Thought and Character

• Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruit; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.
• Thought in the mind hath made us.
  What we are by thought was wrought and built.
  If a man's mind hath evil thought,
  pain comes on him as comes the wheel the ox behind.
  If one endure in purity of thought,
  Joy follows him as his own shadow - sure.
• A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts.
• Man is always the master, even in his weakest and most abandoned state. But in his weakness and degradation he is foolish master who misgoverns his "household." When he begins to reflect upon his condition and search diligently for the law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues.
• Man is made or unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the divine perfection. By the abuse and wrong application of thought he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.

What you read above are my notes from a book called 'As a Man Thinketh' by James Allen. When I read this book, I thought every line was worth underlining/taking notes from. Everything in this world starts with a thought. Thoughts are like seeds, they grow into results if they are properly culivated in the right environment. It is true for both good and bad thoughts. Everybody is prone to having both of them. The key for success is to have more good thoughts (that will blossom into action and bore results as the fruit) than bad thoughts. I found a great way to cultivate the habit of having good thoughts. In order for this to work, first off we need to understand that everybody has bad thoughts at somepoint of time or the other. Even the noblest of the noble, whom you might have a high regard for, have bad thoughts spring up once in a while and catch them off guard. Thats just the way it is. Understanding that it is not just you that have bad thoughts will help you easily overcome it. Second, we also need to understand that, though our brain is a highly powerful computer(which is an understatement) that is capable of doing 20,000 trillion calculations per second, we cannot have two thoughts at the same time. Which means that you cannot have good thoughts and bad thoughts at the same time. That is a boon! Because, when I have a bad thought about anything, I can easily force myself to stop thinking about bad things and start thinking about good things. This simple strategy can rock our world in a very positive way. One last thing, positive thoughts come from God, and we all know where the negative thoughts come from! so lets work hard on increasing the positive (thought) differential.

so long!..

-SamCam