By Scott Miners.
“[F]or 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
It’s a must to end negative thinking—judgement of self or others—if you want to be happy and completely healthy the rest of your life. You awake each morning fresh, having been in the realm of pure positive energy during sleep, but as soon as you enter into negative conscious (or even subconscious) thought, your body begins to release stress hormones, such as cortisol. Your breathing becomes shallow, and your day a struggle.
The cortisol plays havoc with your body, including the hippocampus in your brain, beginning a process of fiber degeneration. The hippocampus takes your input and processes it so you can act on plans you have for your life. You do not want to shred it’s structure. Fortunately, you and your body have the power to regenerate the dendrites, to rewire your brain through focused thinking.
It is necessary then to be vigilant about your thought. The minute you worry or feel anxiety about your body or anyone or anything in your life is the same 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. It’s time to go within, to be quiet for a time, contemplate, meditate and rewire and regenerate your marvelous brain. You don’t have time not to do this!
To take a common example of a tendency to judge, which is different from discernment, let’s look at a rather dicey subject: Politics. Do you judge anyone in government? They have done this wrong or not done that 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. You have just contributed to your body’s release of stress hormones. Notice your signals, your feelings if you judge.
This isn’t to say you can’t have your preferences. You can vote however you like. Just don’t make anyone else wrong and you right. How does everyone get to be right. This earth is large enough to allow for all the 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 your focus for your own happiness and health. You have little to offer the world from a state of depression and illness.
Let’s look at the metaphysics of a judgemental thought. Firstly, as science shows, your thought affects your own hormones and the incredible balance of thousands of chemical interactions in your body. Therefore your entire physical system of life blood, organs, nerves, musculature, and skeletal structure is in effect of your 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 your thoughts of your previous moments or day. Your thought hangs around you and creates either a disturbance in the field or a harmonic pattern that resonates coherently with who you really are, and who you are in your core is brilliant, loving, compassionate, kind, frisky about life, just like a child who sees the magic in each moment.
You 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 you judge the actor, you add your 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.
When you purify thoughts—an ongoing pursuit to be sure—you 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 achieve 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 emeritus 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.