Ever since I became interested in the New Thought movement, I have noticed how easy it is to get sucked into it and start using its principles in ways that they were not (in my understanding) intended. I am certainly not a New Thought expert by any means, but I have noticed one idea get manipulated above all others. The idea of your thought creating your reality.
The part of it that I get its the idea that, for example, if you are not feeling well, thinking about how bad you feel is not going to ever make you feel better; in fact, it will most likely make you feel worse. But if you think about how strong your immune system is, and visualize your white blood cells fighting off any foreign bodies (or something like that), you may just make yourself feel better, or not even sick at all. That’s cool. I get that. I do that (sometimes).
I understand the concept of visualizing yourself as already having the life that you want to have (whether you have it already or not). Visualizing yourself achieving your goals or stopping a bad habit. These are things that we have power over. These are things that right thinking can affect. The part where things start to get twisted for me is when people start manipulating the truth, and calling it their “reality”.
Here’s an (extreme) example: As much as I may want to visualize it, I am not black. No amount of visualizing that will make it so. However, if I get it in my head that I am black, and I start telling everyone that I am black (despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary) I just might start believing it. I just might expect YOU to start believing it. And if you don’t, I might start to isolate myself. Tell myself that no one else “gets me.” Maybe surround myself with the (few) people who are willing to accept what I’m telling them (and myself) and make me feel okay about it. Giving up on the people who don’t. Then the real trouble begins. Me vs. the world. I start calling myself “enlightened.” I start looking down on others who don’t see the world the way I do-I feel so bad that they are so small minded and don’t “get it.” I am no longer seeking to be in touch with myself-I am trying to be right, at all costs.
I have seen people in my life, mentors, actually, use this type of thinking as justification for their selfish actions, and it blows me away. The pedestal of rightness that they place themsleves on. The cruel manipulation of beautiful ideas as well as the people around them.
This is the danger in all organized religious or intellectual movements-that in making it our own we stop listening to the outside world and only selectively take what we want to hear and call it truth, facts be damned.
The mind is powerful. Be careful how you use it.
