Greetings once more friends everywhere!

I hope you can find this site as a place you can find rest and peace from a stressful and sometimes excessively demanding world out there. I had obtained this explanation for the title of my post, “The saying “a penny for your thoughts” is an English idiom simply asking what someone is thinking. Though no payment actually changes hands, the phrase has become a regular part of the English vernacular.” (wisegreek.org) You may have also heard the expression, to offer “my two pennies (or cents) worth.” It has similar nuance of offering one’s opinion in a matter. The idiom seem to imply one’s thoughts is not valued a whole lot, but it’s given and taken for what’s it worth. Contrary to this opinion, I would argue your thoughts are vital and has much to do with how we will live a meaningful life. To put it another way, it’s your thought that counts! Let’s talk about the true value of our thoughts and how they affect our future and that of our loved ones.

Paul tells us, “We demolish arguments (thoughts) and every pretension (attitude) that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient (in Love) to Christ.” (2Cor.10:5). This passage tells we are to reject bad thoughts, while trying to keep the good ones. Jesus gives us the right words and thoughts for living. He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt.11:29) “Learn from Me” means to be reeducated in our thought process. Sometimes, it is hard to shut out the world and be able to spend some quality time with Him and imbibe on His Word and His thoughts. The reason for this is obvious – our minds and thoughts are still locked into the sway of this malevolent world with all its hectic pace and insidious manipulation. As a result our thoughts have a negative impact upon us. So let’s talk about an important Godly attribute man has been given that can help us find rest and peace in our lives – through our thoughts and thinking process.

The Human Mind – Having the Divine Spark Which Gives Human Intelligence (Wiki Commons)

“As He Thinks…So Is He”

It was wise King Solomon who said, you are what you think. “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he (Prov. 23:7a). James Allen, author of the book As a Man Thinketh, writes that “…humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. It’s the wise man, it’s he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, that makes the wind and storm of the soul obey him.” The life that’s mixed with malevolence and seeks competition, domination, and rivalry whose mind is generated by inconsistent and incomplete thinking and comes at the behest of man’s “lone wolf” thinking. Thoughts lead to action.

Thirty Thousand Thoughts a Day

The average person has over thirty thousand thoughts a day, according to Dr. Caroline Leaf, in her book, Who Switched Off My Brain. Thoughts are words in muted rather than spoken form. Words forms the picture of life we will live in our realities. Thoughts are actions in muted in muted form. That’s why your words and actions which originate in your thoughts are important for they form the foundation of your reality. Of all the species of life God has created upon our earth, only man is replicated in God’s likeness with the divine capacity to think and act upon his thoughts. (Gen.1:26-27) Animals and other created species don’t think. God created them with instincts to ‘behave’ in a fixed and predictable manner. The function of the human mind is fundamentally spiritual in its activity and setup, rather than a purely physical brain function. Thoughts are unseen and exist in the realm of the spiritual. Jesus is the foundation and source of all wholesome and cleansing knowledge. Jesus, the Personified Word of God, is the Instructor, as His Word the Bible, is the instruction manual that comes with God’s ‘product’ called human beings. However, we are not robots, we are His children and He deeply Loves each one of us, so much so He did not spare His Son in order to save us.

If God made us in His image to have a mind like His, and the fund of knowledge in His Son to tell us how live, then He is as near to us as the many thoughts we think with our God-given minds.  -All we have to do is utilize our freedoms and choose the right thoughts which reflect Him – for there are also false and destructive thoughts. Yes, freedom is divine and originate with God and is the flip-side of His Love. We use it to make deliberate and wise decisions. This in itself is a miraculous activity we live through each day without fully appreciating His unseen Loving hand  upon us. The ability to think and reason and exercise our liberties then be conscious of our actions is proof of the presence of Jesus and the Spirit in our lives. Our thoughts underlie all our actions and interactions with each other. The purpose of the human mind is to be a “factory” for thoughts to create concepts and ideas which conform to the image of Christ. (Rom.8:29; 2Cor.10:5) They can be good and bad thoughts, happy and sad ones, loving and fearful, living and deathly ones. The Spirit of God is the life-energy which envelopes our universe and all life forms upon this earth. Nothing can exist outside of God’s life-giving energy. The Spirit is the ‘divine spark’ which give the mind of man his intellectual and spiritual faculties.

Thoughts Create Forms to be Acted On

Of all the thoughts the mind receives through internal and external stimuli, enters the factory of the mind which processes them to create concepts and ideas to be decided and acted upon. The work of transformation begins with the flow of Jesus’ Person in His Triunity with the Father and the Spirit, and His Words (the Bible) in man’s thought processes. The Bible compares man to a riverbed with the Spirit as its living waters which cover him and so help control his thought process. (John 7:37-39) There’s “living waters” as there is “deathly waters.” Where the Bulumanriver** (Unbeliever) has “deathly waters” flowing through him, he process thoughts through the spirit of fear, self-interest and independence. The Bulamanriver* (Believer) has “living waters” of the Spirit flowing through him. His thoughts are processed by love, self-giving and interdependence. The “deadly waters” of the river of fear produce one result – lack and deprivation, and ultimately death. The “living waters” of the Spirit give us the power to channel our thoughts and actions in love, with one result: to live creatively and abundantly, both now and into eternity, with the Triune God.

Creativity, Domain of the Human Mind. Colin Goldberg, Paravirtual Orbit (Wiki Commons)

The Thought behind the Thought

So how do we take these many conscious thoughts that enter and influence our minds at a rate that boggles the mind and make sense of them? It’s not as hard as  one might imagine. The human mind is first and foremost a filtering device. Everyone possesses two mindsets: one manages the conscious thought while the second manages the subconscious thought. Our subconscious mind is associated with and inspires the human conscience. That is how God made the mind to function, and it is well researched in scientific circles. The subconscious mind is the underlying thought process which governs all the conscious thoughts. So what a person is thinking in his conscious thoughts is automatically filtered through his subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the sponsoring thought that governs his conscious thoughts. It’s the ‘factory’ that collects all your thought data and creates “form” out of them to be acted upon.

Bulamanriver (Believer) vs Bulumanriver (Unbeliever)!

It’s not uncommon to find the conscious and subconscious thoughts encounter disagreement. This happens because the subconscious is filtering the conscious thoughts based upon what it believes to be true and secures everything about him/her. When differences occur, the conscious thought always loses the battle to the subconscious mind. For example, the Bulumanriver,** (unbeliever) with the river of fear flowing in him, will have his subconscious mind (sponsoring thought) lead inevitably to create actions that produce self-centeredness, greed, anxiety and ultimately lack and death. No matter how many “good intentions” his conscious thought might have, the subconscious mind will not allow him to achieve them in a true lasting way that produces genuine good. It will always invent a negative form upon which to base his choices. The subconscious mind consistently champions the day for it governs the thirty thousand thoughts that enter our head. As G. K. Chesterton said, “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.” Albert Einstein said no problem gets resolved by ignoring what created it in the first place – the heart of man. (Jer.17:9) Consequently, your outer life (conscious) reflects your inner beliefs (subconscious) about you. (Matt.15:16-20)

Subconscious Like ‘Gravity’

Think about the law of gravity. We grow up discovering how to compensate for it as we learn to live within the limitations it allows us. All our acts and movements are done to compensate for it, so much so we give it no second thought. We live with gravity without giving conscious thought to it. We take gravity for granted, and becomes second nature to us. When we are up on a high elevation, we automatically find something to hang onto for we are well aware what gravity is capable of doing to us. In a real sense, our mind has its own “gravity” – it’s our subconscious mind. Our conscious thoughts, all thirty thousand of them, have to compensate for this “gravitational” pull of our subconscious mind and what it is telling us to do with our thoughts. It happens in our minds involuntarily like we have grown accustomed to physical gravity. We gravitate to our subconscious-sponsored thought unconsciously – that’s why we sometimes wonder why our plans don’t turn out the way we imagined. In other words, if there is a clash of thoughts between the conscious and the subconscious, the subconscious will win every time.

Money!

For example, a person may have a long-held belief that it is wrong to be rich. Perhaps his idea of money stems from his mistaken understanding of a passage from the Bible which states, “For the love of money is a (not ‘the’) root of all kinds of evil; for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:10, NKJV). His belief and idea about money is soldered into his subconscious mind – ‘money is evil.’ That’s how the Bulumanriver** (Unbeliever) thinks in his fear-based thought process. Yet, in his conscious thoughts, he plans many lavish and grand things for him and his family. However, in order to achieve those ambitions, he needs ‘money.’ So, there is a clash of minds. What’s being pursued by his conscious mind, his subconscious (sponsoring) mindset is telling him it will be something ill-gotten, because of his beliefs about money. I’m not saying the Bulumanriver** (Unbeliever) will not achieve his aims, he can, but he does it battling his conscience, and he will not acquire them in a truly abundant way. His conscience is seared and only the Spirit can change him through repentance and forgiveness. I will not mention the stress and anxiety that accompanies him. But, O the joy that could have accompanied him, if only! I hope we have our own bearings about money focused in the proper way – through the Bulamanriver* (Believer). This happens not only with money, but every other aspect of life.

God is the richest Person in the universe, He declares, “The gold is Mine, and the silver is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills, the fowls and the wild beasts are Mine, the earth and its fullness and all that dwell in it” (Hag. 2:8; Ps. 24:1; Ps. 50:10-11). Yet He is Spirit and does not need to be defined by them to prove His super-abundance. He declares Himself super abundant in His Love – in His Triune Being of Love. So, if riches are not evil because they are God’s creation, our thoughts about them ought to change. If we fail to control our thoughts and channel them in a constructive way, then our fear-based environment will control us. It’s that simple.

“The Gold is Mine,” Says the Lord. “Mojave Nugget” California’s Largest Nugget, 156 ounces (Wiki Commons)

Money is not Evil, Man Is!

Money is not evil by itself – it’s the wrong use of money that’s evil. It starts in out thought process. The bottom line on money is this: if money is a defense, and it is, and Jesus is our true defense, then money and Jesus are one and the same. (Psa.118:14) Money becomes something virtuous for it is used to reflect Jesus. It is to reflect Him in us in a self-giving rather than self-centered way. He is reflected in us through the right thoughts of money in our subconscious mind. We don’t adore money but Jesus, our true defense (Eccl. 7:11-12). It would be pointless to have as much money as you would like if it cannot protect or defend you. True defense comes from Jesus, not money. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matt.6:24) Therefore, money and all material things are supposed to help attract us to Christ, not draw us away from Him. He must sit on the throne of our lives, not any material stuff, most of all, not money. Ultimately, Love is the true source of all abundance.

Of what use are material things in the spiritual realm and regime of God? One day all material riches will be of no value, because the only valuable thing that will remain is God’s Love in his spiritual kingdom. God’s Love is another word for super abundance. Think about it, how did money or riches came to be. It was created by man’s thoughts. Man created the economic system of goods and service with currencies (money) to keep it turning. Who gave man his thoughts? It is fashioned after the mind of God to make choices about how man will live life. (Gen.1:26-27) So, the ability to think and make choices is the gift of God’s Love. He calls us to amend our ways out from a self-centered orbit, to His Love-centered universe. All material riches of the earth was created by God who is Love.

Love!

Let me now share how the believer controls his thought process. For the Bulamanriver* (Believer), Love is the spiritual “gravity” in our thought environment. We don’t learn to live within Love’s spiritual gravity as quickly as we do with physical gravity. Living within Love’s spiritual gravity is a process of thought and thought forms. On the physical level, we learn very quickly that we need a chair to break our fall when we sit, but we fail to equate the Spirit’s Love in our hearts as the spiritual gravity that will bring true success.

Love Is the ‘Champion of the Subconscious Mind

The Bula man-river’s* sponsoring (subconscious) thought is God’s Love. Love is the subconscious mindset that should govern all our thoughts. Love is the super-abundant thought-process – it is the factory where thoughts are the raw material which create forms for decision-making and acted upon. Therefore, the sponsoring thought through which all our conscious thought are sifted always ends with joy, peace, abundance and Love. Jesus said, “Those who have – more will be given; those who don’t – what they have will be taken” (Matt. 13:12 emphasis added). He is speaking of our underlying philosophy about life that’s welded to our subconscious mind. Abundance (Love) breeds plenty, while lack (fear) breeds scarcity. The subconscious-sponsoring thought of God’s divine Love is the sieve that filters all our conscious thoughts to produce one inevitable form – abundance. The subconscious mindset determines if your thoughts (seeds) fall on “good and rich ground” or “stony and poor ground.” Love is to our thought environment what gravity is to our physical environment. No matter how high we aim, our foot will rest ultimately on the ground of our sponsoring thought (subconscious mind).

Like a Jig-Saw Puzzle

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where you have seen the picture of the end from the beginning outside the jig-saw box. The picture symbolizes your subconscious mind –  it’s the picture of God’s Love, and His personal gift and calling in your life. (Read my blog titled, “Gifts, Abilities, Destinies, posted on 1/10/2014) When you pick the right pieces (thoughts), they fall magically into place and the picture comes through. Unlike a jigsaw puzzle which has all the correct pieces in the box, we have all kinds of thoughts including ones that don’t fit the picture, enter our minds. Our subconscious mind assists us by filtering our thoughts to find the right pieces that fit the picture. When we have the right picture (subconscious mind enveloped in God’s Love), your brain is always on autopilot, picking the right pieces which fit the picture.

As I said earlier, it’s not as daunting as the number of thoughts that bombard our conscious minds each day, all 30,000 of them. Love puts your subconscious mind on autopilot to sieve through them. It happens at lighting-fast pace we are not even conscious of how this awesome miracle of the mind works. The question is what picture do you have? That’s the key! You must get the picture (subconscious Love mindset) right first. When your picture is Jesus, you will use only the right thoughts (jigsaw pieces) that fit into the picture, with the help of the Spirit. Then you form Godly decisions to be acted on based upon the process of His Love.

Five Senses Tools for Raw Material of Thought

Love-forms are the result of “creative thinking” which leads to “creative action” and materializes into “creative works” (Eph. 2:10). So forms materialize as plans and goals birthed in our thoughts. We perceive form through the five senses. The five senses do not create form. Only thoughts do, through the subconscious mindset that’s motivated by the Spirit’s Love. The five senses are tools of the mind factory, and thoughts are raw material you use to help create Love forms to enable you to live positive realities in life.

Do We Live Through Our Senses?

However, many of us do not, or seldom, live that way. We live principally through our senses. That’s to say, we let others do our thinking and create forms in our stead. We have allowed our inquisitiveness and imagination to be taken over by the glamour and appeal of the latest scandal, public frenzy, the captivating drama on our television – whether real or fiction, or the entertainment element plastered all over our media. Have we given our minds to other mediums such that we cannot think for ourselves? Our five senses ought to be disciplined to go where our Love-thoughts lead us, not the other way round. The senses are suppose to live in joyous excitement of the creative thought activity of the mind. Perhaps inadvertently or through ignorance we have become prisoners of our own making by letting our sensory responses lead us, instead of allowing our creative thinking dominate our lives.

The Word – Our Foundation

God thinks Trinitarianly and shares His Triune thought process with us by saying He knows our thoughts before we think them. (Psa.139:2) The Spirit’s thoughts of Love show us how we are to think and live as Bulamanrivers* (Believer) (1 Cor.13; Rom.12 & 13; Gal. 5; Col.3 & 4). It’s a way of living that produces creative forms on a consistent basis and never fails you because you are a river and the ecology of the “living waters” (Spirit) makes fertile and rich whatever, wherever, and whoever you flow through. And the river (man) does this consistently every single day. The river (man) comes as a new beginning each day—consistently. That is abundance as defined in the life of the Bulamanriver* (Believer) (1Cor.13:8, 13; John 7:37-39). If the Bible can be defined in one word, it is Love. (Matt.22:37-40). God’s Spirit is the divine Love deposited in believing humans. “God’s Love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Rom.5:5)

Jesus – Personified Word of God, Artist: Martin von Feuerstein (Wiki Commons)

Therefore, the Bible is the groundwork of Love from which we create forms of thought that lead to greater benefits, and they come to us without apology because they are founded on the principles of God’s Love. The Bible says we should pay heed to the foundation upon which we build our lives – whether it is on shifting sand or on the solid Rock, Jesus Himself. (Matt.7:24-27) The foundation determines whether the structure will stand the test of time and remain secure well into the future. The Bible is the foundation of our thoughts for creating plans, desires, goals, and objectives – in one word, basic form of the Love of God. The Bible brings form and stability to our lives as long as Love is in our subconscious mindset and shapes our thought processes. Love is “creative action” because it is deliberately formed in the thought and acted out. To think like a Bulamanriver* (Believer) is to think like God. To think like God is to think Love in all its manifestation (1Cor.13:1-13; Rom.12 & 13; Gal.5; Col.3 & 4). Then we are to maintain this sound mind that comes consistently from the Spirit to keep our thoughts motivated by Love’s fruits. (2Tim.1:7)

Make Rich the “Valleys”

The river (man) exists to make the valleys fertile for the sustenance of all who depend on them. For the Bulamanriver* (Believer), the valleys represent the community of people with whom you come in contact daily. There is your family valley. Then there is your church valley. There is your neighbor, community, and village, valley. Furthermore, there is your work or occupation valley. Then there is your school valley, your national valley, and so forth. Each of these valleys requires different responses from you. Here is the crossover: we have a mind to think good thoughts that form “abundance,” or to think fearful thoughts that form “lack.” To think super “abundant” thoughts is our inheritance given us by the Creator, who is Love by nature. Lack is the place of fear, and to think in “lack” is to live in the river of fear, strife, rebellion, and greed—the Bulumanriver** (Unbeliever).

We are called in our gifts to make rich our valleys. When we do, we likewise become rich too. The Bible says, “He who waters others will himself be watered.” (Prov.11:25, NASB) Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed himself. That’s how the law of Love works.

The Bible tells us “be you transformed by the renewing of your mind (your thoughts.)” (Rom. 12:2) Your thought is the key. Your thought is to be harmonized with the literal Word of God, and the Personified Word of God, Jesus. The Personified Word (Jesus) manifest Himself by living in us in the Spirit’s power, and His literal Word, the Bible, guides us with the Spirit’s inspiration. He miraculously creates circumstances for those who believe in the promises of His Word. Your actions will always follow the forms your thoughts create – whether for good or bad. You are to first “think abundantly good.” You have to “grow” to be abundant. You have to “increase” to be abundant. That’s Love. Love is abundance. Jesus said, “Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Matt.5:48, The Message)

Fight the Good Fight

Paul said, “The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, we have divine power to cast down imaginations [demolish evil thoughts and arguments] and every pretension [posturing thought] that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we bring captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-6 emphasis added). So Paul reveals an enemy who wants to change us from the Bulamanriver* (Believer) with the Spirit’s “living waters” and take us back to the Bulumanriver** (Unbeliever), the river of fear and want that we have renounced, disowned, and left behind. He says the battle lines have been drawn, and the enemy has been identified, so we have no doubt or misgivings about how, when, why, and where this battle is going to be fought – in our minds, for the controls of our thoughts!

I will close with this apt quote, “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, either way you are right!” (Henry Ford) I certainly hope you will never undervalue your thoughts for pennies. That’s all for now! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to write me in the space provided below, or email me on bulamanriver@gmail.com. I invite you to visit my web site, www.bulamanriver.com for more resources.

Blessing

Until we meet again in my next post, may the blessing of the God who ceaselessly expresses Himself in His dependable Triune Love, be with you today and give you strength for authentic creative Triune Living as a Bulamanriver.*

Kiang                                                                                                                                                          (Your Servant in Christ)

* The “Bulamanriver” is the metaphor describing the believer who is the union of man with the Love of the Triune God flowing in humans, making possible the “Triune Life” – the source of the miraculous life in man. “Bula” is a Fijian word which means “life.” To read the many facets of life of the Bulamanriver,* go to my website www.bulamanriver.com where you can order a copy of my Book.

** The Bulumanriver is metaphor for a non-believer. “Bulu” is Fijian word which means “burial” or “death.” This river produces want and death in the person. Bulumanriver is the union of man with his fallen, unsaved self who lives under the deception and sway of the devil. You can also read my blog post titled “Who is The Bulamanriver?”

All scriptures are taken from the NIV Version 2011, unless stated otherwise

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