How to Strengthen the Power of the Mind

When the sinful body is led by the godly mind, true love comes into being.

The essence of strengthening the mind is to toughen your moral will. What if everyone in the world lived by God's moral code. We would immediately see peace in the world. All conflicts would be resolved through God's point of view.

We must start with the basics. To strengthen the mind, it must be built up daily like a muscle through daily habits.

Through the small choices to do the right thing everyday, despite any fear, distress or fatigue, we can make our godly mind stronger than our flesh. Therefore, to strengthen this mind, we need challenges which allows us to encounter adversity and develop inner strength and will.

Here are five ways to harvest these skills:

1. Determining and realizing your goals

The most basic way to strengthen your will is to make a determination to God and yourself and achieve your goals.

For example, this could be talking to a relative that you know is distressed over a situation instead of enjoying a book. Or choosing a career that serves humanity such as social work.

To challenge yourself more, you can set goals that rely only on your spiritual power, deep prayers, studying the truth, and your acts of true love.

“Twelve years ago when I first came to Mountainview High,” recalls a physics teacher in a rural school

in the American Midwest, “I swore that I would bring the white and Native American students and faculty together in a tangible way. I prayed about it every day, stuck my neck out more than a few times, got misunderstood a lot and once almost lost my job. But now in the faculty there are cross-cultural friendships developing and this year the president of the student council is a Native American boy.”

To make promises to God and fulfill them is significant to reverse humanity's betrayal of the Creator.

This is the most powerful way to get divine support, also through building your self-respect and faith in yourself.

Heaven and other people notice the one who can always be counted on to fulfill their promises and carry out their responsibilities.

2. True Love as a Motivator

To have motivation will give you the power to go beyond any discomfort when it depends upon meaningful purposes that make the sacrifices you encounter worthwhile.

The strongest motivator is true love.

Love is the key to unification of mind and body.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon

This kind of love is familiar to parents.

A father son team was the first team ever to finish the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in 1999. Dick Hoyt, was 62 and still raced every Boston Marathon for over 20 years while pushing his paralyzed adult son, Rick in his wheelchair.

His son excitedly declared that, “It was as if I wasn't even handicapped!” This was enough motivation for his father to challenge his every physical limitation and give his son such an awesome experience year after year.

The power of love is behind the heroic sacrifices of religious and national lore.

Many of the first Pilgrim settlers to North America starved to death instead of eating their grain that was later to be planted. They endured such hardships out of love for the next generation and the hope to build a community that could worship freely unlike their previous community.

Christians recount how St. Peter faced a painful execution upside-down on the cross gratefully out of love for God and his Savior Jesus Christ.

Whether if such acts are done on legendary proportions or just a small act of unselfishness found daily, true love is the strongest means to subdue your fallen body.

3. Acting on Faith

We can mobilize a tremendous power of self-control when we can sustain a great vision of the future despite any obstacles we face right now.

Debi Faris is a woman who is familiar with heeding the call of her heart and conscience in faith. As a wife and mother of three teenagers, she heard this call when she heard news of an abandoned baby found dead. She arranged to give the child a proper burial, and soon, one child led to three.

Her middle-class family committed to ultimately $27, 000 in expenses despite other pressing expenses her family had. She recalls, “I remember praying, “i don't think I can do this, God. I don't think I have the courage.

“I stayed quiet for a while until I sensed that what we were doing was right. It was an act of love, and at that moment I made a commitment to offer it to any child who needed it.”

She has since raised funds and organized volunteers to found a cemetery for abandoned babies called, “Garden of Angels. She fights for legislation to help prevent further tragedies.

Such people who believe in their own gifts or that truth and goodness will ultimately win, those who cultivate the power of faith and hope and demonstrate “sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not curently see” (Hebrew 11.1) have a priceless advantage that enables them to harvest their strongest resources to unite mind and body.

4. Service

Serving others physically such as massaging an elderly person's back, preparing food for homeless shelters, picking up bags of trash for the community, these practices are especially helpful for training our moral will through demonstrating humility.

A man and his comrades of a service club recalls how they were ready to do whatever work was necessary for his community without any fanfare.

“The staff at the rehab center were surprised to see middle-aged men willing to just set up the party, serve the boys soda and food and take down and mop up afterwards. And it didn’t do this CEO big shot any harm either to do grunt work for a bunch of not-too-grateful teenagers. I think I learned a few things.”

5. Connection with God

Ultimately all of these methods used to strengthen the moral fiber support the greatest remedy for the mind and sinful body to unite: only through the connection to the divine Source.

The first necessary step is to center your mind on God.

Then your body will automatically become one with your mind.

Through prayer, worship, study of God's words, supporting the spiritual community, acting on faith, fulfilling goals, being humble and offering service, all of these time-honored ways accesses the Heavenly Parent and tremendous resources of strength.

“Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature,” promises St.

Paul (Galatians 5.16).

The stronger the bond with God, the more readily your mind can conquer the fallen body.

Corrie Ten Boom was a watchmaker who was sent to Hitler's concentration camp because he rescued many Jews. After the war, he gave lectures about God's love and forgiveness and healing of wonds caused by the war. After one of her lectures, a former S.S. guard of her concentration camp waited at the back of the room

She instantly flashed back to the time she and her sister were forced to walk naked in front of the male guards on the way to the showers. They were ill, cold, hungry, elderly and in deep pain. They were also mocked sexually by the guards.

She remembered at that moment, her sister's pained face as she had to bear the humiliation in front of the very guard who attended her lecture.

Unfortunately, her sister died at the concentration camp. This former guard now came up to Corrie and acknowledged God's forgiveness of his past and he now asked for hers. He held out his hands to her.

She remembers, “I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing. Not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.”

Yet her strong religious beliefs told her she must forgive him. She breathed a silent prayer to give her the strength to do the right thing. She resolutely took his hand in to her own matching her deds to her highest ideals and loftiest words.

Then, “As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.”

She then cried out to this soldier that he was her brother and assured him her forgiveness. Through her willingness to act upon the beliefs she always lectured upon, she unleashed a flow of true love which liberated both persecutor and persecuted.

To love another at the most difficult time requires the capability of the mind to assert itself over the demands of the satanic body.

Such efforts reduce the unnecessary pull of the flesh and at the same time enhances our moral and spiritual strength. Thus, the mind and body can unite centered on God's ideals.

Then, the heart is also liberated to give of itself freely and unselfishly, and reap the rich rewards therof.

Such a world of experiences would be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Seven Principles for Loving Relationships



This post was rewritten and derived from the Religious Textbook Educating for True Love, written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy.