You may think that you are well, but you will not secure health until you think thoughts that produce health. You may persistently affirm that you are well, but so long as you live in discord, confusion, worry, fear and other wrong states of mind, you will be sick; that is, you will be as you think and not what you think you are. You may state health in your thought, but if you give worry, fear and discord to that thought, your thinking will produce discord. It is not what we state in our thoughts, but what we give to our thoughts that determine results.

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. PROVERBS 17:22 SEPTEMBER 18 I visited my old hometown and thought about my boyhood days. I remembered the time I’d been eating unripe apples, and I suffered for it. I called a doctor. He came and poked around at me and asked me what I had been doing. He gave me some peppermint and said, “You just take that and quit eating unripe apples. You will be all right.” Then he put his hand on my head and said, “Son, I can cure your stomach. That is easy. But if you get bad thoughts in your mind, it will take a greater doctor than I am to cure you. So don’t let bad or sick thoughts get in that head of yours.” How you think can even change the impact of sickness, physical deterioration, and aging. Christianity is life, friends. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). And if you are going to have life, you have to cope with illness and deterioration and aging. And how you think has an important bearing on the aging process.

It’s been said that we are shaped by our thoughts. If this is true, can you imagine where one healthy thought can lead each day?

A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work.

We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking — or, more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth. “Health is not just a matter of thinking happy thoughts,” writes the molecular researcher Candace Pert. “Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-suppressed anger.” Anger, or the healthy experience of it, is one of the seven A’s of healing. Each of the seven A’s addresses one of the embedded visceral beliefs that predispose to illness and undermine healing.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon.... If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

It’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.

it has been your thoughts that have made you feel alternately weak and strong.’ My guru looked at me affectionately. ‘You have seen how your health has exactly followed your subconscious expectations. Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.’ “Knowing

All your actions, whether thinking of God or beating a child, spring from the same source — thinking. The thoughts themselves cannot do any harm. It is when you attempt to use, censor, and control those thoughts to get something that your problems begin. You have no recourse but to use thought to get what you want in this world. But when you seek to get what does not exist — God, bliss, love, etc. — through thought, you only succeed in pitting one thought against another, creating misery for yourself and the world.

Thought has produced tremendous effects outwardly. And, as we'll discuss further on, it produces tremendous effects inwardly in each person. Yet the general tacit assumption in thought is that it's just telling you the way things are and that is not doing anything — that 'you' are inside there, deciding what to do with the information. But I want to say that you don't decide what to do with the information. The information takes over. It runs you. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives the false information that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought, whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Until thought is understood — better yet, more than understood, perceived — it will actually control us; but it will create the impression that it is our servant, that it is just doing what we want it to do. That's the difficulty. Thought is participating and then saying it's not participating. But it is taking part in everything. Fragmentation is a particular case of that. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally.

In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden.

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts it becomes an epidemic. p901

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Thinking is a double-edged sword. It can help you. But it can also destroy you.

Thought applies to an idea expressed or unexpressed that comes into your mind as a result of reflection, and reflection takes time.