FROM studying the varied features and expressions of those we meet on our daily round we can easily appreciate how thought molds and fashions the body. Here we may see a face sweet and gentle, yet perhaps it speaks of grief or sadness. There we may find another, coarse or cruel, suggesting even more of the animal nature than the spiritual; and so on in endless variety.
But what is it that is responsible for thus molding the features? Not material food, but the thoughts or ideas upon which the individual has been feeding account for the varied expressions of fear, hatred, self-will, or of joy, compassion, purity, unselfishness. Such thoughts or ideas may have been induced by the way the individual has been brought up or educated, by the mental atmosphere in which he has been accustomed to dwell, or in some other way.
All discord arises because fearful, sick, sinning, suffering beliefs seem inherent in the human mind. Indeed, these beliefs are the natural product of and at the same time constitute in part this supposed mind; and their destruction through suffering must inevitably follow as redemption comes to the individual through the light of spiritual understanding. But at times it may appear as if the so-called carnal mind were thriving on its own falsity.
