Positive Thinking and the Reality of Everyday Life
The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration & Meditation, Revised: Ancient Skills for Modern Minds
So much has been said and written about Positive Thinking and its effects on our Everyday lives.
The obvious reason why The Power of Positive Thinking has become a number one tool of the mind is that it offers instant change that promises the practitioner the answer to all his or her problems.
Unfortunately, reality begs to differ and we are left with a feeling of being outdone by a promising idea that seems to be nothing but a fleeting thought.
But, that’s just the point, a positive attitude about daily life can’t be too bad – can it? Not at all. The problem is that many people have simply misunderstood what we mean when we talk about the power of positive thinking. Many people will buy a book and read all about Positive Thinking then apply its principles. The results, well, maybe they achieve some good results but they often have to admit that the promises of wealth and abundance talked about in the book didn’t materialise. There is too much Positive thinking about positive thinking.
Good Positive Thinking writers should concentrate on the mind of the reader when writing about the subject. In reality they tend to write about material wealth and the promise of cash cascading down on the thinker – out of nowhere!
Concentration a Guide to Mental Mastery
What a wonderful life it would be if all we had to do was think positively and earnestly about the material things that we want, and need, and they would start to tumble from the heavens. We would have to start a campaign for negative thinking to stop the abundance – It would be too much! We need to find balance.
Life is like that, it has two sides to everything in it. It is the Yin and Yang of existence, the Heaven and Hell of our lives and it is the Positive and Negative of our minds that we have to deal with. Nature has already fixed it for us. We have negative thinking in order for positive thinking to exist. It helps us to achieve something much more important than a few dollars more than our neighbours. It helps us to achieve Balance within ourselves. Without this we cannot expect to live peacefully or fruitfully in this Universe.
So, really it is how we can achieve the fine balance of Negative and Positive thoughts that we should strive for if we wish to make life an experience of spiritual wealth and abundance. A life where we can be discerning about how much we need, how much we can give and how we can actually do this without corrupting the balance of negative-positive thinking.
To attempt to just think positively is not practical. The mind is not equipped to survive without the balance mentioned before. Don’t be misled though, the balance is not the end goal. It is the state of mind that we should really strive for in order to accomplish a balanced mind that can live undisturbed by either positive or negative thinking. It is a state of being that is possible. Practice is the key to achieving anything in life and this is true of achieving ‘balance’. Within the balanced mind we find inner peace and harmony of thoughts.
The Power of a Balanced Mind is stronger and more permanent than the one sided attempt to re-create the principles of the human soul and its the form of being only positive.
The power of Positive Thinking promises us wealth and abundance but it never tells us where we can really find it. Many people who practice positive thinking in terms of how it is presented in some books, become de-motivated about their goals and begin to express negative beliefs about life around them. This happens because they have been attempting to simply ‘blot-out’ the negative – to suppress negative thoughts which need to be balanced with positive thoughts.They have been expecting too much and are therefore dissapointed with the results.
Concentration and Meditation: On the Energies of the Inner Man and Their Application in Daily Life
What we perceive as negative thought is not always so negative. Some people tend to the belief that if a thought criticizes something they are attached to or like, then the thought is negative. If the person whose thoughts were considered negative is simply not interested in the subject and therefore show no enthusiasm for it, does it really mean that they are being negative? Of course not. Unfortunately this is how many people judge if a person is negative or positive thinking. Which brings us back to my original thought. They are dividing their thinking between what is negative and what is positive. Positive being the one to enhance and strengthen and let the negative thought just dwell and fester in the mind. There is no balance. There is no strength. The so called positive Thinker is exerting enormous amounts of energy on suppressing feelings and thoughts that they, in their world, consider negative. They wear the mind out by trying to batter negative thought into submission.
No wonder Freud came up with the idea of “anal retention” coupled with the thought processes. In so doing he certainly made us all screw our noses up and not want to read what his findings were!
This a subject that can be written about, talked about and pondered upon for many a day. Therefore, there isn’t really a practical reason for me to continue on into the depths of acrobatic thought in this article. Better that I point you in the right direction where you can browse a few book titles. Hopefully there is something here that causes useful thoughts to occur in your mind which may lead you to delve deeper into the art of living life as a balanced human being.
Sean Durham
Zen in the Art of Archery
Making a Change for Good: A Guide to Compassionate Self-Discipline
