# The Short Cut to Regeneration Through Fasting/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
The Mental Fast
Before one can understand the influence of thoughts upon the physical body he must learn the occult relationship between Cosmic Mind as expressed in the man, and atomic mind as expressed in his flesh.
Every atom of our flesh intelligence and it is under the influence of every thought we think. Thoughts establish a force or action in our tissues and upon our own thought force is quality of our physical flesh.
The medium through which all action is transferred from mind to flesh is the blood current; the life of the body is the blood. The blood carries thought-force as waves of vibration and these waves of vibration establish action and reaction in the tissues.
We say without a chance for contradiction, that all disease of the flesh is the result of disordered states of mind; that back of all disease is the long, discordant line of thinking which it and that as the disease of the in mind, it is to the mind we must has produced flesh begins look for its cure. Back of all disease in the flesh lack of circulation, back of circulation is mental pressure, back of mental pressure is crooked is ​thinking, back of crooked thinking are false ideas of God, man, life, people, situations and things.
We are asked every day “How do the mental states affect the body, and how is it of possible for mind to be the author of disease flesh or environment?” The answer is easy: all mental states affect the breathing, and breath is primarily the source of circulation; without breath there would be no force from behind which would keep the blood flowing through the body. All mental states act directly upon the blood circulation through the breath, and there are distinct lines of thinking which act at once upon the circulation. There is only one way by which disease can be established in the flesh, and that is through congestion of the blood–only as this congestion is released can normal action be reestablished.
All discordant states of mind such as worry, fear, anxiety, hate, resistance, unrest, strife, contention, etc., act directly on the circulation through the breath and thought force. It is impossible to find a normal breath where there is fear or any of these states of mind. The mental state prevents the blood from circulating normally, some organ is congested, and pain results.
Think of the fine mechanism of the brain like the works of the finest watch. Through worry or fear, some prolonged abnormal attitude of mind, some part of the brain is deluged with more blood than is needed in normal action and a low, prolonged headache is the result. Get ​the kidneys congested and nephritis is sure; take all the blood away from the stomach by some big mental strain and indigestion is the result; indigestion and lack of normal blood pressure will eventually give ulcers and complete changes in the mucous membranes of the body.
Yet world turned to every local relief without once getting back of the thing created–to the cause which created the disease. Increased action of any organs means an increased determination of blood to that organ; an increased determination of blood to any organ means increased action of the old that organ, hence we have a vicious circle established, which at first causes functional disturbances and later anatomical change. Then we cut the organ out in the old way, letting the patient go on in his error until he gorges some other organ and his last state is worse than his first, when he is finally reduced to that hopeless stituation, “a confirmed invalid,” although all the processes of regeneration are lying latent within himself.
Back of the disease body is the blood; back of the blood is interrupted blood pressure; back of this is the mental pressure persistently establishing and reestablishing its own destruction.
Fasting quickly and permanently changes the circulation; it allows the blood current to release first, even before the patient begins consciously to direct it; then when steadfastly to the mental law of his fast, he has a new power and can determine his own circulation.
​“A man is as old as his arteries” has been well said; and hardening of the arteries is the result of congestion of the blood vessels with deposits of dead food cells in the arterial walls. Through fasting all this deposit is carried away, and through understanding, it is not allowed to form.
The one who takes his body along with him from the beginning will have no reconstruction process to follow, but his life cells will keep constantly up to their original plan. “Nature is a great restorer”.
Mental Exclusion
The mental fast to cast out of the mind, while fasting, any thought that links us with anything that we do not want. We learn never to let a thought escape that does not link us with joy, peace, rest, happiness, harmony and success. There is a whole world of joy thoughts and joy words. We learn to think the perfect thought, to speak the perfect language; we are destroying our old cell consciousness now, and building a new food body. The intelligence of this new body will become our benefactor as the years go on, so we refrain from thinking or speaking a thought that would give the food cells the intelligence of weakness.
We want health, wealth, happiness, freedom, love and usefulness, and, since this is so, it is folly to stamp upon the mind of the new body anything less than our heart’s best desires.
While we fast we set the mental task for ​self of thinking about the things for which we are fasting; we refuse to think of anything else. We train ourself into fixed thinking and induce the state of mind in which we want to fast. We know that when thinking has passed into a fixed form we are able to stamp the atomic mind of the intelligence of our body and environment. So we clean up our mind; unload our mental rubbish, just as we are unloading our physical. There are very few thoughts worth thinking; we seek them out and resolutely refrain from thinking any thought that is below a true standard of selection.
We lift ourself away from our old miasma-laden thought swamp onto the hill tops of inspired thinking, and here we persistently dwell. What is it that we want more than we want to eat? We take this desire or desires firmly into our mind and when our flesh tempts us, or the old call of the mind would drag us back to memory, we go again in thought to the new, the whole, the true. We may want to eat, the hunger of our body may overpower us, or the old habit of memory creep upon us, but we are alive with a new awareness. And while we do want to eat,–think the old destructive thoughts, we want a thousands times more than all else, the new freedom of the body, mind and spirit, and the possession of the dear desires of our soul. So we turn away and walk on, pledged over and over to the higher law of conquest in all and through all.
After a while a new thought form body is ​built and we have created the habit of right breathing, speaking and thinking; our mind is as clear as a crystal, and our blood current runs bounding through our veins, fresh, pure, carrying to every tissue in our body, the right amount of vital blood. Our flesh is renewed through the renewing of our mind; we find that the things we sought are seeking us and that, through fasting, we have made ourself a higher magnet to attract to us from out the universal the things we so desired. We have “tuned up the fine, strong instruments of our being to chord with our dear hope” and suddenly, without strain or effort, we are face to face with our own.
Then, standing with this freedom as a spiritual springboard, we leap again into conscious mastery over a still finer law of being, and we begin the dominion of our emotional self. Subjecting feeling into a finer force, we mingle it with the stream of higher thought force and pour a new inspiration into life.
Mental Technique
The instructions for mental fasting are all summed up in a few words, “Change your mind.” Mental ruts make physical ones and these ruts run more deeply than the flesh–even they pass out into the environment. The flesh is the first form, the environment the second, and the mental picture is the molding of both.
“There is nothing in all the world but thinking makes it so”, hence all one needs to do is to set a watch on his thought world and clean up ​his mental house, throwing away the thoughts that have destroyed him in the past and which will destroy him again.
Until the mental plate is changed the body and environment will reprint the old pictures, no matter how often we fast, for there is always an insulation of cells from which the new cells build and these will keep the old registrations if they are not changed by new mentation. The cell intelligence is extended through cell continuity and cell contiguity, and the cells are changed every month to the marrow of the bones. In fasting, the new cell must be charged with the new intelligence or it can only repeat the old law.
CONCENTRATION first, last and all the time is the slogan for the faster. “I am the divine thinker of my own thoughts” and these thoughts must be swung around the vision of the things or thing which you want more than you want to eat.
For what are you fasting? Know beyond all doubt; build every thought to run in direct power to this thing and from an unfaltering thought world build the perfect mental picture of your heart’s desire.
What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Ask this question of yourself and then answer it by giving steadfast allegiance to the thought, words, and vision of that desire.
There can be no changing base for the consciousness that wants to outstrip the old limiting things of our flesh and our material world. ​It takes some mental force to displace a hovel, a weak flesh body, a broken heart, or a long line of saturated failure atmosphere.
Think! Think of the thing you desire; think of the way you desire it; think of the time you want it; think of how, when and where. Take out from your mind the thought that does not make you a new, strong, altogether lovely creature, then passing all these things into a perfect vision, fast on and turn the attention to your emotions.
Summary for Mental Image
Think the perfect thoughts Speak the perfect language– See the perfect vision– Know only the All Good– Believe that the Great Creative Spark is burning brightly Within you–reducing all the old things to ashes–making way for the new.