Thoughts Held in Mind Produce After Their Kind
In 1989, as a new student of Unity truth, I awakened to a great spiritual principle: Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. I also learned that each of us is a thinking center of thought within the one limitless mind of God. That idea has stayed with me. What we think matters.
In Unity, we do not tell anyone what to think. Unity invites us to become still and examine our own thinking. We learn to look at life from the highest possible point of view.
Up until now, for most of us, thought has been a reflex. Something happens, and we react rather than respond. Our reactions may include worry, fear, anger, happiness or hope. We have tended to suppose that outward conditions have created our thoughts. However, circumstances do not command the mind. Our thoughts come from our attitudes, feelings and familiar patterns.
We think what we choose to think, or we think what we have practiced thinking for years. Many of us do not realize that we have the power to choose which thoughts we allow to run through our minds. When we let people and conditions determine our inner state, we give away our power.
It is our own mind, and the way we think and either react or respond reflects our level of consciousness. No matter what happens in the world, no matter what we read or hear, and no matter what takes place around us or to us, we always and in all ways have a choice.
We do not have to stay angry. We do not have to remain unhappy. We can choose a different thought. We can learn to respond instead of react and become the master of our thinking.
The idea is simple, but it is not always easy. Self-mastery takes commitment because we have practiced reactive thinking for a long time. Still, we can do it.
Each morning and throughout the day, we get to make a commitment that we will not allow people, conditions or circumstances to decide how we are going to think or feel. We cannot change other people, and we cannot control everything that happens in the world. But we can change what we think about what is happening around us.
When we change our attitude, we change our experience, which then allows us to change our life. Each time we surrender our inner life to outward appearances, we forget that God has given us dominion over our own consciousness. Our mind is holy ground, and the quality of our experience is shaped by the level from which we behold it.
How, then, shall we refine the thoughts we hold? We begin by turning within, listening for divine wisdom and consenting to think from the Christ light and be spirit-led rather than thinking from fear and being ego-driven.
This is the key to positive thinking. It is not about filling the mind with happy platitudes. It is about knowing that we can choose the thoughts we want to hold. And the thoughts we hold in mind will produce after their kind.
Autumn blessings.
Rev. Therese Donlan Lee is the senior minister of Unity Spiritual Center on Hilton Head Island. revthereseunityhiltonhead@gmail.com.
