As a Man Thinketh So Is He

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
-- The Book of Proverbs

"Your habitual thinking and imagery mold, fashion, and create your destiny; for as a man thinketh in his subconscious mind, so is he."
-- Dr. Joseph Murphy Ph.D.

"I thinketh that I looketh awthome today!"

In 1902, James Allen produced a literary essay "As a Man Thinketh" based on a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs. According to Wikipedia, in the Bible the passage is referring to another person, and in James Allen's work the passage is adopted to primarily refer to the reader himself. It is in the later context that the quote is used in this post at the end of which you will find a  5 minute YouTube video containing a recorded excerpt from the essay.

Dr. Murphy's quote above is taken from his book, "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind".
 
It would seem there is a lot of agreement that the heart and/or the mind  are directly responsible for the kind of person we each become (or perhaps "turn into" is a more appropriate way of putting it.)

One example of a problem which was made clear to me by the movie I Am is that people who are in trouble have difficulty thinking and acting reasonably. They are therefore helpless to confront an emergency on their own.  Yet prayers often pour forth in times of trouble and in particular when illness or death lurk.  People also complain that they often get the opposite of what they pray for.  That, or they pray and pray and get no answer. 

Several authors, some of whom I have quoted in the blog, are of the opinion that it's not specifically what you believe in that brings answers to your prayers.  It is literally what you think and specifically what your subconscious thinks that brings the result, good or bad, right or wrong, on the mark or the complete opposite.  In short what they are saying is that the answer comes when your subconscious responds to an image or thought in your conscious mind.

Back to the movie for a minute... The main premise of I Am is that we are all somehow connected at a more fundamental level than previously thought. Experiments have shown that this is true not just for humans but probably for all animals as well. The conclusion was that what we do at the individual level really does affect the global environment. If this is all true it makes the premise of a conscious thought affecting our subconscious mind easier to believe or at least begin to understand. The concept of duality of the mind is nothing new, and the two parts have been given names such as: objective subjective, waking sleeping, voluntary involuntary, and of course concsious subconscious.  What is so fascinating is that we are talking about internal thought "seeding" the subconscious which reacts by causing a result to happen.  And that result may be outside your body.

Dr. Murphy has stated that the condition of your mind and body as well as circumstances is a direct result of what you think, feel and believe and that your habitual thinking and imagery create your destiny.  Certainly he was not restricting this to refer just to the destiny of your mind and body since he added the rather broad category of "circumstances".

All of us, Buddhist, Muslim, Hebrew and Christian alike, may get our prayers answered, but only because of belief and mental acceptance of that for which we pray.  In other words we have to develop a technique which is based on an understanding of what we are doing in prayer and why.

People who have difficulty praying or meditating about a problem often say their mind wanders back and forth on problems.  We can sometimes feel defeated even before we start a positive thinking exercise.  Are you one of those who is filled with fears and doubts?  When opportunities arise do you think about how you might fail instead of how you will succeed?  Are you afraid you will get laughed at?  To state the obvious, If you are afraid to move forward you will stay where you are.  And yet all of us possess the ability to release the power of our subconscious mind to attract happiness, good health, wealth and success into our lives.  It is the belief in our own mind's capability that brings the result we seek.  That is the same as saying that you have to believe in the way your mind works. 

Dr Murphy, whose quote appears at the top of the page,  expressed his descriptions of prayer by using analogies to scientific processes that are better understood.  The essence of his explanation is that prayers are answered by the universal principle of action/reaction.  The action is the thought you put in your conscious mind.  The reaction is the subconscious mind's response, and the response corresponds to the nature of your thought.