1 result for (book:nopr AND session:633 AND stemmed:do)
[... 23 paragraphs ...]
As living cells have a structure, react to stimuli and organize according to their own classification, so do thoughts. Thoughts thrive on association. They magnetically attract others like themselves, and like some strange microscopic animals they repel their “enemies,” or other thoughts that are threatening to their own survival.
[... 7 paragraphs ...]
Now: First of all, Augustus had been told in various ways, quote: “You think too much. You should be doing something physical, involved in sports, more outgoing.” Such repeated remarks, with other childhood conditions, made him afraid of his own mental activity. He also felt unworthy, so how could his thoughts be good?
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
Forget now that in this case such a division occurred, and imagine instead the successive thoughts and feelings that you possess. When you feel weak you are weak. When you feel joyful your body benefits and becomes stronger. Augustus’s case simply shows in exaggerated form the effects of your beliefs upon your physical image. If you think, “Aha, then from now on I will only think good thoughts — and therefore be healthy, and inhibit my ‘bad’ thoughts, or do anything at all with them but think them,” then in your own way you are doing what Augustus did. He began by believing that some of his thoughts were so evil that they must somehow be made nonexistent. So inhibiting what you consider as negative thoughts, or assuming that they are so terrible, is no answer.
[... 7 paragraphs ...]
You with your conscious mind are to discriminate among those thoughts as to which ones you want to form into your system of beliefs (intently), but in so doing you are not to pretend blindness. You may at times wish that a rainy day were a sunny one, but you do not stand at the window and deny that the rain is falling, or that the air is cold and the sky dark.
Because you accept the rain as a present reality does not mean, either, that you must believe that all days are stormy, and make that obvious misconception a part of your beliefs about reality. So you do not have to pretend that a “dark” thought doesn’t exist. You do not have to take it as fact that all of your thoughts would be murky, left alone, and try to hide them.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Since you have all kinds of thoughts there are reasons for having them, as you have all kinds of geography. Within your reality it is as foolish to deny the existence of certain thoughts as it would be, say, to pretend that deserts do not exist. In following such a course you deny dimensions of experience and diminish your reality. This does not mean that you have to collect what you think of as negative thoughts, any more than it means that you should spend a month in a desert if you do not like them. Period. It does mean that within nature as you understand it, nothing is meaningless or to be pretended out of existence.
That will do. Now you may end the session or take a break if you prefer.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]