In order to sever all mental relations with disease, you must enter into
mental relations with healthy making the process positive not negative;
one of assumption,not
of rejection. You are to receive or appropriate health rather than to
reject and deny disease. Denying disease accomplishes next to nothing;
it does little good to cast out the devil and leave the house vacant,
for he will presently return with others worse than himself. When you
enter into full and constant mental relations with health, you must of
necessity cease all relationship with disease. The first step in the
Science of Being Well is, then, to enter into complete thought
connection with health.
The best way to do this is to form a mental image or picture of
yourself as being well, imagining a perfectly strong and healthy body;
and to spend sufficient time in contemplating this image to make it
your habitual thought of yourself.
This
is not so easy as it sounds; it necessitates the taking of considerable
time for meditation, and not all persons have the imaging faculty well
enough developed to form a distinct mental picture of themselves in a
perfect or idealized body. It is much easier, as in "The Science of
Getting Rich," to form a mental image of the things one wants to have;
for we have seen these things, or their counterparts, and know how they
look; we can picture them very easily from memory. But we have never
seen ourselves in a perfect body, and a clear mental image is
hard to form. It is not necessary or essential, however, to have a
clear mental image of yourself as you wish to be; it is only essential
to form a CONCEPTION of perfect health, and to relate
yourself to it. This Conception of Health is not a mental picture of a
particular thing ; it is an understanding of health, and carries with
it the idea of perfect function- ing in every part and organ. You may TRY to picture yourself as perfect in physique; that helps; and you MUST think of yourself as doing everything in the manner of a perfectly strong and healthy person. You
can picture yourself as walking down the street with an erect body
and a vigorous stride; you can picture yourself as doing your day's
work easily and with surplus vigor, never tired or weak; you can
picture in your mind how all things would be done by a person full of
health and power, and you can make yourself the central figure in the
picture, doing things in just that way. Never think of the ways in
which weak or sickly peo-ple do things; always think of the way strong
people do things. Spend your leisure time in thinking about the Strong Way, until you have a
good conception of it; and always think of yourself in connection with
the Strong Way of Doing Things. That is what I mean by having a
Conception of Health.
In
order to establish perfect functioning in every part, man does not have
to study anatomy or physiology, so that he can form a mental image of
each separate organ and address himself to it. He does not have to
"treat" his liver, his kidneys, his stomach, or his heart. There is one
Principle of Health in man, which has control over all the involuntary
functions of his life; and the thought of perfect health, impressed
upon this Principle, will reach each part and organ. Man's liver is not
controlled by a liver-principle, his stomach by a digestive principle,
and so on; the Principle of Health is One.The
less you go into the detailed study of physiology, the better for you.
Our knowledge of this science is very imperfect, and leads to imperfect
thought. Imperfect thought causes imperfect functioning, which is disease. Let
me illustrate: Until quite recently, physiology fixed ten days as the
extreme limit of man's endurance without food; it was considered that
only in exceptional cases could he survive a longer fast. So the
impression became universally disseminated that one who was deprived of
food must die in from five to ten days; and numbers of people, when cut
off from food by shipwreck, accident, or famine, did die within this
period. But the performances of Dr. Tanner, the forty-day faster, and
the writings of Dr. Dewey and others on the fasting cure, together with
the experiments of numberless people who have fasted from forty to
sixty days, have shown that man's ability to live without food is
vastly greater than had been supposed. Any person, properly educated,
can fast from twenty to forty days with little loss in weight, and
often with no apparent loss of strength at all. The people who starved to death in ten days or
less did so because they believed that death was inevitable; an
erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought about themselves. When a man is deprived of food he will die in from ten to fifty days,
according to the way he has been taught; or, in other words, according
to the way he thinks about it. So you see that an erroneous physiology
can work very mischievous results.No
Science of Being Well can be founded on current physiology; it is not
sufficiently exact in its knowledge. With all its pretensions,
comparatively little is really known as to the interior workings and
processes of the body. It is not known just how food is digested; it is
not known just what part food plays, if any, in the generation of
force. It is not known exactly what the liver, spleen, and pancreas are
for, or what part their secretions play in the chemistry of
assimilation. On all these and most other points we theorize, but we do
not really know. When man begins to
study physiology, he enters the domain of theory and disputation; he
comes among conflicting opinions, and he is bound to form mistaken
ideas concerning himself. These mistaken ideas lead to the thinking of
wrong thoughts, and this leads to perverted functioning and disease. All that the most perfect knowledge of physiology could do for man
would be to enable him to think only thoughts of perfect health, and to
eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way ; and this,
as we shall show, he can do without studying physiology at allThis,
for the most part, is true of all hygiene. There are certain
fundamental propositions which we should know; and these will be
explained in later chapters, but aside from these propositions, ignore
physiology and hygiene. They tend to fill your mind with thoughts of
imperfect conditions, and these thoughts will produce the imperfect conditions in your own
body. You cannot study any "science" which recognizes disease, if you
are to think nothing but health.Drop
all investigation as to your present condition, its causes or possible
result, and set yourself to the work of forming a conception of health.Think
about health and the possibilities of health; of the work that may be
done and the pleasures that may be enjoyed in a condition of perfect
health. Then make this conception your guide in thinking of yourself;
refuse to entertain for an instant any thought of yourself which is not
in harmony with it. When any idea of disease or imperfect functioning
enters your mind, cast it out instantly by calling up a thought which
is in harmony with the Concep- tion of Health.Think
of yourself at all times as realizing conception; as being a strong and
perfectly healthy personage; and do not harbor a contrary thought..KNOW that as you think of
yourself in unity with this conception, the Original Substance which
permeates and fills the tissues of your body is taking form according
to the thought; and know that this Intelligent Substance or mind stuff
will cause function to be performed in such a way that your body will
be rebuilt with perfectly healthy cells.The
Intelligent Substance, from which all things are made, permeates and
penetrates all things; and so it is in and through your body. It moves
according to its thoughts; and so if you hold only the thoughts of
perfectly healthy function, it will cause the movements of perfectly
healthy function within you. Hold with persistence to the thought of
perfect health in relation to yourself; do not permit yourself to think
in any other way.Hold this thought with perfect faith that it is the fact, the truth. It is the truth so far as your mental body is concerned. You have a mind body and a physical body; the
mind-body takes form just as you think of yourself, and any thought
which you hold con-tinuously is made visible by the transformation of
the physical body into its image. Implanting the thought of perfect
functioning in the mind-body will, in due time, cause perfect
functioning in the physical body.The
transformation of the physical body into the image of the ideal held by
the mind-body is not accomplished instantaneously; we cannot
transfigure our physical bodies at will as Jesus did. In the creation
and recreation of forms. Substance moves along the fixed lines of
growth it has established; and the impression upon it of the health
thought causes the healthy body to be built cell by cell. Holding only
thoughts of perfect health will ultimately cause perfect functioning;
and perfect functioning will in due time produce a perfectly healthy
body. It may be as well to con- dense this chapter into a syllabus : Your physical body is
permeated and filled tuith an Intelligent Substance, which forms a body
of mind-stuff. This mind-stuff controls the functioning of your
physical body. A thought of disease or of imperfect function, impressed
upon the mind-stuff, causes disease or imperfect functioning in the
physical body. If you are diseased, it is because wrong thoughts have
made impressions on this mind-stuff; these may have been either your
own thoughts or those of your parents; we begin life with many
sub-conscious impressions, both right and wrong. But the natural
tendency of all mind is toward health, and if no thoughts are held in
the conscious mind save those of health, all internal functioning will
come to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner.The
Power of Nature within you is sufficient to overcome all hereditary
impressions, and if you will learn to control your thoughts, so that
you shall think only those of health, and if you will perform the
voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way, you can
certainly be well. Click HERE To Sign Up To The Natural News Newsletter Chapter 5Health
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