From – Our Spiritual Resources
By Joel Goldsmith
Ch. 6
Dominion Over Mind, Body & Purse

A thorough understanding and practice of the subject of treatment is one way of rising into the true atmosphere of prayer and God-consciousness. Treatment means consciously knowing the truth and applying the principles of truth through the instrument of the mind, and the first step is to establish yourself in your true identity as I, that I which has dominion over mind and body. Until you do that, you cannot give or receive a correct treatment.
You were given both a mind and a body. The mind is not you, nor is the body: I am you, the I which is your true identity. Your mind and your body are something that you possess. The mind is the instrument, which you use for thinking or reasoning purposes or for any purpose of awareness, and it is through your mind that you are able to judge and make decisions.
The body is also an instrument, a physical instrument, which takes it orders from you through the mind. You say to your hand, “Up,” and the mind communicates that to the hand; the hand obeys the mind, which in its turn obeys you, indicating that you must have control over both mind and body.
The mind and the body were given to you, and dominion over both of them was also given to you. If, however, you do not exercise that God-given dominion, you soon find yourself in all kinds of trouble.
When you sit down in meditation, the mind usually is far from still, not because it has a wish or will of its own, but because you have not assumed dominion, and the mind is conditioned to becoming a prey to any and every universal belief floating about in the atmosphere.
It is much like the horses that I have ridden. They do not acknowledge my control a bit. Instead, they take me where they want to go, but that is only because I do not know how to assume dominion over a horse – and he has his fun with me. So it is true that the mind also has its fun with us, but only because we have not learned how to exercise dominion over it.
In some ways, the body behaves better than the mind and is far less obstreperous. At least, the hands will not steal if we do not direct them to do so, and the hands will co-operate, share, and give, if we so direct them; but the body can be just as unruly as the mind: it tries to determine for us when we are well and when we are sick, as if we had no dominion in the area of physical well-being. Yet, rightly understood, we have as much control over our health as we have over our morals or as we have over the thinking mind, and the only reason we do not seem to have it is because we have not assumed dominion.
This dominion can be compared to the loving control that a wise and emotionally mature parent exercises over a child. It is a discipline of love and gentleness, exercised in peace and with patience.