By Scott Miners.
How to End Negative Thought: The Worst Pollution
“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” —Hamlet’s line to Rosencrantz in act 2, scene 2 (2.2.257-258) of “Shakespeare’s” Hamlet.
TO END NEGATIVE THINKING—such as judgement of self or others—and be happy and completely healthy the rest of your life, there’s a charge. You awake each morning fresh, having been in the realm of pure positive energy during sleep, and then, as soon as you think a negative conscious (or even subconscious) thought, your body begins to release stress hormones, such as cortisol. Your breathing becomes shallow, and your day is set to be perhaps a struggle.
The cortisol plays havoc with your body, including the hippocampus in the brain, beginning a process of fiber degeneration. The hippocampus takes input and processes it so you can act. You do not want to shred it’s structure. Fortunately, we and our bodies have the power to regenerate the dendrites, to rewire the brain through focused thinking.
Vigilance
It is necessary then to be vigilant about thought. The minute you worry or feel anxiety about your body or anyone or anything is the same exact instant to take that feeling as a signal. It is telling you that you have fielded or created a thought doing a disservice to you—and perhaps one or many others. This is the time to go within, to be quiet, contemplate, meditate and rewire and regenerate the marvelous brain.
Let’s take a common example of a tendency to judge, which is different from discernment, and look at a rather entertaining subject: Politics. Do you judge anyone in government? They have done something wrong or not done another thing right and are a blight on the face of the earth? This is a hypothetical, of course (just saying). Be aware, if you do this, that you have just contributed to your body’s release of stress hormones. Notice signals, feelings that accompany judgement (to make someone wrong).
Preferences are important. We all have them, and we are all unique in many. You can vote however you like. It’s just important that we don’t make anyone else wrong and ourselves right. How does everyone get to be right. This earth is large enough to allow for any diversity.
This is not meant to be a condoning of violence or behaviors that have negative effects. It is rather a discussion of the importance of focus for our own happiness and health. We have little to offer the world from a state of depression and illness.
Let’s look vigilantly at the metaphysics of a judgemental thought. Firstly, as science shows, thought affects hormones and the incredible balance of thousands of chemical interactions in the body. Therefore our entire physical system of life blood, organs, nerves, musculature, and skeletal structure is in effect of each of our thoughts.
What Does Forgiveness Have to Do with It?
You have the option to forgive yourself if you have condemned. When your feelings are not loving or compassionate but rather anxious, fearful, worried, dejected, look to the thoughts of the previous moments or day. Personal thought hangs around and creates either a disturbance in the field or a harmonic pattern that resonates coherently with the essence of who we are, and who that is is brilliant, loving, compassionate, kind, frisky about life, just like a child who sees the magic in each moment.
We also have the choice to forgive others. Not all are making deliberate choices to be compassionate or act lovingly. When not, it seems the choice is deliberately negative. Not so. Such actions are based on fear, anxiety, worry, thoughts of lack. However, when we judge the actor, we add our powerful thought to their already difficult state of affairs.
When you forgive, yourself and others, you extract the judgemental thought from the field around the person. You change the energy field. You have just cleaned up part of the worst pollution on planet Earth.
To purify thoughts—an ongoing pursuit to be sure—is to wash away troubles. It is without doubt that if you take this discipline and begin it anew each time you fall into negative thinking, your life—and that of anyone around you—will be enhanced. What would it be like here if you were compassionate toward yourself, others, all creatures great and small?
You cannot orchestrate this for anyone else, but you can do it yourself. You will be happier—and who knows the limit of that—and perhaps realize complete wholeness, or health in your life. You will have ceased polluting, and the ripple effect will begin the toppling of the worst pollution, the one that leads to all others. []
Scott Miners is editor of Well Being Journal. His previous publications include A Spiritual Approach to Relationships (Quest 1984); Thoughts, Attitudes, and Your Health (Turning Point Press, 1991; digital version on this website); and in German paperback as Deine Gedanken, Deine Einstellung, Deine Gesundheit (Crotona Verlag, publishers, 2019); Beyond Common Thought (with Jacqueline Snyder), Windsor House Publishers, 1990; and The Healing Effects of Energy Medicine: Memoirs of a Medical Intuitive (with Shannon McRae, PhD) Quest Books, 2015; Indian version published by New Age Books, 2017; additional translations published in German (Aquamarin Verlag) and Spanish (TPH) editions.