Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

– David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press

Concentration

Lesson 11 is Concentration.  Hill defines concentration as “the act of focusing the mind on a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation.” Two important laws enter into this principal: The Law of Autosuggestion (covered extensively in previous lessons) and The Law of Habit. He states that habit grows out of environment, and out of doing the same thing the same way, over and over again, out of repetition – and thinking the same thoughts. Therefore, he reminds us of the importance of selecting our environment with great care.

Hill states that bad habits can be turned into good ones. Habits are created by repetition, and the best way to break old bad habits is to replace them by forming new good ones.  Form new mental paths, and the old ones will become weaker.

He tells us to out enthusiasm into forming a new habit, concentrate on it and travel the new path as often as possible.  Also, resist the temptation to go down the old path.  The first step in creating a good environment is to consider your Definite Chief Aim, and design your environment to best help you achieve it.  This begins with your close associates-make sure they support your goals.

Concentration is the ability to keep your mind focused on one subject until you have mastered it.  Also, the ability to control your attention, and solve any problem, the ability to throw off bad habits and attain self-mastery are also included in the definition of concentration.  These abilities are helped by constantly keeping your Definite Chief Aim in mind.

The most important part of this lesson is this: When two or more people ally themselves for the purpose of attaining a goal, their power is greatly increased.  Hill calls this the power of organized effort. He describes several examples of powerful and successful alliances.

Hill describes a third subject relating to concentration: memory.  He provides a detailed formula to retain, recall and recognize information (using association), and using it effectively.  He then provides fascinating examples of crowd psychology, which serve to further illustrate the power of the master group.

Hill concludes this lesson by saying it is possible for anyone to develop the ability to “tune in” and understand the thoughts of others through what he calls “the universal mind,” which is very similar to what psychologist Carl Jung called “the collective unconscious”.  He then uses more examples to emphasize the important idea of the master mind – cooperation between like-minded individuals.

Lesson 11 – Concentration

• The two important Laws that will enable you to fully concentrate your mind.
• The stunning effect that a change in environment can have on your success.
• The ‘radio principle’ … and how you can use it to tap into abundance.
• The door to your success … and how to find “The Magic Key” to unlock it.
• The staggeringly simple pledge that will enable you to spend only ten minutes a day focusing on your future.
• Why thought is organized energy … and how you use its amazing potential.
• The secret of concentrated attention … and how to use it to manage your time more effectively.
• The simple visualization technique that trains your mind to concentrate.
• The startling hypnotic truth behind the psychology of crowds.

CONCENTRATION IS THE MAGIC KEY TO SUCCESS! This Magic Key constitutes an irresistible power which all who will may use… It win unlock the door to riches! It will unlock the door to fame! And, in many instances, it will unlock the door to physical health.  It will unlock the door to education and let you into the storehouse of all your latent ability. It will act as a pass-key to any position in life for which you are fitted.

Through the aid of this Magic Key we have unlocked the secret doors to all of the world’s great inventions. Through its magic powers all of our great geniuses of the past have been developed.

Concentration, in the sense in which it is here used, means the ability, through fixed habit and practice, to keep your mind on one subject until you have thoroughly familiarized yourself with that subject and mastered it. It means the ability to control your attention and focus it on a given problem until you have solved it.

It means the ability to throw off the effects of habits which you wish to discard, and the power to build new habits that are more to your liking. It means complete self-mastery.

Stating it in another way, concentration is the ability to think as you wish to think; the ability to control your thoughts and direct them to a definite end; and the ability to organize your knowledge into a plan of action that is sound and workable.

Two important laws enter into the act of concentrating the mind on a given desire: One is the law of Auto-suggestion and the other is the law of habit.

Habit is the basis of all memory training, a fact which you may easily demonstrate in remembering the name of a person whom you have just met, by repeating that name over and over until you have fixed it permanently and plainly in your mind.

Ambition and desire are the chief factors which enter into the act of successful concentration. Without these factors the Magic Key is useless, and the main reason why so few people make use of this key is that most people lack ambition, and desire nothing in particular.

When you become familiar with the powers of concentration you will then understand the reason for choosing a definite chief aim as the first step in the attainment of enduring success.

Concentrate your mind upon the attainment of the object of a deeply seated desire and very soon you will become a lode-stone that attracts, through the aid of forces which no man can explain, the necessary material counterparts of that desire, a statement of fact which paves the way for the description of a principle which constitutes the most important part of this lesson, if not, in fact, the most important part of the entire course, viz.:

When two or more people ally themselves, in a spirit of perfect harmony, for the purpose of attaining a definite end, if that alliance is faithfully observed by all of whom it is composed, the alliance brings, to each of those of whom it is composed, power that is superhuman and seemingly irresistible in nature.

When one concentrates one’s mind upon a given subject, facts of a nature that is closely related to that subject will “pour” in from every conceivable source. The theory is that a deeply seated desire, when once planted in the right sort of “mental soil,” serves as a center of attraction or magnet that attracts to it everything that harmonizes with the nature of the desire.

It IS possible to attune your mind and harmonize the rate of vibration of thought with the rate of vibration of the ether where ALL knowledge that has been accumulated through the organized thoughts of the past is made available to you.

We have seen what an important part environment and habit play in connection with the subject of concentration. We shall now discuss MEMORY.

The principles through which an accurate, unfaltering memory may be trained are few, and comparatively simple.  These are the three principles that enter into the act of remembering:

1 Retention: The receiving of a sense impression through one or more of the five senses, and the recording of this impression, in orderly fashion, in the mind. This process may be likened to the recording of s picture on the sensitized plate of a camera or kodak.

2 Recall: The reviving or recalling into the conscious mind of those sense impressions which have been recorded in the sub-conscious mind. This process may be compared to the act of going through a card index and pulling out a card on which information had been previously recorded.

3 Recognition: The ability to recognize a sense impression when it is called into the conscious mind, and to identify it as being a duplicate of the original impression, and to associate it with the original source from which it came when it was first recorded.

This process enables us to distinguish between “memory” and “imagination.”

First: When you wish to be sure of your ability to recall a sense impression, such as a name, date or place, be sure to make the impression vivid by concentrating your attention upon it to the finest detail.  An effective way to do this is to repeat, several times, that which you wish to remember. Just as a photographer must give an “exposure” proper time to record itself on the sensitized plate of the camera, so must we give the sub-conscious mind time to record properly and clearly any sense impression that we wish to be able to recall with readiness.

Second: Associate that which you wish to remember with some other object, name, place or date with which you are quite familiar, and which you can easily recall when you wish, as, for example, the name of your home town, your close friend, the date of yourbirth, etc.,  for your mind will then file away the sense impression that you wish to be able to recall, with the one that you can easily recall, so that when bringing forth one into the conscious mind it brings, also, the other one with it.

Third: Repeat that which you wish to remember, a number of times, at the same time concentrating your mind upon it, just as you would fix your mind on a certain hour at which you wished to arise in the morning, which, as you know, insures your awakening at that precise hour.  The common failing of not being able to remember the names of other people, which most of us have, is due entirely to the fact that we do not properly record the name in the first place.  When you are introduced to a person whose name you wish to be able to recall at will, repeat that name four or five times, first making sure that you understood the name correctly.  If the name is similar to that of some person whom you know well, associate the two names together, thinking of both as you repeat the name of the one whose name you wish to be able to recall.

Your ability to train your memory, or to develop any desired habit, is a matter, solely, of being able to fix your attention on a given subject until the outline of that subject has been thoroughly impressed upon the “sensitized plate” of your mind.

Concentration, itself, is nothing but a matter of control of the attention!

Inspiring Videos