The Master Mind

The ordinary mind is like a dumb, driven animal, while
✓ the Master Mind is like the strong-willed, intelligent, masterful Man.

✓ The average man is a slave to his thoughts and feelings. A stream of thought and feeling flows through him, moving him here and there with little or no voluntary choice on his own part. Even those who have attained a certain degree of mental mastery do little more than feebly steer their mental boat with the rudder of a wobbling will—they do not realize that mastery is possible for them. Even a well-known writer has said: ✓ “We do not voluntarily create our thinking. It takes place in us. We are more or less passive recipients. We cannot change the nature of a thought; but we can, as it were, guide the ship by moving the helm.” It would be truer to say that we can deliberately ✓ and voluntarily select and choose the particular wind that will force our mental boat forward, or, to change the metaphor, choose the particular stream of thought and feeling that we allow to flow through our mind.

There are three general conditions of human mentality: ✓ (1) Mental Slavery, in which the mind is the slave and servant of outside forces and influences; (2) Partial Freedom, in which the mind is largely controlled by outside influences, while at the ✓ same time a limited amount of voluntary control and direction has been acquired; and (3) Mental Mastery, in which the mental faculties and emotional ✓ organism have been brought under the control of the will and judgment, and the individual is a master of—not a slave to—environment and circumstances. The great masses of people are in the first or second of these classes; a comparatively small