All I Know I Learned in Bible Class

“Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes the subconscious identically creates.” ~ Brian Adams

When I was a young girl and was attending Bible classes, I often sat in the room, bored to pieces, and listened to Don Battaglini explain how much we should guard our thoughts. “If a man thinks of having an affair with his brother’s wife”, he used to say, “He’s as sinful as the man who does”. As every know-it-all teenager in the room probably did, I also believed it was just bogus. By then, I had pretty much concluded that thoughts and facts were very different things. My ideas in that regard would change in the future.

Since even then I loved to write, but couldn’t really come up with a specific character, I became the protagonist of my own stories. On days when I had the time, I would write short stories, and then I would put them away. When I wrote them I became so attached to the situations – most of them rosy wishes of a teenage girl – that I often envisioned myself living the stories. Strangely, within a short period of time, most of them became reality. One of them, particularly, took the cake. After a trip to London when I was sixteen, I often fantasized about living there. In my daydream I imagined I had married an English guy I had met while he was vacationing in Italy, we had three children and lived on one of the streets near Victoria Station.

Then I grew up, I forgot my fantasies of London, and focused more on real happenings. I met my husband, moved to the States and settled into the life I’m currently living. It was a few years ago, on my way home, that I absent-mindedly glimpsed at the sign outside my subdivision while I waited to turn at the light…the name on it was the same as the street in London I had envisioned living on as a kid! It took my breath away. Suddenly, the events that had played a huge role in my life flashed in front of my eyes – I have, after all, married an English man, and we have three children; we don’t live in London on the street of my fantasy, but live in an area called by the same name.

Once I started paying attention, I realized that thoughts do indeed affect reality. Not all thoughts do, but only those we fuel with emotions and passions. We manifest that which we deeply fear, wish and expect, if we feel strongly enough about it. Without emotional charge, thoughts are just that – fleeting ideas streaming through.

That is why it is so important to watch our thoughts. If we train our conscious minds to accept only positive images, those are what we send to our subconscious mind for production. One important thing to note is that things do not instantaneously change the moment we alter the way we address our thoughts. First we must live through the residue of what we thought yesterday. However, if once we decide we are going to change our thinking we stick to our guns - regardless of the left-over trash we are still experiencing - eventually those thoughts will run their course, and all that will be left to manifest will be positive images.

So many years later, I finally understand what the good old priest was trying to explain. And that brings a smile to my face.