Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
Behrend's Guarding the Picture
Protect the mental picture by keeping the desire secret, never changing it, and using the will to inhibit every doubting or contrary thought and feeling — so the ‘spiritual nucleus’ of the picture is not dissipated.
Guard your picture three ways: tell no one, keep one picture (don’t re-expose the plate), and use a cheerful, steady will to refuse every doubting or contrary thought. If you must vent the desire, write it down and destroy the paper. Don’t worry about others picturing the same thing — guard against your own doubt, not rivals.
What it is
Behrend treats the mental picture as something fragile that must be guarded, and she gives three specific guards. (1) Keep it secret: “The moment you speak it to any living soul, that moment your power is weakened.
The more perfectly a secret between your mind and your outer self is guarded, the more vitality you give your power of attraction.” (2) Keep it single — never change it: changing pictures is “destructive,” like double-exposing a photographic plate.
(3) Refuse the contrary thought: use the will to “inhibit every thought and feeling contrary to your pictured thought,” and by “holding your picture in a cheerful frame of mind, you shut out all thoughts that would disperse or dissipate the spiritual nucleus of your picture.” This is a protective discipline rather than a generative one, which is why it sits in surrender/release: it is mostly about what not to do — not telling, not changing, not doubting — so the picture is left intact to do its work.
It contrasts with practices that release a feeling (Hawkins) or forgive/clean a disturbance (Ho’oponopono); Behrend’s guard is closest in spirit to Neville’s “remain faithful to your idea,” but stated as a concrete code of secrecy and single-mindedness drawn straight from Troward’s “do not dig up the seed.”
The Method
- Tell no one. “Never mention what you are doing to anyone.” Telling a trouble is how we weaken it — “when a thought is given out, its power is dissipated”; the same logic protects a desire. If you must externalize it, “talk it over with yourself, and even write it down, then destroy the paper”.
- Keep one picture. Don’t keep swapping desires and then return to the first wondering why it never came. “The Substance with which you are mentally dealing is more sensitive than the most sensitive photographer’s film” — don’t re-expose the plate.
- Inhibit the contrary thought with the will. A steady will exists precisely to “inhibit every thought and feeling contrary to your pictured thought.” Catch doubt, worry, and “ifs,” and decline them.
- Hold it in a cheerful frame of mind. Cheerfulness is itself a guard: it “shuts out all thoughts that would disperse or dissipate the spiritual nucleus of your picture.”
- Don’t let others’ pictures worry you. A common beginner’s fear — that someone else is picturing the same thing — is dismissed: “the universal law of harmony prevents” interference. Guarding is against your own doubt, not rivals. (Sourcing note: from Your Invisible Power, Ch. II, Ch. IV, and “Things to Remember” §6–7; quoted phrases are Behrend’s, numbered structure an attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Genevieve Behrend, Your Invisible Power (1921), drawn from her warnings scattered through Chapters II and IV and “Things to Remember.” The secrecy rule and the “double-exposed plate” image are Behrend’s own vivid formulations; the underlying principle — don’t disturb the impressed idea — is Troward’s.
Common refinements
Treating secrecy as suppression. The point is not to bottle up stress but to avoid diluting a desire through chatter; genuine support and help are different and allowed (see Safety).
- Constant re-picturing. The most-emphasized failure: swapping desires. Choose one, guard it, let it develop.
- Fighting doubt head-on. “Strenuous effort. suggests the consciousness of an adverse force.” Inhibit contrary thought by turning cheerfully back to the picture, not by grimly wrestling doubt.
- Worrying about competitors. Behrend explicitly tells you not to.