Lessons In Truth - Lesson 4 - Annotation 5
Explain how wrong thinking affects our health and our circumstances.
5. We have learned that by the law of mind action ("like begets like") thoughts produce according to their character. Selfish, greedy, fearful thoughts produce inharmonious conditions in our body and circumstances, whereas happy, trusting, generous thoughts bring only good conditions into our body and affairs.
We can now conclude that the body does not control our thinking, but rather that thinking controls the body. We accept the Truth that the body is "a temple of the living God" but its appearance will be according to the type of thinking that the soul (the mind or consciousness) is carrying on.
"Mental habits ... mark the body and they influence organic functioning ... What you look upon mentally or visually stamps your flesh with its likeness. Whatever of imperfection has been stamped upon your body can be removed therefrom by contemplation of the perfect. Untrue visioning, foolish thinking about life, cannot hurt the perfect life in you, but they weave a veil that to your eyes obscures the perfect and translates it into the flesh as imperfection" (What Are You? 15, 17).
Like our body, our circumstances are not only affected by our thinking, but they actually outpicture the character of our thinking and feeling,
"The word circumstance means that which "stands around' or encompasses. Just as our thoughts affect our body for good or ill, even so their far-reaching influence determines the nature of the conditions that surround us. Psychological research ... reveals that thought action operates under certain established laws of the mental realm ... As a result of the operation of these laws of mind, we find that our body and circumstances are the inevitable outpicturing of our thought action. We may think of them as our solidified thought, as thought condensed into form" (Prosperity's Ten Commandments 111-112).
Our Scriptures give us this same teaching in the words: "For as he thinketh within himself, so is he" (Prov. 23:7).
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Preceding Entry: What must we do to change our false beliefs about God, ourselves, and others?
Following Entry: Explain why we should not judge according to the appearance. Give examples.
