with its Infinite Personality, and therefore our contemplation of it as the
Power which we want gives us the power to use that Power.

This is the Self-contemplation of Spirit employed from the individual
standpoint for the generating of power. Then comes the application of the
power thus generated. But there is only one Creative Process, that of the
Self-contemplation of Spirit, and therefore the way to use this process for
the application of the power is to contemplate ourselves as surrounded by
the conditions which we want to produce. This does not mean that we are to
lay down a hard and fast pattern of the conditions and strenuously endeavor
to compel the Power to conform its working to every detail of our mental
picture--to do so would be to hinder its working and to exhaust ourselves.
What we are to dwell upon is the idea of an Infinite Power producing the
happiness we desire, and because this Power is also the Forming Power of
the universe trusting it to give that form to the conditions which will
most perfectly react upon us to produce the particular state of
consciousness desired.

Thus neither on the side of in-drawing nor of out-giving is there any
constraining of the Power, while in both cases there is an initiative and
selective action on the part of the individual--for the generating of
power he takes the initiative of invoking it by contemplation, and he makes
selection of the sort of power to invoke; while on the giving-out side he
makes selection of the purpose for which the Power is to be employed, and
takes the initiative by his thought of directing the Power to that purpose.
He thus fulfils the fundamental requirements of the Creative Process by
exercising Spirit's inherent faculties of initiative and selection by means
of its inherent method, namely by Self-contemplation. The whole action is
identical in kind with that which produces the cosmos, and it is now
repeated in miniature for the particular world of the individual; only we