you going to heal him? If you see a sick man he will remain sick, so far as you are concerned.
You cannot heal while you see sickness.
In treating, turn entirely away from the condition.
Disease and limitation are neither person, place nor thing.
They are simply images of thought.
Turn entirely from the condition, or the limited situation, to its opposite, that is, to the realization of health, happiness or harmony.
Let us suppose that Sarah is sick and Michael is a practitioner of mental science.
She comes to him, saying, "I am sick.
" He understands that Mind is all, but she does not understand this.
She feels that she is sick.
But he knows that all sickness is mental.
He does not try to hold a thought over her, nor does he try to suggest anything to her, for that is not mental treatment.
He simply declares the Truth about her.
He speaks her name and says, "This word is for her.
She is perfect, she is well.
" In other words, he contradicts what appears to be and declares the Truth about her.
What happens? A law is being enacted on the subconscious side of life.
His word, operative through the Universal Sea of Mind (in which both live) sets in motion a law which manifest through her body as healing.
Sarah thinks a miracle has been performed.
She exclaims, "I am healed.
I did not have a bit of faith, but Michael healed me".
No miracle has been performed.
He used a law which all may use if they will.
Suppose Sarah were perfectly well, but wanted a position, what would the treatment be? It would be the same.
Michael would state in Mind what should be done for Sarah.
There is only One Law, Mental Law.
Law is Mind in Action.
Sarah could demonstrate just as well for herself if she understood It, but she must first see It demonstrated to realize It.
This is the state of mind of most people who come for healing.
They do not know what ails them, they think their condition is due to some external cause.
Nevertheless, they are healed and exclaim, "This is a marvelous thing, though I do not understand what it is all about".
Often they become superstitious about it, as people do about the things they do not understand.
Once they understand the law, healing is no longer a mystery.
The method of realization is one whereby the practitioner realizes within himself the perfect state of another.
It is purely a spiritual and meditative process of contemplating the Perfect Man, and if the embodiment of the idea is really made, it will at once produce a healing.
Treatment is for the purpose of inducing an inner realization of perfection in the mentality of the practitioner, which inner realization, acting through Mind, operates in the person.
Healing is not creating a perfect body or a perfect idea.
It is revealing an idea which is already perfect.
Healing is not a process, it is a revelation through the thought of the practitioner to the thought of the patient.
There may be a process in healing but not a process of healing.
The process in healing is the mental work and the time it takes the practitioner to convince himself of the perfectness of his patient and the length of time it takes the patient to realize this perfectness.
If he could do it in one minute, she would be healed in one minute.
Sarah must have a consciousness of health before the healing can be permanent.
It will have to become a part of her subjective thought.
If the consciousness did not change she would perpetuate the old thought images and would get sick again.
That is why, in treating, people get well for a while and then become sick again.
They are not permanently healed unless the consciousness is healed.
When you treat, resolve things into thoughts.
Bodies, people, objects and all things into thoughts.
Having resolved everything into thoughts, know that disease is neither person, place nor thing.
It has no location, does not belong to any one, cannot operate through any one, is not believed in by any one.
Know that it is a false belief, a false image, with no power.
Know that the whole thing is mental, then mentally dissolve it.
Each treatment is a complete statement of the Reality of Being.
The treatment should be repeated daily until a healing takes place.
If it takes five minutes, five hours, five days or five years, the treatment must be kept up until a healing is accomplished.
This is the only method that we know.
It is not enough to say that everything is all right.
This is true in principle, but in fact, it is only as true as we make it.
Treat until you get results.
A healing takes place when the patient is no longer sick, and until that time mental work must be done.