How Your Mind is Related to the Universal Mind

Sage: We said in our last lesson that your mind was at outcome of the great Universal Parent Mind which brought you into existence for the direct purpose of expressing Itself through you. The reciprocal action between your mind and the Parent Mind might be compared with a tree and its branches. Your mind is the specific expression of the Universal Mind from which it draws its power to think. Just as a branch of a tree is a specific part of a tree, not apart from it, but a part of it. Thus, between the Universal Mind or life and its own specialized expression (which is your mind), there is a perpetual interaction, as with the tree and its parts; its branches and its leaves are continually drawing sustenance from the parent trunk. Your thought action is the specialized, identical action of the Universal Mind. Example: Imagine yourself feeling a bit downcast, when suddenly you are handed a telegram with the news that the one person in the world whom you love the most is on his way to see you, and the messenger of some wonderful news! Can you not imagine what a definite reaction you would have from news like that! Well, you can stimulate the same quality of thought, that same feeling of joy and surety between your individual mind and its source, through mentally picturing yourself as doing the things that you enjoy. See yourself happy, and lift your mind up to it by constantly repeating a happy affirmation, and you will readily realize the reaction in kind.

Pupil: I see. The way that adverse conditions are to be overcome is through my recognition of the reciprocal action going on continually between my mind and the One great Universal Mind, which brings about the same kind of a reaction that I would have from an agreeable experience on the physical plane. I used to think that conditions were overcome by ignoring them, and setting aside the inherent law that caused them. I begin to realize now (theoretically at least) that the laws of life cannot be ignored nor destroyed, but, on the contrary, must be made to work for us to produce a harmonious existence.

Sage: Adverse circumstances are overcome by reversing the originating cause, which is your own thought. Anxiety and fear always attract conditions of their own kind. Reverse this tendency and entertain only those thoughts which register harmony and confident assurance, and the adverse circumstances will recede, and in their place will appear the conditions which correspond to your changed mentality.

Pupil: Am I to regard my mind as a branch of the Universal Mind from which I draw all my substance?

Sage: Yes. You now have a fairly good general idea of the two ultimates: the Universal and the individual, and their relation to each other. I think we should now consider the process of specialization, that is, how to make nature's laws produce a particular effect which "could not be produced under the simple generic conditions spontaneously provided by nature."