# The Short Cut to Regeneration Through Fasting/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII
The Vision (Creating In Consciousness)
There is no use fasting without the VISION and this begins on the Mental plane,–it is built by thought. All the fasting of the past was, to a certain extent, futile just because those who fasted never knew that they had to destroy completely the mental picture, before they could set in a new one. They simply fasted off the flesh and made a feeble change in mental pressure without changing the mental image, often aggravating the old emotional conditions without destroying them.
“Without vision, the people perish” the masters of the past taught and true it is today. Without the vision of health the individual will perish away from health; with the vision of poverty he will build a hovel, with the vision of misery he attracts misery, for on the path of life like attracts like. “Whatever man sows, he reaps and with what measure he metes it is meted unto him.”
We know today that we never live for an hour without some sort of mental vision or or thought form; after we begin to find these the past taught and true mental forms or pictures we can have a moving ​picture show of our own at any time or place.
When we fast we must become the true artist and conceive a new, original thought picture to paint into flesh and environment. The true artist strives always to produce the perfect thing and we, as artists, must strive to produce a perfect thing which is not put on canvas nor cut into stone, but is worked out in our own form. The expression of a beautiful, perfected selfhood is our new work and we must have the perfect conception and perception of this selfhood before the work can be done.
Is it health you want?
Then, when you fast, hold a mental image of yourself just as you want to be. Do you want to change your face or form? Then hold a changed vision, or the vision of a new type, while you fast and your friends will pass you on the street or take you for your younger brother or sister.
If you cannot build the vision yourself, then take some picture which in a way fulfills your idea of a perfect personality. You will not reproduce this in exact likeness, but in one year you can put the main characteristics into your own type.
“That which we we must become, richer and richer, breath by breath; immortal gain immortal room.”
Just as the sculptor works on his marble, cutting away all unsightly turns, just so, with your mental tools–your thoughts–you must work on your own vision, shaping it to your ​highest ideals.
Hold the vision and fast, then let your own new body tell the tale to the passerby. It will set in flesh, just what you have imaged mentally.
If it is in environment you desire a change, or if it is any other kind of change you desire, the method is the same. Just hold every day, all the time, the vision of yourself set in the situation and conditions which you desire–don’t make them less in the vision than you really want. Hold this vision, do with your might what your hand finds to do; soon the old conditions will begin to change and you will be face to face with new opportunities and new privileges.
Any one who will fast once a month under full instructions, projecting the VISION power fully from and in his mind, can, in one year, and often in less time than this, change his whole body and environment, bringing himself, out of impossible conditions, a world of beauty, freedom and peace.
The VISION is the beginning and the end of fasting, even after the fast is over, the one who lives constantly under the vision of health, wealth, love and service will find that his steps are led closely in these paths and as he thinks, he is.
The vision is built into our bodies and environment by the elemental intelligences of the universal life which our own recognition commands. Cosmic Intelligence is waiting to be acted upon. We are actors; intelligence must obey because it is mindless mind, it can only ​obey as it is given direction through our own higher mind, then it gladly obeys our slightest wish. The way the command carries through to elemental mind is through the vision we set and project each day in unchanging creation.
Then fast; hold the vision of your heart’s desire, work, wait, serve, fast again and again, project the vision with ceaseless realization, and one day you will stand face to face with your heart’s desire in form. The very presence of your soul’s command in visualized creation will turn nothing into something for you, for the law saith “Behold I come quickly and I make all things new.”