The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [37]
Now we come to consider this kingdom a little more in detail, and we find that the King’s Palace, the office of government, so to say, is nothing less than your own consciousness—your own mentality. This is your very own private cabinet, and the business transacted there is the swirl of thoughts that continually pass across your mind. The “Secret Place of the Most High,” the Psalmist calls it, and it is secret because no one but yourself knows what goes on therein. There is privacy, and there is dominion. You have the power to think what thoughts you like. You can choose which thoughts you will accept and which you will reject. You are master there. Whatever thoughts you do elect to dwell upon will presently be expressed in the outer physical world as things and events—but that is your lookout. Having thought certain thoughts, you have no power to change the outer consequences of these thoughts. Your choice lies in thinking or not thinking them in the first place. If you do not wish certain consequences to come to you, your business is to abstain from thinking them in the first place, or from thinking the kind of thoughts that will ultimate in them. If you do not want an engine to start, you do not open the valve; if you do want a bell to ring, you do not press the button; and so, if you really understand this fundamental principle, you will from now onwards watch your habitual thinking with the utmost care.
Since it is true that the kind of thoughts that you hold in consciousness (the Secret Place) are presently going to be expressed in your outer life, in your body and affairs, you will no more think of holding inharmonious thoughts than you would think of eating or drinking something which was certain to make you very ill. Remember that whatever the mind dwells upon will sooner or later come into your experience. It does not at all follow that the particular thing you were thinking will be exactly what will happen—although sometimes it does. For instance, if you think very much about disease, you are tending to undermine your health; if you think much about poverty and depression, you are tending to bring poverty upon yourself; and if you think about trouble, and strife, and dishonesty, you attract those. The actual thing that occurs in any given instance will not commonly be the precise reproduction of any particular train of thought, but rather the resultant of the combined action of that train of thought and of your general mental attitude.
Thinking about sickness or disease is only one of the two factors that produce bodily ailments, and it is usually the less important. The other, and more important factor, is the entertainment of negative or destructive emotions, although this fact seems to be very little understood, even among students of metaphysics. So important is it, however, that it is simply impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact that most bodily ailments are caused by the patient’s allowing destructive emotions to hold a place in his mind. It cannot be too often repeated that to entertain feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, spite, and so forth, is certain to damage your health in some way or other, and quite likely to damage it very severely indeed. Remember that the question of the justification or otherwise for such feelings does not arise at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with the results, for the thing is a matter of natural law.
A woman said: “I have a right to be angry,” meaning that she had been the victim of very shabby treatment, and that she consequently possessed a kind of license or special permit to hold angry