Our mental home

There is no place like a good home, where we can be ourselves and enjoy peace, love, refuge, and stability. But there is another kind of home that, if tended to and watched over, provides us with comfort, rest, health, and harmony. This is our mental home—our consciousness. 

If we take an hourly mental inventory, we find that most of us are constantly entertaining a variety of notions or suggestions. Our thoughts move fluidly from one thing to another. We may be focusing on a task and then suddenly be daydreaming about dinner or becoming annoyed with the whistling of a coworker. Some thoughts may appear innocuous, such as imagining ourselves at the beach, while others, such as sensual, lustful, or unloving thoughts, may lead us down a road of pain, sorrow, or addiction. It takes discipline to govern our mental home, and to entertain ideas that lead to good and not evil.

Researchers at Queen’s University in Canada estimate that the average person thinks over six thousand thoughts per day. It’s the content of those thoughts that’s essential to our well-being. The best content is pure, uplifting spiritual ideas from God, which counter suggestions of sickness, impurity, discord, and temptation.