Your Health is determined in a great way by your thoughts.
Part IV of a multi-part series based on the book As A Man Thinketh by James Allen.
One of the foundational books for modern thought leaders is James Allen’s book, As A Man Thinketh. Originally published in 1903, this book is at the root of all today’s motivational speakers and gurus. This is the fourth in a series of articles where I translate, Victorian Age speaks into today’s commonly used English.
Allen starts off this part of his book by explaining that your body is the servant of your mind and your thoughts. Your body obeys the directions transmitted by your thoughts. These directions can be by choice or by your autonomic nervous system. You don’t have to tell your heart to beat, your liver to filter your blood, or your intestines to convert food into nourishment for your body and when you continually think bad or “unlawful” thoughts, your body quickly sinks into “disease and decay.” When you think happy and beautiful thoughts, your body becomes wrapped in beauty and youthfulness.
Being sick and healthy are similar because they are both the product of your thoughts. Thoughts of sickness and fear have both been known to quickly kill people and these thoughts are killing thousands of people at varying rates of speed. People living in fear of disease are the people who get it. Anxiety can demoralize your whole body and can lower your immune system, causing you to be more likely to get the disease. Impure thoughts, even if they are not acted on, will cause damage to your nervous system.
Your Health is Connected to Your Thoughts
When you think strong, pure, and happy thoughts you build your immune system, physical strength, and your peace of mind. Your body is resilient but in some ways it is delicate and it responds quickly to your thoughts and follows your habitual thinking. Your thinking can cause good or bad changes to your body.
People will continue to contract disease and be afflicted with health problems as long as they continue to think negative and impure thoughts. Clean and healthy thoughts create a clean life and body. Your thoughts are the source of your actions which will become the life you live. If you want a great life, think exceptional thoughts, ones that are positive and pure.
Changing your diet will not help if you do not change your thinking. If you think pure thoughts, you will desire pure foods.
Your clean thoughts will show up in clean habits. “The so-called saint who does not wash his body is not a saint.” If your thoughts are pure and strong, you do not need to consider the “malevolent microbe”.
If you feel your body is worth protecting, you should protect your mind. If your body is worth the effort to keep it in shape, you should put the same effort into keeping your thoughts and mind in shape. People who are envious, disappointed, despondent, or wish harm on others, rob their bodies of good health and their lives of grace.
Allen tells us, “A sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts. Wrinkles that mar (disfigure) are drawn by folly, passion, and pride.”
“I know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl. I know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours. The one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition; the other is the outcome of passion and discontent. “
“As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity.”
“On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by passion: who cannot distinguish them? With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun. I have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed. He was not old except in years. He died as sweetly and peacefully as he had lived.”
Allen finishes the chapter on health and thoughts with, “There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with goodwill for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison-hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all–such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven, and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.”
This idea has been substantiated with countless placebo studies and with the famous work of Norman Cousins. Cousins who described in his novel, Anatomy of an Illness contracted ankylosing spondylitis (A painful disorder of the immune system). He was given a 1 in 500 chance of recovery.
Relying on previously read books on the subject, such as Hans Selye’s The Stress of Life, Cousins learned that negative emotions, such as frustration or suppressed rage, are linked to adrenal exhaustion. Cousins concluded the opposite should be true, that the positive emotions of love, hope, faith, laughter, and confidence should have beneficial results. He also knew that “putting positive emotions to work is not as simple as turning on a garden hose. Along with high doses of Vitamin C (to boost his immune system), Cousins self-prescribed Marx Brothers, Candid Camera, Laurel and Hardy, and found the therapy worked. After several years of continuous “laughter therapy,” he was able to live his life without pain. (https://sites.google.com/site/laughofflife/page-1).
(To be Continued) The next part of the series is about how your purpose will make your life worth living.
