The Seven-Day Mental Diet
The food you furnish your mind determines the character of your life.
The subjects you allow your mind to dwell upon, make your surroundings what they are.
Everything in your life today - the state of your body, the state of your fortune, the state of your home, the present condition of every phase of your life - is entirely conditioned by the habitual tone of your past thinking. The condition of your life next week, and next year, will be conditioned by the thoughts and feelings that you entertain from now onward.
In other words, YOU CHOOSE YOUR LIFE!
Thought is the real causative force in life, there is no other.
You cannot have one kind of mind and another kind of environment.
You cannot change your environment while leaving your mind unchanged.
This is the real key to life; if you change your mind your conditions must change too.
Your body must change, your activities must change; your home must change;
the color-tone of your whole life must change.
And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind...
(Romans 12:2)
This may be the GREAT COSMIC LAW
The practical difficulty in applying it arises from the fact that our thoughts are so close to us that it is difficult, with out a little practice, to stand back and look at them objectively. Yet, that is what you must learn to do. You must train yourself to choose the subject of your thinking at any given time, and also to choose the emotional tone.
If you are not determined to start in now and carefully select all day the kind of thoughts that you are going to think, you may as well give up all hope of shaping your life into the kind of thing that you want it to be.
To train yourself in the habit of thought selection will be difficult for the first few days, but it is the most interesting experiment that you could possibly make. You will be amazed at the things that you will learn about yourself. This week may be the most significant week in your whole life; not only will you be able to face your present difficulties in a better spirit, but the difficulties will go. You cannot change conditions directly – you have often tried to do so and failed – but go on the seven-day mental diet and conditions MUST change for you.
The way to start on a Seven-Day Mental Diet is to BEGIN NOW.
This is your Seven-Day Mental Diet prescription
For seven days you must not allow yourself to dwell for a moment on
any kind of negative thought.
You must watch yourself for a week and must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind.
This discipline will be so strenuous that you could not maintain it consciously for much more than a week, but a week will be enough, because by that time the habit of positive thinking will begin to be established. Some changes for the better will have come into your life, encouraging you enormously, and then the new way of life will be so attractive that you will find your mentality aligning itself almost automatically.
What is meant by negative thinking?
A negative thought is any thought of failure, disappointment, or trouble; any thought of criticism, or spite, or jealousy, or condemnation of others, or self-condemnation; and thought of sickness or accident; or, in short, any kind of limitation. In practice you will never have any trouble in knowing whether a thought is positive or negative. Even if your brain tries to deceive you, your heart will whisper the truth.
It is not the thoughts that come to you that matter, but only such of them as you choose to entertain and dwell upon. Many negative thoughts will come to you all day long. Some will be given to you by other people, or you will hear disagreeable news. These things, however, do not matter so long as you do not entertain them.
Red Hot Cinder Analogy
An analogy is furnished by the case of a man who is sitting by an open fire when a red hot cinder flies out and falls on his sleeve. If he blows that cinder off at once, without a moment's delay to think about it, no harm is done. But, if he allows it to rest on him for a single moment, under any pretense, the mischief is done, and it will be a troublesome task to repair that sleeve. So it is with a negative thought.
Rock On
People often find that the starting of this seven-day mental diet seems to stir up difficulties. It seems as though everything begins to go wrong at once. This may be disconcerting, but it is really a good sign. Suppose your whole world seems to rock on its foundations. Hold on steadily, let it rock, and when the rocking is over, the picture will have reassembled itself into something much nearer to your heart's desire.
Do NOT tell anyone else that you are on a mental diet.
Remember that your soul should be the Secret Place of the Most High. When you have secured your new mentality, then tell the story to anyone else whom you think is likely to be helped by it.
Meditation
There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal;
no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge;
no wall that enough love will not throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem.
It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle,
how great the mistake; a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
The Seven-Day Mental Diet comes directly from
Around The Year with Emmet Fox – A Book of Daily Readings, p. 360-363. ISBN: 978-0-06-250408-1
Available at our online store at www.livingshoppe.com
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Turn The Other Cheek
RESIST NOT EVIL
The Greatest Metaphysical Secret
To the world – those who do not understand – it sounds like moral suicide, the feeblest surrender to aggression; but it is superb spiritual strategy. Antagonize any situation, and you give it power against yourself; offer mental nonresistance, and it crumbles in front of you.
WHAT YOU RESIST, PERSISTS
TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
This is a mental practice, not a physical action. This refers to changing of one's thought when faced with error, changing from the error to the Truth – and , as a rule, it acts like magic.
It will sometimes happen that you will find yourself in company where the conversation is very negative, sickness and trouble being described and dwelt upon at great length, or perhaps uncharitable statements made concerning absent people. For various reasons it may be difficult for you to withdraw, and if so your duty is clear – you must mentally “turn the other cheek” and thus help both the speakers and their victims.
YOUR OWN CONCEPT IS WHAT YOU SEE
If, when someone is behaving badly, instead of thinking of the trouble, you will immediately switch your attention off from the human to the Divine, and concentrate upon the Real Spiritual Self of the person in question, you will find – if you really do this – that his conduct will immediately change.
THE SECRET OF HANDLING DIFFICULT PEOPLE
Remember, they are not doing it to you...they are just doing it.
If people are troublesome, you have only to change your thought about them, and then they will change too, because your own concept is what you see. This is the true revenge. It has been tried thousands and thousands, perhaps millions of times, and it never fails when properly carried out. It is often quite amusing to see it acting like clockwork. If somebody comes into the room at home, or into the office or shop, or anywhere else, looking as if he meant to make trouble, just try switching you attention straight off to the Divine, instead of sparring up aggressively to meet the difficulty or shrinking away to avoid it, according to your temperament. You will be amused and gratified to see the anger fade away from the subject's face (which will mean it has faded from his hear too and quite different expression take its place. You may find it helpful in the beginning to glance away from him while giving yourself this “treatment,” but with a little practice you will be able, so to speak, to look through him to the Truth of Being (the same spark of consciousness that is in you is in them and is in the God of your understanding).
PRAYER AND AN OPEN MIND
When you find yourself in difficulties, you should pray for harmony and freedom, and expect to get it; but you should not seek to select the exact arrangement that will come about, or the course that things will take.
*** Emmet Fox - The Sermon On The Mount - Chapter 4
Paraphrased for my own personal understanding and practical use. Take what you like and leave the rest.
The Greatest Metaphysical Secret
To the world – those who do not understand – it sounds like moral suicide, the feeblest surrender to aggression; but it is superb spiritual strategy. Antagonize any situation, and you give it power against yourself; offer mental nonresistance, and it crumbles in front of you.
WHAT YOU RESIST, PERSISTS
TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
This is a mental practice, not a physical action. This refers to changing of one's thought when faced with error, changing from the error to the Truth – and , as a rule, it acts like magic.
It will sometimes happen that you will find yourself in company where the conversation is very negative, sickness and trouble being described and dwelt upon at great length, or perhaps uncharitable statements made concerning absent people. For various reasons it may be difficult for you to withdraw, and if so your duty is clear – you must mentally “turn the other cheek” and thus help both the speakers and their victims.
YOUR OWN CONCEPT IS WHAT YOU SEE
If, when someone is behaving badly, instead of thinking of the trouble, you will immediately switch your attention off from the human to the Divine, and concentrate upon the Real Spiritual Self of the person in question, you will find – if you really do this – that his conduct will immediately change.
THE SECRET OF HANDLING DIFFICULT PEOPLE
Remember, they are not doing it to you...they are just doing it.
If people are troublesome, you have only to change your thought about them, and then they will change too, because your own concept is what you see. This is the true revenge. It has been tried thousands and thousands, perhaps millions of times, and it never fails when properly carried out. It is often quite amusing to see it acting like clockwork. If somebody comes into the room at home, or into the office or shop, or anywhere else, looking as if he meant to make trouble, just try switching you attention straight off to the Divine, instead of sparring up aggressively to meet the difficulty or shrinking away to avoid it, according to your temperament. You will be amused and gratified to see the anger fade away from the subject's face (which will mean it has faded from his hear too and quite different expression take its place. You may find it helpful in the beginning to glance away from him while giving yourself this “treatment,” but with a little practice you will be able, so to speak, to look through him to the Truth of Being (the same spark of consciousness that is in you is in them and is in the God of your understanding).
PRAYER AND AN OPEN MIND
When you find yourself in difficulties, you should pray for harmony and freedom, and expect to get it; but you should not seek to select the exact arrangement that will come about, or the course that things will take.
*** Emmet Fox - The Sermon On The Mount - Chapter 4
Paraphrased for my own personal understanding and practical use. Take what you like and leave the rest.
It is Blessed to be Persecuted as the Result of Our Right Thinking
This exerpt is worth sharing on this day of Thanksgiving. As we give "thanks" and "giving" attention today I am reminded of how many may not see the wonderful things all around them. Their minds are flooded with self-defeating emotions of worry, fear, excuses, gossip, self-pity, hopelessness, comparison, complaint, criticism, selfishness, negative thoughts and words that reflect all the pain they suffer with needlessly....If they only knew....read on...
"It is Blessed to be Persecuted as the Result of Our Right Thinking...All this is indeed very startling, and it is perfectly correct; only we have to understand that the source of all this persecution is none other that our own selves. No outside persecutor, but only our own lower selves.
When we find rightousness or right thinking very difficult - when we are very strongly tempted to hold the wrong thoughts about some situation, or some person, or about ourselves; to give way to fear, or anger, or despondency - then we are being persecuted for rightousness' sake, and this is for us an extremely fortunate or blessed condition, for it is in such moments that we are really advancing.
Every spiritual treatment or scientific prayer involves a tussle with our own lower self, which wishes to indulge the old habit of thought, and, in fact, persecutes and reviles us - if we like to put the thing dramatically in the Oriental way. All the great Prophets and Enlightened Ones of the race who ultimately overcame, did so by just such struggles with themselves, when they were being persecuted by their own lower natures, or the Old Adam.
Jesus himself, "who was tempted in all respects like as we are," had to meet this "persecution" more than once; especially in the Garden of Gethsemane, and, for a few moments, on the Cross itself. Now, since these combats with the lower self have to be fought out sooner or later, and so, relatively speaking, they are great blessings.
Note carefully that there is no virtue or advantage whatever in being persecuted or annoyed by other people. Nothing can come into our experience unless it finds something in us with which it is attuned: and so, to have trouble and difficulty is only a sign that our own mentality needs clearing up; for what you see at any time is nothing but your own concept.
We get only what belongs to us at any time, and nobody can prevent our getting that; and so all persecution and hindrance are absolutely from within.
-- Sermon On the Mount by Emmet Fox
May you find peace in your heart to enjoy yourself completely in the lifetime.
Dr. Susan Duve
A Happy Soul
"It is Blessed to be Persecuted as the Result of Our Right Thinking...All this is indeed very startling, and it is perfectly correct; only we have to understand that the source of all this persecution is none other that our own selves. No outside persecutor, but only our own lower selves.
When we find rightousness or right thinking very difficult - when we are very strongly tempted to hold the wrong thoughts about some situation, or some person, or about ourselves; to give way to fear, or anger, or despondency - then we are being persecuted for rightousness' sake, and this is for us an extremely fortunate or blessed condition, for it is in such moments that we are really advancing.
Every spiritual treatment or scientific prayer involves a tussle with our own lower self, which wishes to indulge the old habit of thought, and, in fact, persecutes and reviles us - if we like to put the thing dramatically in the Oriental way. All the great Prophets and Enlightened Ones of the race who ultimately overcame, did so by just such struggles with themselves, when they were being persecuted by their own lower natures, or the Old Adam.
Jesus himself, "who was tempted in all respects like as we are," had to meet this "persecution" more than once; especially in the Garden of Gethsemane, and, for a few moments, on the Cross itself. Now, since these combats with the lower self have to be fought out sooner or later, and so, relatively speaking, they are great blessings.
Note carefully that there is no virtue or advantage whatever in being persecuted or annoyed by other people. Nothing can come into our experience unless it finds something in us with which it is attuned: and so, to have trouble and difficulty is only a sign that our own mentality needs clearing up; for what you see at any time is nothing but your own concept.
We get only what belongs to us at any time, and nobody can prevent our getting that; and so all persecution and hindrance are absolutely from within.
-- Sermon On the Mount by Emmet Fox
May you find peace in your heart to enjoy yourself completely in the lifetime.
Dr. Susan Duve
A Happy Soul
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