The Master Key System Chapter 19 deals with the important relationship between ‘food’, both spiritual and physical, for those wishing to shift their reality.
Haanel begins by sharing an interesting observation,
“In seeking the truth we are seeking ultimate cause. We know that every human experience is an effect; then if we may ascertain the cause, and if we shall find that this cause is one which we can consciously control, the effect or the experience will be within our control also.”
— Charles Haanel
What Haanel is referring to here is the principle of cause and effect.
Every effect which can be seen in the outside world is the result of a cause.
Some causes are outside our sphere of influence.
Say you want to become a professional basketball player, perhaps it would be advantageous to be over 6 feet tall.
Now the cause of height is likely dominated by the genes your parents gave you; this is not in your control.
However, let’s say you want to make more money.
You notice a correlation between having a business and increased earning capacity.
Starting a business or being in a more leveraged job such as sales is a cause which you can control.
The game of success is to learn what causes produce certain effects and simply take action on them.
The Master Key System Chapter 19 On The Principle of Polarity
Haanel goes on to share the principle of polarity.
“In the physical world there are innumerable contrasts and these may, for convenience sake, be designated by distinctive names. There are sizes, colors, shades, or ends to all things. There is a North Pole and a South Pole, an inside and an outside, a seen and an unseen, but these expressions merely serve to place extremes in contrast. They are names given to two different parts of one quantity. The two extremes are relative; they are not separate entities, but are two parts or aspects of the whole.”
This principle states that there is only ever one substance expressing itself at different levels of vibration.
There is no darkness, only an absence of light.
There is no silence, only an absence of sound.
Many of the phenomena we experience in the physical world can be reduced to their most fundamental essence.
This idea of polarity when looked at from the perspective of mind and matter creates some interesting conclusions.
“We find exactly the same law obtaining in the Spiritual world; we speak of Mind and Matter as two separate entities, but clearer insight makes it evident that there is but one operative principle and that is Mind.”
Mind and matter are one.
They can be seen as emanating from the same substance, sitting on the same spectrum at two different poles.
Matter is mind manifesting at a lower vibration.
The highest level of mind is the Universal Mind.
“Matter is but a form which Mind takes and is therefore simply a condition. Matter has no principle; Mind is the only principle.”
So what’s the relationship between the Universal Mind, the Mind of Man and Matter?
Let’s explore it in simple terms.
The Universal Mind, The Individual Mind and Matter
According to Haanel, The Universal Mind is static and at rest.
It needs the individual mind to set motion a chain of events; this process is sometimes referred to as outer intention.
When the individual thinks he connects with the Universal Mind,
“the ability of the individual to think is his ability to act upon the Universal Mind and convert it into dynamic mind, or mind in motion.”
This mind in motion is what allows synchronicities to happen.
If the individual keeps his thoughts aligned with his goal, he will begin to walk across a bridge of incidents until he accomplishes his desire.
His subconscious will help him take certain actions and matter through his own efforts and that of outer intention will begin to rearrange itself.
What’s this about food?
Haanel talks at length about the importance of food for thinking.
From a basic biological level, one needs sustenance to perform their best mental activity.
Without food you won’t be able to think let alone stay alive.
Haanel takes this concept of food to the mental plane.
The spiritual food one needs is new stimuli which in turn will pave the road for new ideas.
“You take the necessary time to eat in order that the body may be nourished, why not take the time to assimilate your mental food?”
One can get new ideas from books, coaches and courses.
The idea is to continually supply your mind with new and quality mental food.
This will stimulate new ideas through the power of emergence.
These new ideas, when held in the mind, will help you connect to the Universal Mind.
The Universal Mind will then use you as a channel to bring what is real on the Mental Plane to materialization on the Physical.
This is done by giving you intuitive insights which lead you in the right direction.
This is how progress happens.
“This power is superior because it exists on a higher plane, because it has enabled man to discover the law by which these wonderful forces of Nature could be harnessed and made to do the work of hundreds and thousands of men. It has enabled man to discover laws whereby time and space have been annihilated.”
Have you ever wondered why many of the greatest breakthrough discoveries happen by accident?
These accidents are the result of the Universal Mind at action.
The Master Key System Chapter 19 Exercise
For your exercise this week, concentrate, and when I use the word concentrate, I mean all that the word implies: Become so absorbed in the object of your thought that you are conscious of nothing else, and do this a few minutes every day. You take the necessary time to eat in order that the body may be nourished, why not take the time to assimilate your mental food?
Let the thought rest on the fact that appearances are deceptive. The earth is not flat, neither is it stationary; the sky is not a dome; the sun does not move; the stars are not small specks of light; and matter which was once supposed to be fixed has been found to be in a state of perpetual flux.
Try to realize that the day is fast approaching — its dawn is now at hand — when modes of thought and action must be adjusted to rapidly increasing knowledge of the operation of eternal principles.
Lesson 19’s exercise is about concentration.
When you fix your concentration on a subject, the process can be seen as eating mental food.
You might have noticed how many of the exercises of The Master Key System focus on very similar ideas.
Haanel gives a student a task which usually involves concentration on a particular subject.
When you fix your concentration on something, you will begin to know it more intimately. You will gain the intuitive hints from The Universal Mind which will allow you to have amazing breakthroughs.
Sometimes this process can take years.
Great physicists and mathematicians often ponder a subject for decades before they are privy to its insights.
Check out this video to see the process at work.
Do this, and you will be one step closer to living and dying well.