Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Behrend's Faith With Works
After picturing the desire and releasing the means, watch for the first small circumstance pointing toward it — the ‘first sprout of the seed’ — and calmly, without excitement, do whatever it seems to require, following intuition step by step into action.
After picturing and releasing, watch for the first small circumstance that points toward your desire — direction matters, not size. Follow the intuition even if it seems unlikely, and do calmly, without excitement, whatever it seems to require. One right step reveals the next. Faith without works is dead; act on the sprout.
What it is
Behrend’s answer to “what do I actually do?” Picturing and releasing are inner work; this is the outer half. After you have made the picture and let go of the means, you watch for the first small circumstance that points toward your desire, and you act on it — “Faith without works is dead, but Faith with Works sets you absolutely free.” She quotes Troward’s vivid instruction: when a pointing circumstance appears, “regard it as the first sprouting of the seed sown in the Absolute, and do calmly, and without excitement, whatever the circumstances seem to require,” and that doing “will in turn lead to a further circumstance in the same direction, until we find ourselves conducted, step by step, to the accomplishment of our object.” It is the Mental-Science take on “acting as if,” but with a specific signature: the action is cued by intuition and emergent opportunity, not forced from a script, and “the direction and not the magnitude” of the circumstance is what matters.
Her stories show it concretely — the woman who, prompted by a sudden thought, visited an unlikely real-estate dealer who sold her property in three days; Behrend herself, who “left no stone unturned to follow up” each opening as her $20,000 took shape.
The Method
- Do the inner work first. Make the picture; release the means (see the two companion techniques). Then “expect all life to respond to your call.”
- Watch for the small pointing circumstance. “Wait till some circumstance pointing in the desired direction begins to show itself. It may be a very small circumstance, but it is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.”
- Follow intuition even when it seems unlikely. Behrend’s property-seller “hesitated. as it seemed to her that that man could not sell her property. However. she followed the lead.” Suggestions “to the fulfillment of your desire” may come “not only from your fellowmen, but also from the flowers, the grass, the trees” — i.e., from anywhere; act on them “in confidence on this physical plane.”
- Act calmly and without excitement. Treat the opening as “the first sprout of the seed,” and do “whatever the circumstances seem to require” — neither over-excited nor passive. Keeping the mind “poised and free from excitement” was, she says, her “greatest effort.”
- Let one step lead to the next. Don’t demand the whole staircase at once; the first right action reveals the second, “step by step.” (Sourcing note: from Your Invisible Power, Ch. I, Ch. IX, and Ch. XIV–XV; the “first sprout / direction not magnitude” language is Behrend quoting Troward’s Edinburgh Lectures. Numbered structure is an attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Genevieve Behrend, Your Invisible Power (1921), especially “How to Make Nature Respond to You,” “Faith With Works — What It Has Accomplished,” and her own demonstration in “How I Attracted to Myself Twenty Thousand Dollars.” The “first sprouting of the seed sown in the Absolute” is Troward’s phrase, which Behrend adopts as her rule for action.
Closely related to the general “acting as if” posture but cued by emergent intuition.
Common refinements
Waiting for a big sign. “It is the direction and not the magnitude” — small openings count; act on them.
- Dismissing unlikely leads. The point of the property-seller story: the lead that “could not work” did. Follow the intuition, then verify.
- All faith, no works. Picturing without acting on what appears is the “dead” half Behrend warns against.
- Excited, forced action. Frantic hustling is its own kind of “digging up the seed”; act, but calmly.
- No reality check. Behrend’s own story shows her following up and verifying each step — intuition initiates, judgment confirms.