Yes, obviously, I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking… 

Today’s thought comes from the bible and a book written in 1902.

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he… (Proverbs 23:7a)

The book is called As A Man Thinketh by James Allen.  I believe you can actually find free copies of it floating around the internets (gotta love Bushisms).

It’s true though, you are the sum of your thoughts.  Just like Nature, good seeds produce life, bad seeds produce death.  So if we are spending our precious little thinking time that we do get these days, on things like the news, which let’s face it, is never good news, or movies, which usually deal with the darker side of humanity, or TV which bombards us with advertising, effectively turning us into consumers, then is it any wonder why so few of us are happy?

In contrast to the popular Secret…

In 1902, James Allen came to the conclusion that “We do not attract what we want, but what we are.”  “Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t ‘get’ success, but become it.  There is no gap between mind and matter.”

What are you thinking about?

Emerson has commented that, “A person is what he thinks about all day long.”  What do you spend your time thinking about?

Sadly, I think most of us will find that according to Emerson’s definition, we are just consumers.  We spend most of our time thinking about how to buy something we want, or how to get the money to buy what we want, as if Happiness had a price tag or physical embodiment.

Some more great quotes from Allen that I’ll let you do your own thinking on:

“Circumstances do not make a person, they reveal him.”

and

“Most of us are anxious to improve our circumstances, but are unwilling to improve ourselves–and we therefore remain bound.”

Some other interesting notes… The word thinketh from Proverbs above, comes from the Hebrew root word meaning to split or open, and the word heart comes from the Hebrew root word for the word to breathe, in this case, denoting a breathing creature.

So another way of looking at it would be to say, ‘As a man splits open in his breathing, so is he’.

Think about it…