How to override your thoughts?

There are many thoughts of a trivial and entirely physical nature that really do not emanate from the person concerned at all—they are the reflections from others, either in your world—or in the world just outside the earth plane.

They have no roots at all and it is only when those thoughts are welcomed and voluntarily taken in by the individual that they become attached or personal.

The mere fact that some thoughts are unwelcome—or are distasteful shows that they are not your own thoughts at all, and never can become your own thoughts unless you are very much off your guard.

I tell you this because so many people are troubled by thoughts, which are not of a spiritual character at all—almost the reverse, it would seem.

They are troubled by them and search through their own characters to find out what is in it that has attracted them—they cause sorrow often and distress always.

These thoughts are but tests, which have to be endured to prove the metal of those so attacked.

If the pure were never assailed by thoughts not wholly pure, they would be untried and not in a position to claim their purity entirely as their own. It is the same with everything of a like nature—

The mere fact of possessing a quality in an advanced stage means that that quality has to be tested and retested over and over again to grow still stronger.

And it is only by using the antithesis of that quality that the test can be satisfactorily carried out.

I want you all to think over this, and apply it generally. It is exactly the same with bad temper, or rather, I should say, good temper, and with patience, especially with patience.Could you see what patience looks like here, you would think that nothing less than equal beauty could come close to it.

 

But how is patience gained?

The answer is obvious to you all—it is gained by much vexation and much trying of that patience by others. 

In colour, it is lavender.