Renewing of the Mind

 TRAINING YOUR THOUGHTS

Thought is the real causative force in life, and 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; the color tone of your whole life must change.
    And be not conformed to the world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind… (Romans 12:2).
…. This may be called the Great Cosmic Law.

Excerpted from:

Around the Year

with Emmet Fox, p. 361

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I often hear my fellow travelers on similar spiritual paths say that they don’t watch the news or read the papers because it “bums” them out and shapes their thinking in a negative manner. I can understand their position, and even support it to a degree; but I am not so inclined because I do have a variety of sources available to me today that my grandparents had not even imagined to exist. I don’t accuse others, who are less interested in the news of the day, of sticking their heads in the sands either because I know that the most important thing is to act compassionately. Acting compassionately can also be applied to the problems of the day if I don’t allow myself to be driven knee-jerk by the differing slants presented on the nightly news. Whatever kind of news junkie I am, it is important to me to know what folks are getting all fired up about and judge for myself where I stand. How might I apply spiritual principles to the issues of the day? Am I buying into the accusations and emotional barrage thereof? Where can I encourage understanding and healing? Where can I put a hand out to opposing sides and find the humanity in others I would have detested otherwise? I couldn’t do so without constant conscious contact with a Power far greater than myself. This takes some training of the mind and is accomplished most effectively for me through a regular inventory of my own thinking combined with the practice of quietude in the spiritual renewal of meditation.

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