Positive Thinking - Original Ideas and Thoughts on Thoughts

Welcome to Positive Thinking - Original Ideas and Thoughts on Thoughts.

There are many of us who delude ourselves that we have good powers of concentration, that we are, in effect, ‘thinkers.’ But let us not deceive ourselves. Most of us receive and process then modify thought which already exists. Very few of us are orginal thinkers.

The ‘original’ thinker is not the person who writes treatises on philosophy or ‘goes outside the square’ with De Bono’s Lateral Thinking. Oh, no. The original thinker is a man or woman whose can bring their thinking processes to quietness. This is done by will power. The person who can then, by an act of that will, direct it towards a wanted answer, a truly original concept, something which is not already extant and have it brought into being...this is your truly original thinker.

I'm told this can be done because we are surrounded by vast oceans of thought-matter. The person who then can convert that received thought-form as a concept, then by using the normal means of a good vocabulary, codnvert it into something which can be recorded and understood by us lesser mortals is an 'original thinker.' Albert Einstein's E = MC squared is an example of such.

Those sorts of original concepts come from much higher planes than our own personal intellects. The key? Sustained interest in the subject. For here we are utilizing a great psychological law: We bring into our lives that which we think about most. We get an answer.

I'm a positive thinker, and yes, I can concentrate!” the writer hears you say. But can you? And if you can, is it ‘voluntary’ or ‘involuntary’ concentration. The second is hardly a sign of a controlled and stable mind. Yet it is concentration of the latter type most of us are proficient at. We're not actually concentrating. We're more like a automatic radio scanner which jumps from one station to another with little control; what Swami Vivekenanda describes as our "monkey mind.'

So to describe it furher: What is meant by ‘involuntary concentration’? Let us take an example or two. You are in a bank withdrawing some savings when a bandit bursts through the door brandishing a saw-off shotgun. He points it at you. Now, at this very instant, your concentration could hardly be greater. You are completely in the here and now. You are concentrated!

...but it is involuntary concentration.

Let us take a less dramatic instance. You pick up a book on your favourite subject from the library and you open it up to read. You are absolutely engrossed. The words are hardly words, they are images, pictures! You skip through the book savouring the messages being given. You are concentrated. But, once again, it is ‘involuntary’ as it is led by your interest, an interest preceded by earlier learning and other associated interests which gave you pleasure, or some subconscious sensation which impelled you towards the experience.

The real test of how good your concentration is is when you have to concentrate on something which has, to you, no interest at all. Something absolutely boring!

How long could you concentrate on a book written in a language you could not decipher? How long could you concentrate on a dot on the wall? Most people cannot even concentrate on the sweep hand of a wrist-watch for half a minute. Long before the thirty seconds have elapsed our grasshopper minds, i.e. our attention, has switched to another, then another subject or issue.

So let us not kid ourselves that our concentration is good. Yet – and this is so very important – until we get our thinking directly under the control of our will we are NOT masters of our own fate. At least at the conscious level.

So if we really want to become a positive thinker, a real creator capable of original thinking, and have our destinies a little more under our personal control, then we need set about the task of monitoring and disciplining our thought. It isn’t easy. It takes a long, long time. But of all of life’s goals it is certainly one of the most important.

I hope you got something out of Positive Thinking - Original Ideas and Thoughts on Thoughts.

Keep smiling

Tom