From Positive Thinking to Thinking Positively
Think Positive
Feel Positive
This has been a slogan of management consultants, alternative therapists, and new age gurus.
It has become the mantra of the new age. Thousands have linked to this mantra to bring them out of a maelstrom where we believed or felt that the world was a horrible place, and people were out to get us. There was a balancing backlash of thought from within each person, and from outside:
If you keep thinking positive thoughts, then aren’t you being in denial?
Can’t you see the horrible things going on around you? Aren’t you being unfeeling and living in la-la land?
Perhaps it is time now not to focus on thinking positive thoughts, but to think or feel positively. Not to label a thought or feeling as either positive or negative by its nature, but to watch where it takes us. This is the path of healing, wholeness.
Each positive thought builds on a negative one. To think that everything is wonderful is to suppress that which is not. Each positive emotion shows the same shadow. The opposite side of hope is discontent with the present.
If I want to heal the world, is that a positive thought? It is, if I focus on transmuting pain and suffering into light. It is not, if I focus on what is wrong with the world.
If you think everyday that you will one day have enough, is that a positive thought? It is, if having “enough” money is a dream, a yearning. It is not; if this arises out of a feeling that what you have at present is not enough.
If a thought causes us to learn something new, to wake up with anticipation each day, or stay energetic, we are thinking positively. If it causes us to feel discontented all day long, or focusing on getting ahead by destroying others, we are thinking negatively.
It is all a matter of focus.
The mantra for healers is ~ Think Positively. Accept thoughts that are for the highest good of all concerned. Let other thoughts be transmuted into light, or flow away in the breeze.
[originally posted in the now transmuted Gaia community on Aug 3rd, 2007 ]
Living in Joyful Awareness ~ Meenakshi Suri 
You make very practical and discerning observations, Meenakshi. Often I cringe when someone says if you think positively nothing bad will happen, or that positive thoughts will cure or prevent cancer. Even the notion of us creating our own reality is problematic for me sometimes. But as you illustrate so well, there is a meaningful difference between positive thinking, which can seem like a denial of reality, and thinking positively, which causes us to act in a way that makes the best of things and moves ourselves and our realities toward healing and the light.
Barbara, your thoughts are helping this to flow. Thank you.
I often find myself saying “Think the thought that serves you.” We sometimes forget how much control we can exercise on what to think. Which thought to harbor, which to let go.
We’re like a child sitting by the stream of thought, deciding which pebble to keep, which to play with, which to examine, and which to throw back into the stream, there waiting for someone else to pick it up.
But the beauty of all this is, that the one we really are seeking to know, is that metaphorical child.
Welcome to this different kind of thinking.
Namaskaram!