By Steve Wells
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." - Mark Twain
You become what you think about - philosophers and thinkers have been telling us this for centuries. But what if they are wrong? For when you look at it many of our thoughts actually have very little - if any - impact at all.
Many people think the same thoughts for years without any discernible change in their action or results. I have a friend who for all 33 years I've known him has been saying that his time is about to end, he's constantly thinking this and believes what he says. Now approaching 80 I suppose the odds of his being correct are improving!
Imagine if all of your ongoing ridiculous disjointed and often contradictory thoughts were each instantly turned into their physical counterpart! What a chaos your life would be!
The reality is that some of your thoughts influence (but do not control) your actions, and therefore your results, more than others - and these are the thoughts you have that are emotionalized.
Without the energy of emotion, thoughts have no power.
You have much more chance of "becoming", or at least being influenced by, what you think about with feeling. As it says in the Bible "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
However, even if you have a really intense thought laden with lots of emotion, it doesn't necessarily mean that thought will become real. Look at my friend whose scary thought which worried him incessantly has never yet come true.
And despite what "Law of Attraction" cultists will have you believe, even if you think and feel really intensely about something you want, without action you still won't necessarily manifest much in terms of results in the material world. If you look at real results, those who are thinking it and even those who are feeling it without action are being overtaken by those who are doing it (even those without the "right" thinking and vibration!).
And just because a thought has lots of emotion doesn't mean we have to act on it, it just increases the likelihood we will. But feeling definitely trumps mere thought alone when it comes to influencing action.
It's possible to think a thought and for it to have absolutely no discernible effect on you at all. You are not hooked by it. It flows right through you. It doesn't affect you and it certainly doesn't influence your actions.
Anyone who has experienced deep mediation or experienced the effects of effective treatment using SET or EFT tapping knows this to be true. After tapping you can often think the same "negative" thought - even one which previously really affected you - and try really hard to conjure up some emotional intensity by thinking it in its worst form and the effect just isn't there.
If the thought can be there and yet have no effect on you then the thought itself must not be the problem. This must cause some challenges to the cognitive therapists among us, surely?
It is not the thought but the emotional attachment which is the real cause of our suffering. Release the emotion which has become associated to the thought and the thought loses all of its presumed power.
That idea is then released back into the world of ideas and is now easily seen as simply an idea, a concept, or a story, which can be seen from many sides, examined and entertained, but does not need to be saluted emotionally, or reacted to, or acted upon.
Ultimately then, it must be possible to think any thought at all, and for it to have no significant effect on you emotionally or physically. Is this where real freedom lies, in the freedom from emotional attachment to ideas? Freedom from thought, actually.
Many religious traditions have pointed to this:
Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter. - Longchenpa (Tibetan Buddhist teacher)
To the pure, all things are pure... (Titus 1:15)
"Out beyond the rightness or wrongness of things there is a field, I'll meet you there" - Rumi (Sufi poet)
Effective tapping treatment releases the emotional attachment which binds us so strongly to the pain of one perspective, one idea, one thought, one choice for our actions, one story for our life, one constricted view of our potential, one name for a person, one limiting identity...
Ultimately, as we release these emotion-based attachments, we reach a place where we are free of judgment. Then we can be where we are and see it for the first time.
Let's end with one more from Rumi:
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi