Does Positive Thinking Help?
Power of Positive Thinking
Is this a concept from the West? Not really. This is from our own scriptures.
Take Gopatha Brahmana, a scripture of the Atharva Vedic corpus. If you visualize mentally that something is going to happen, then it will happen. That is what is going to happen.
This is not about sitting and meditating for 10 minutes or half an hour. This is not about neuro-linguistic programming, which you do for 15 minutes every day, or those assertions that motivational speakers tell you to do before every meeting. I am not saying they don’t help, but this is more about the thoughts that run in your mind throughout the day.
How do you find out whether your thoughts are positive or negative? If your dreams are positive, then your thoughts are also positive. If your dreams are negative or scary, then your mind is also negative. If they are mixed, then your mind is also like that. If your dreams are perplexing or confusing, then your mind is also confused.
Once you find out what your mind is presently like, then try to improve its condition. If your mind is full of negative thoughts, just throw them out. Don’t allow them to come up at all. If a negative thought raises its head in your mind, just kill it. Don’t reason with it—that will make it more complicated. Just kill it. Rational or irrational, logical or illogical—it doesn’t matter, just kill it.
Close your gates. Negative thoughts get into your mind through four gates: two eyes and two ears. Don’t give away your control over these gates. God has given you the power to decide what you see and what you hear. Stop seeing negative. Stop listening to negative. Bhadram Karnebhi….
If you practice this for some time—not just a day or two, but at least a few months—stop seeing negative, stop listening to negative, stop talking and spreading negative, you will realize that your dreams have also stopped being negative. This is the indication of the health of your mind. Only such a mind can think positively and make things happen. You can’t just read out an assertion 50 times and make it happen when your mind is full of negativity otherwise.
First, stop taking in negativity. Then kill the negativity that is already in the mind. Then your positive thoughts will start producing results. This is what the Gita also says:
श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्धः स एव सः।
If your mind is positive, you will become positive. If your mind is negative, you will become negative. This is the overall life experience. A positive person will have a positive life experience.
Monsoon is about to start. Suddenly, the first shower comes. There are two kinds of people: those who run to the nearest shelter and complain that the IMD never warned that it would rain. They grumble, ‘If you drench in the first shower, you will catch a cold.’ This is the first kind of people.
Then there are those who run out into the open, wanting to experience every drop of the first shower—enjoying, dancing, playing. This is the second kind.
And, of course, there are the fence-sitters, who will look for social media posts about flooding and watch news channels. This is the third kind.
Same rains. See the different reactions it evokes in different people. What is the experience it gives them? They are not the same. It all depends on what you believe in.
If you think life is positive, then it is positive. If you think that you are born to suffer, then suffering is what will be in your life. This is what Bhagawan says. It is up to you, according to your Shraddha, what you believe in.
मन एव मनुष्याणां कारणं बन्धमोक्षयोः।
Nothing except your mind can imprison you in fears, worries, and anxieties. Nothing external can do that. We know about some of our politicians living a royal life inside real prisons. It is the mind. Only your own mind can bind you. And only your own mind can set you free.
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