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feeling or object will also help materially, for the Imagination

exercises a powerful influence over the emotional faculties.
Paint the proper mental pictures, and hold them before you,
and you will find the work of concentrating will grow much
easier by reason thereof. Also assume the physical expression of
the desired state or feeling. We have explained in other volumes
of this series that just as thought takes form in action, so does
action react upon thought. By assuming the outward physical
expression of the desired mental state, one does much to bring
about a manifestation of the mental state itself. To quote the
very familiar passage of Prof. William James:
Refuse to express a passion and it dies. Count ten before venting
your anger, and its occasion seems ridiculous. Whistling to keep up
courage is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand sit all day in
a moping posture, sigh and reply to everything with a dismal voice,
and your melancholy lingers. There is no more valuable precept in
moral education than this, as all who have experience know; if we wish
to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must
assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the
outward movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer
to cultivate. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal
rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key,
pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it
does not gradually thaw.
The emotive activities of the mind may also be controlled and
directed by training the subconscious mind to refuse to admit
undesirable emotions and feelings into the field of consciousness.
By a carefully arranged system of auto-suggestion along
the lines suggested by Leland and others the subconscious
mind may be impressed with the idea that it must not admit
the undesirable thoughts into consciousness. It must be
impressed with the importance of inhibiting them before they
reach the conscious plane of mentation. The auto-suggestion
The Will