I'm right now reminded of a doctor from Honduras called Doctor Sebi, who's late now. He had some theories on medicine. Right? And one of his theories was that bacteria are just like human beings.

Bacteria live, move, breathe, eat, and die if they are not fed. And one of the ways he treats his patients is by putting them on a fast and making them eat particular things that he knows will not feed certain bacteria, especially cancerous bacteria. I don't know if that's what they call it in medical terms, but he talked about how cancer cells feed on certain foods that we eat. And he said, If you starve the body of those foods, the cancer cells will die. And apparently, there were a few people who, you know, went for his treatment.

I don't know how true it is. But that principle of starving a thing and it dying is not just a physical thing but a psychological thing as well. Every thought is fed by something. It has a base of nourishment. It has what feeds it. It has what empowers it. If that food for thought is taken away, then it doesn't have any basis for survival.

And it's something I want to introduce to you, which is what I will call “thought replacement." That's actually why we meditate on scripture.

It's not just to read them, quote them, and recite them; that is great, but there is a life inside of them. There is a power inside of them; there is an energy inside of them that we want to download into our being. So for example, if I think about lust, right? The way to counter thoughts of lust is to replace them with thoughts of purity.

For example, when one starts to think about a sexual image, you can use your imagination to replace that picture with something very holy. Every time that thought of lust comes, replace it with an image of something holy. It can be a picture; it can even be a scripture. Every time it comes in, replace it, replace it, and you will do this over and over again with prayers; you know, you just have to replace the thought.

As you do that, the energy of that thought begins to weaken. The more we feed or rest on a particular thought, the more that energy feeds itself. So a lustful thought comes when you begin to brood over it. Because lust is a spirit. It's a living entity inside of us, and I will teach more of this in the awareness module. Lust is alive. Anger is alive. Pride is alive.

These are living beings. This is what Jesus Christ called the members of your household who are your enemies. They are living entities that live, move, and have a being inside of you. And they are fed by the degraded aspects of your heart.

Are you following?

These are the things that ought to be starved to the point of death. So the moment a lustful thought comes into your mind, you replace that image with something holy. It could be Jesus Christ on the cross. It could be Jesus Christ feeding the 5,000. It could be David fighting Goliath. It could be Moses crossing the Red Sea and finding a path through a place that seems impossible (the images I give are not random). They are not just images of scripture; they are not just scriptures that have spiritual power; they are also what I will call the language of the subconscious mind. And I will teach that later on, by the grace of God. Because the subconscious mind is controlled not by words but by images,.

That's why when people want to do hypnosis, they start to say things, they get you to picture things, and before you know it, you can sleep off, and many things like that. The subconscious mind is controlled by images; that's why you dream; you see pictures; that's why the Bible paints pictures and stories; all the prophets told stories; they paint a picture because they want it to bypass your mind and go somewhere deeper beyond the mind.

So there's a way that we can manually begin to apply this in our daily lives. Someone has upset you, and thoughts of anger come into your heart. Begin to brood upon the image of goodness, kindness, and holiness. Visualize yourself forgiving them, being kind to them, or even if the image of them is so disturbing, visualizing yourself being kind to someone else.

When you breathe in, it's like the thought of anger or loss is like fire. Based on energy and the natural affinity of all things, for every fire, there's water that can quench it. You understand? So there's always a contrary force to every kind of thought. If you have a lustful thought, an angry thought, a prideful thought, or a greedy thought, you counter it and weaken the energy of that thought by introducing its opposite. So the opposite of lust is purity; holiness is looking at things in their natural beauty without trying to defile them or covet them in the wrong way.

So you can have a picture of Jesus on the cross; you can have a picture of the Virgin Mary; that's why the Catholics had a lot of statues and paintings; it was for meditation purposes; it wasn't for worship (like the people of this generation think): when people don't have understanding, they just judge things without even asking any questions or doing research or whatever.

They were for meditations—to help the imagination. Because a lot of people struggle to imagine things when asked to. So those statues, sculptures, and paintings were given to aid the imagination, to use pictures that are based on scripture to be able to enter the mind and serve like a spiritual or psychological GPS that can help you go on the right mental trajectory.

So you weaken a wrong thought by empowering a right one. Paul said, “Whatever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

The way the world is will force you to meditate on the wrong things. So you have to be intentional. Every one of us naturally has a childish mentation. Adult mentation takes intentionality, and I'm going to write more about it in the course manual.

I know some people are asking me to talk more about it. Don't worry. In the course manual, I'll write more about adult mentation. It involves a lot of willpower and intentionality, as opposed to being like chaff that is blown by every wind.

So you counter a negative thought by replacing it with a positive one, and you do it over and over again until it becomes natural that when a funny thought comes into your mind, you already have a natural counter for it, and then back it up with prayer and inviting the holy spirit as you bring that new image or new thought into your heart. And you’ll see how, after a while, that energy becomes diffused. It is well with you.