The Impression We Make: The Power of Beginning Again
by Jennifer Paros
“The power within you, which enables you to form a thought-picture, is the starting point of all there is.”
When I took a course in meditation, I was given a mantra and told to mentally repeat it – and whenever my mind wandered, gently return to the mantra. There would be a time when the mantra would naturally fade but when new thoughts came, I was to bring my attention back to it once more. I wasn’t to blame myself or strive to annihilate or control my thoughts; I wasn’t to believe I had failed; I was simply to begin again.
Beyond a meditation practice, calling our focus back to what we want can feel hard, but the intention to do so builds resolve and strength that is ultimately liberating. Our thoughts make a big impression on us and define how we see the world and ourselves. Direction of thought matters; it determines how we feel, what we create, and what we believe we can and cannot do.
Geneviève Behrend was a teacher of “Mental Science,” in the early 1900’s, part of the New Thought movement. In her book, Your Invisible Power, the power to which she refers is really just our ability to purposefully focus while working in harmony with the creative energy in everything, which she calls God, Life, First Cause, Divine Intelligence, Universal Mind, Formless Substance, etc. She encourages conscious collaboration with this loving intelligence that wants us to have whatever we want because it is a part of us – itself looking for greater and greater expansion and expression. So, in her view, this power is in us, for us, and for itself, eager and ready to participate in ideas, insights, and inspired action. The only rub is that we can’t think both about what we want and also on its absence or failure; we can’t split our attention and still deliberately use this power.
Behrend uses plate photography as an analogy to explain this dynamic. Early on, photography was accomplished using chemically coated plates. One plate was used for each image. If a photographer were to forget and take two pictures on the same plate, neither image would be clear. When our focus is divided between two differing things, what we want cannot come through. Behrend encourages us to take a new “plate” and start again, no longer thinking in opposition to the ideas and thoughts we want to grow and develop.
Joe Dispenza is a chiropractor/author/teacher who was in a triathlon years ago, on his bicycle, when a vehicle hit him from behind, leaving him with six broken and compressed vertebrae. Four doctors believed he’d never walk again and recommended he have Harrington Rod Surgery in which stainless steel rods are screwed into the vertebrae, serving to cantilever the spine off the cord – if it works.
“No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.”
Dispenza decided not to have the surgery. Like Behrend, he believed in an intelligence behind all life and wanted to try to communicate to and align with this creative energy, setting his body on the course of healing. Instead of reacting to his body’s current condition, he strove to make an impression on his own mind, direct his energy constructively, and create a new state. For six weeks he tried visualizing each of his vertebrae being reconstructed. But every time he started, he found himself thinking of life in a wheelchair or having to sell his house and practice. He described those six weeks as a dark night of the soul.
Each time his attention drifted he’d have to start over because the image of what he wanted was now unclear. At six and a half weeks, he was finally able to hold his attention on mentally “rebuilding” his vertebrae. At that point something “clicked” and the process became easier and faster – his pain levels dropped; he had more energy; his body started responding. In ten and a half weeks he was on his feet again, able to train in twelve.
When we take “two pictures on one plate” as Behrend describes, it can be painful because our attention is divided, pulling us away from our ability to create what we want. But we can begin again. The opportunities for course correction are endless. Whether we realize it or not, we’re always directing our attention – stymied or freed by how we focus and the impressions we’re making on ourselves. Despite difficult and trying moments, we can choose to work with the creative properties of thought – with the “invisible power.” It may require beginning again, but when we do, we’ll find our lives more and more in harmony with what we really want.
Jennifer Paros is a writer, illustrator, and author of Violet Bing and the Grand House (Viking, 2007). She lives in Seattle. Please visit her website.