31 Jan Love #8

The Discipline of Thought

Although thought is a fundamental human activity familiar to everyone, there is no generally accepted agreement as to what thought is or how it is created. Thoughts are the result or product of either spontaneous or willed acts of thinking.

Because thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its physical and metaphysical origins, processes and effects has been a longstanding goal of many academic disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, artificial intelligence, biology, sociology and cognitive science.

Thinking is the process of thoughts forming a plan of action for achieving its goal. Thinking is an interesting gift, even though we never think of it as such. It goes without saying that all of us think. What is meant here in these writings is to take it deeper. We look at many things and maybe we give them a quick thought, or not, and we move on because everything seems fine.

However there are times in certain situations, essentially when you hear or see a symbol, you must stop immediately and start thinking about what your mind is saying to you. You need to discern what’s taking place. What are the present energies stimulating concepts within your subconscious mind? What patterns of behavior are about to be set in motion?

You need to see what energies are aligned and working against you. They will come from internal and then external forces. The Discipline of Observation must be employed first to read the symbol. Then think. Then act.

Your thoughts can lead you astray. In doing so, they can take you off your path and into disunity within and without. There is a Universal Teaching about stray thoughts. Here it is: “How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?” (Matthew 18:12)

This Teaching tells you, you MUST track down negative thoughts as soon as you realize you have them, and bring them back to the positive. If you don’t, there is no telling where they will take you. All one needs to do is look around our society today to see the manifestation of negative thoughts in action.

In our next discussion we will examine the Discipline of Emotions.