Thoughts

Thoughts

What is a thought? Can you see a thought? No. Thoughts cannot be detected by the five senses. You can see what a thought is based on, but you cannot see the thought itself. Yet, even though the thought cannot be seen, it is as powerful as anything.

Suppose your friend calls you on the phone and asks you to mail some letters. At 9:00 AM you run down to the mail box and mail the letters. Now it's 12:00 PM and your friend meets up with you and asks you if you mailed the letters. You answer with total certainty, "Yes."

But what is your certainty based on? A thought, and only a thought. You mailed the letters three hours ago. It's in the past, it's just a memory. And a memory is nothing but a thought. At 9:00 AM it was an event in the unfolding. At that time, you felt the letters, you saw the letters, you felt your hand shove the letters into the mailbox. Now it's 12:00 PM, and it's nothing but a memory (thought). Yet you rely on it with such certainty.

This proves that thoughts are as powerful as anything. You rely on thoughts as you would rely on tangible things.

But what is a thought? Does it weigh anything? Can it be measured? Can it be photographed? A car weighs over 2,000 pounds. But how much does a thought about a car weigh?

Thoughts are very powerful despite their weightlessness. They can cause you to do physical things. To the five senses, thoughts are nothing. Yet "nothing" causes something. Your thoughts will cause physical things to happen.

If you get a 50% raise at your job, you will go out and celebrate. But it wasn't the 50% raise that caused you to celebrate. It was your thoughts that caused you to celebrate. The boss uttered some words, "I'm giving you a fifty percent raise," then your mind processed those words, and then you reacted by celebrating.

This brings me to my next point. What is the difference between the event of winning the $10 million lottery, and the thought of winning the $10 million lottery?

If both give you the same emotional reaction, there is no difference.

Can you have one without the other? Can you have an event without the thought? Or can you have the thought without the event? Let's look at another example. Suppose it's raining outside right now. You look out the window and see the rain falling, and your thoughts say "It's raining." That's two things happening: The event of rain, and the thought of rain.

So can you have one without the other? Can you look at the rain and genuinely think "It is clear and sunny"? This would be very difficult because your thoughts will reflect whatever your eyes see in the present time.

Let's suppose it is tomorrow that we are dealing with. Is it raining tomorrow? You cannot tell. You can only see what you see right now. You cannot see tomorrow. Tomorrow is up for grabs. Since your eyes cannot see tomorrow, you can think whatever you want without being distracted by your eyes. You can think clear sunny skies even when every meterologist on earth says it's going to rain tomorrow. None of the meterologists can see tomorrow either.

If your thoughts can only see clear sunny skies for tomorrow, then the events will have to manifest in accordance to your thoughts. You cannot have one without the other. Events cause thoughts, and thoughts cause events. There is no order. Remove the concept of time from your mind, and you'll realize that there is no order to which comes first.

Popular science tells us thoughts occur in the brain and that they have to do with neurons firing and chemical reactions and so forth. But we know that thoughts are much more than that. Dreams are thoughts, for instance, and we've all had dreams that were so vivid we thought they were real. Dreams, feelings, ideas. They are all thoughts.

What is a thought? It is something that happens. What is an event? It is something that happens. Recent studies suggest thoughts are energy. Well, events are also energy. And as I mentioned above, if a thought and an event give you the same emotional reaction, there's no difference.

Your thoughts are your life.

Your whole time is spent thinking. All you do is think. So your life is your thoughts, and likewise, your thoughts are your life. Everything that happens in your life is in your thoughts. Did anything happen to you that you never thought about? For instance, have you ever gone for a walk without thinking about walking? It's impossible. You had to think about walking in order to go walking. There's never a point during the walk where you would stop and say "I can't believe it, I'm walking right now! I thought I was inside at home, watching a movie."

Now what is the difference between thinking about something that actually happens, and thinking about something that doesn't happen?

Since we established that your life is your thoughts, whatever you think about is happening. It doesn't matter if you can see it happening or not. Your thoughts are the evidence.

Put another way, your thoughts are your way of perceiving reality. Your thoughts are a reaction to what goes on in your life. Whatever you think about is a reaction to an event.

Changing your reality.

You can create your thoughts. That is how a person shapes his or her reality. A person's reality is really their perception of reality. You don't need to wait for an event to have a thought. Remember, there is no order between event and thought.

When you change your reality by changing your thoughts, it's as if the original reality never existed.

When you think about events of the past, those thoughts will dominate your perception, and your reality will conform to the events of the past.

If you want more of the past, let the past dominate your thinking. Your mind is an instrument that perceives reality.

If you think good thoughts, then you'll perceive reality as good. If you think sad thoughts, then you'll perceive reality as sad.

This is what makes forgiveness so vital. Forgiving an unwanted result pushes it out of your perception of reality, thus pushing unwanted results away from your life. Forgiveness frees the mind, and at the same time, steers it in the right direction. And from then on, the sky's the limit.