Bring Out The Magic In Your Mind - The Highlights
/Sure, I like to have fun on this site. I post my silly little gifs, or photoshops of Joshua Jay, or make some jokes about the predatory nature of kid-show magicians. Not today! Today I have something much more useful planned for you. Something that will not only start your weekend off right, but will go on to change the course of your life, I would bet.
In 1964 Al Koran released a book for the public called “Bring Out the Magic In Your Mind.”
A self-help book written by a magician for the general public is always going to be an odd sort of thing. The book is being published because of that person’s fame, but the person isn’t going to actually write about the tools he used to garner that fame. Al Koran didn’t write, “My self-help advice is: If you want to make a spectator’s ring vanish and re-appear with your keys, use a reel.” Instead he wrote stuff like this in the chapter, The Magic of Flowers:
Flowers are vibratory and give off radiations of a positive kind.
I have known women replace a pearl necklace with real gardenias on the neck, supported by transparent adhesive tape. It is far more glamorous than the most costly pearls.
Whatever you say, Al!
This is just some of the wisdom that—as the cover of the book suggests—will “launch you on the road to success.”
I recently picked up a copy of this book second-hand. I’m drawn to this sort of thing. Some of this stuff I appreciate ironically, some of it unironically, and some of the stuff in books about the power of your mind just make for good presentational ideas and patter.
Fortunately for me (and now you) the copy I bought was already highlighted.
So for today’s post I want to share with you the highlights form Al Koran’s Bring Out The Magic In Your Mind. Hopefully you will find these insights life-changing.
The Magic of Belief
The magic of belief grants phenomenal results for all who accept it.
Before I leap out of bed, I always say, “I believe, I believe, I believe.”
To bring out the magic in your mind, belief is the very first essential.
How Belief Works
The human body is a magnet. Sleep with the head of the bed North, so that you are parallel with the magnetic Pole running through the earth, and not lying across it. This is very important.
Remember never to cross your legs, if possible, fold your arms or clasp your hands. [He goes on to note that you shouldn’t do these things unless you’re having “discordant thoughts.”]
Discordant thoughts are not for you, and you must cut off the power of evil by crossing your legs, folding your arms, and clasping your hands.
Belief is a positive word, and therefore creative. Everything negative is dead, and has no creative power whatever. Negative means reject; to put aside, not to be used.
You must polarize your thoughts and words.
Take deep breaths of this electro-magnetism; try it, live it, love it, become it. Don’t worry about what it is, but use it.
Be able to say ‘no’ to the things you do not want to happen. You must rebel and say, I will have no more of this kind of evil, then it stops. Say, I’ll have no more of this from now on, and lo, by the magic you have brought out of your mind, the trouble stops.
The Magic of Visualization
Don’t draw lines between the possible and the impossible. Leave it to your subconscious to get it for you in its own magic way by command of your will.
You obtain your desire by feeling as if you had already got what you want now.
Visualize. See pictures. Look at your scrap book every day, and believe.
Hold but one pessimistic thought and you will be cut off from the magic you are seeking. Cultivate a strong belief, be absolutely positive, and you will release this wonderful magic power. Be an optimist par excellence.
You must repeat over and over again the name of the thing you want. Repetition is essential.
Don’t ever complain. Bless every condition you are in, bless what you already have, then you can work magic.
Power of the Subconscious
Give commands to your subconscious. The subconscious never fails to obey any order commanded, if the order is clear and emphatic and given with feeling.
You must act on a hunch that your subconscious gives you, because the subconscious is always right.
Silence and Meditation
You must silence your thoughts. Empty your mind.
Say with all your heart, ‘Let there be wealth’ or ‘Let there be health’ or anything else you want, and these things are bound to manifest.
Determine there will be no more chaos in your life, no more muddling through. Lift your mind high, high above the stars, and meditate.
The Magic of Love
The torch of life is fed by the oil of love.
Say to yourself again and again, ‘I will try always to be in love.’ In love with everything. When you love life you are able to say, ‘This is my happy day.’
The other day a woman said of a man, “If he calls me dear, I’ll smack his face!” Never, never in a thousand years could such a person do magic.
The Secret of Wealth
The money-conscious parent teaches the child wealth wants me, not I want wealth.
Refuse to deal in little coins.
This is the great secret of money magic. You must bless your money when you send it out, and you must ask it to return multiplied.
Roll your notes. Put an elastic band around them, because, don’t you see, it represents without beginning and without end.
Take yourself where riches are. Take yourself to the very best hotel for tea or go to a famous and smart hotel bar for a drink.
Good luck comes to anyone who gives pleasure to others.
The Magic of Friendship
Mystery lends charm to the personality.
Always find something fresh to admire and appreciate in the object of your affection, and tell them so! Compliment again and again. Be grateful for friendships.
You must have friends. Get out more. Mix more freely. Meet other people, widen your interests.
The Magic of Change
Try something new every now and again, every day if you can.
Change brings magic.
The Magic of Right Impressions
You must impress the world with your importance if you would be a success, and if you would work magic.
Pomp and power go together.
You have got to look like a success before you are a success.
The Magic of Laughter
If you can laugh, you are mentally healthy; the mentally ill can’t laugh.
The Magic of Colour
By loving everybody you develop the rose-pink colour of loving kindness in your aura.
Look at violet or amethyst if you want to reach a higher dimension, to purify your mind or solve a problem.
If it’s money and abundance you want, concentrate on the little square of emerald green silk.
To sharpen your intellect, yellow is helpful.
By wearing red garments the colour has actually been proved to seep into the skin and make a man strong and dynamic.
Green is employed for the decoration of eye hospitals, because green is most helpful to the sight.
The Magic of Right Habits
Poverty is the result of the wrong habits of thinking.
Do something, because action is necessary no matter what habit you desire to break.
The word never should never be used in magic, except in the phrase, ‘You never know.’
The Magic of Music
Music is felt in the same part of the brain that responds to pain. They believe that the sound of music can block off the brain’s reaction to pain by ‘jamming’ the signals from the nerve centres which are affected. Such is the magic of music.
Have Done With Fear
What you are most afraid of won’t happen.
______
And that, on page 179 of this 288 page book, was the final highlight that the original book’s owner made.
Perhaps there was nothing of interest in the last 100 pages. Perhaps they felt they were already on the “road to success” and didn’t need any more information. Perhaps, “what they were most afraid of” was getting hit by a bus, and, with a new sense of invincibility, they crossed the street without looking. It’s hard to say.
I’d like to thank the previous owner—whoever that may be—for giving us their highlights of the book.
Tucked away in the book were two relics from that owner.
First, a business card for a Hypnosis Consultant in Sarasota.
And then this handwritten note.
Here’s to hoping the health, wealth, and understanding they needed came their way.