Christian Science: You Are What You Think You Are

By Subhash Malhotra

We human beings have a unique advantage over other species: We can think and reason. Unfortunately, we have gotten into the habit of thinking negative rather than positive thoughts.

For instance, when a person feels intense fear or hate, it will show up in his actions, eventually becoming part of his experience and memory. In order to help us change the way we think (for the better), we must make a conscious effort to think good thoughts with love and courage.

We need to understand that the way we think controls and governs not only our speech and action, but through them, it will come to govern our life and the way we live. So how you think Ñ negatively or positively Ñ will decide whether you are going to be happy or sad.

How you think Ð positively or negatively Ð

will decide whether you are going to be happy or sad.

Many people round the world have improved the quality of their experiences simply by changing the way they think. In her book Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy writes: ÒOf a man it has been said, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he Ñ hence as a man spiritually understandeth, so is he in truthÓ.

The best way to cultivate the habit of thinking positively is to move from being self-centred to God-centred. According to Ms Eddy God is: ÒThe all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, all substance, intelligenceÓ. Therefore it is necessary for man to understand God, claim his unity with Him and resurrect his thinking from matter to spirit in order to overcome his bondage to the material world in all its different forms.

Take pain and disease. It is by now fairly well established that there is a definite link between the mind and the body Ñ a happy frame of mind is decidedly more likely to be good for physical well-being than would be a mind that was crowded with negative thoughts. A positive attitude really helps to minimise the effects of disease and pain whereas a negative attitude aggravates the problem.

The decisions you make will rule your life, whichever direction you choose to go. You could stand guard at the doorway to your thoughts and admit only such conclusions as you wish realised physically Ñ then you will learn to control yourself.

On the subject of ageing Ms Eddy says: ÒMan in Science is neither young nor oldÓ. Explaining the secret of remaining perpetually youthful, she says to be obsessed with ageing is not a good thing Ñ if you keep thinking that you are growing old, then youÓd probably age faster.

The decisions you make will rule your life,

whichever direction you choose to go.

A story published in The Lancet illustrates this point well. A young girl was disappointed in love and became mentally unstable. She lost all track of time. Believing that she was still in the moment when she and her lover parted, oblivious of the days, months and years gone by, she would stand before the window, waiting eagerly for her lover to come back. Not conscious of time, she remained forever young. American tourists who saw her when she was 74 guessed that she would be in her twenties. She had no care-lines on her face, no wrinkles, no grey hair.

When man counts the years, and begins to feel that he cannot do something because he is old, he loses track of his ever-glorious and unlimited selfhood as a child of God. We imprison ourselves in a cage of our own making, constructed with the ego, thinking that we are immortal and our lives are separate from God. Poet Samuel Longfellow wrote: ÒO Life that maketh all things new,/ The blooming earth, the thoughts of men...Ó