Every picture that you make in your mind, particularly when attended with emotion, has got to work out. One must work out in action, either in external action or internal action. If you inhibit it from working out in external action you will develop some mental, emotional, or physical disturbance in your body. BEWARE OF MAKING PICTURES THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO CARRY OUT IN EXTERNAL ACTIONS. WHEN THE EXPRESSION “IMAGE” IS USED, THAT IS WHAT IS MEANT. THIS MEANS THAT THE PICTURE OF SOMETHING ATTENDED BY EMOTION. A man in prison who was very addicted to alcohol was determined that he would never drink again when he came out. When he did come out, he immediately began to drink. Why was that? Because he was always imaging pictures of a drink while he was in prison. The moment he got out he took to drinking alcohol. He externalized the thing of which he was mentally imaging all the time of his imprisonment. Had he not externalized it, these pictures would have hurt him—they would have worked out in some neurosis in his body. Every picture that you make has to be worked out in action. If you don’t let it work out in external action, it works out in some mental, nervous, or emotional disharmony in your body (producing neurosis). People make pictures of a wrong kind because of their inaccurate attention. The man mentioned above always thought of a drink and the mental image was the preliminary cause of the physically manifested drinks. Most people think that possessions and acquisitions are what makes happiness so they picture themselves having these possessions and acquisitions. If they had paid attention they would have seen that the acquisitions, possessions, and sensations, in themselves, cannot possibly make them happy. The more you want the more you get and the more you get the more dissatisfied you are with what you have. As for sensation, it constantly diminishes to the vanishing point. It is like opium. The more opium you take the more you have to take in order to get the same effect you got in the first dose. The TABLE, in the picture, is called the FIELD OF ATTENTION or the TRESTLEBOARD. This card pictures the highest achievement of the self-conscious mind—as THE MAGICIAN brings down the WHITE LIGHT from above. This is a very occult process; hence, this TABLE has BLACK LEGS.
