Can you Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought?

Kaiyum’s thoughts about thinking…

Maybe this will set you thinking. But then, to what extent do you truly have control over all those thoughts welling up out of the great nothingness?

Aldous Huxley once said:

Life is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens.”

He implies the genuine choice we have, bluntly stated as: thinking positively or negatively.

Meditation teaches us that we can never stop the Mind from chattering. We can just take distance from it. We can choose to listen or to ignore, and to make space for the gifts that arrive in the heart.

From another perspective, you probably recognise the situation that the mail arrives and you know there’s a letter from a certain friend; the phone rings, and you know who it is; you’re out somewhere and know that someone is watching you (you turn around and meet the eyes … the beginning of a new romance? Or a spy thriller?).

In the Kabbalah (just as Sufism is the mystic side of Islam, so, too, does Judaism have its esoteric studies) there’s a specific prohibition on ‘bad mouthing’ – which includes even the non-spoken negative thinking about others. Take this concept to another extreme: Voodoo is fabled for its black magic, the combination of the power of negative thinking and the belief in that (destructive) power.

In 1924 Henry Ford said:

If you think you can, or think you can’t, you’ll always be right.”

This creative power of thought – for good or evil – is the basis of all self-help programmes. Simple kinesiology testing provides indisputable proof of how negatives reduce your physical energy, whether they are thoughts, words spoken aloud, or even a disapproving glance from another.

You may correctly conclude that you have choice in how you express yourself, in how you look at events and people in your life, and thereby give yourself an energy boost that costs nothing and is a lot healthier than a strong shot of caffeine!

Kaiyum, Osho News