In every religious scripture and spiritual teachings, lot of emphasis has been given on purifying our thoughts and emotions. Thousands of books have been written to manifest our wishes by changing our thought patterns. Before we begin, let’s first understand the most important and incredible forces we all possess is the “power of thoughts “ which can helps us to manifest our wishes .
Unfortunately, so many of us still blind to the potential that is locked deep within us and consequently, it is all too easy to leave your thoughts and emotions unchecked. Just like our physical habits like brushing or exercising, our thoughts pattern form habits too. Since most of us are not consciously aware of quality of our thoughts, we simply live our lives according to these habits created by our repeated thought patterns.
Despite all that has and continues to change in our external environment, the real battle is still internal and real challenge isn’t produced until we face our minds and our thoughts. The root cause of all the elements (happiness, sorrow, sadness, joy) is linked with our thought pattern and later on its become our habits too.
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
- Gautam Buddha
There must be something great behind such words of enlightened Buddha. The words are simple and short but the science and the teachings to purify our thoughts are endless. In this article, we will try to explain how thoughts and emotions are interconnected and how can they have impact on our life and our health in both physiological as well as psychological way.
With our thoughts, we can make our life as hell or can make it as heaven. If we think positive, we feel happy and stress free. If we think negative, we feel depressed, anger, jealous etc. Let me bring one fact before you by putting a very simple example:
If someone says – you are looking gorgeous or give any kind of appraise: we doubt and ask ourselves – is it?
On Contrary if someone says – your shirt is not looking good or you are bad in this: we immediately take it and starts reacting on it.
This is general tendency for everyone, said Clifford Nass. Some people do have a more positive outlook, but almost everyone remember negative things more strongly and in more detail. Negative emotions generally involve more thinking & information is processed more thoroughly than the positive ones. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about the unpleasant events and use stronger words to describe them.
Generally, our mind is more attracted towards negative thoughts and emotions because of our tendency to react to situations and to people holding different belief systems and ideas than us. Our belief system is already developed in our mind as per our background of different religions, caste, culture, tradition etc and as per our daily activities. In reality, we all are being driven by our egoistic mind. Our egoistic mind(or ego) creates the sense of separateness between all of us and wants to make us feel superior than others in all areas of life. When our belief system is challenged by someone or by some situation, our mind creates the feeling of intolerance towards such people or situation who challenged our belief system. The crucial point to understand here is that our belief system gets challenged itself even when other person/situation is not trying to go against us or our belief. For example: Person A belonging to Religion A explains some good points about his religion to the person B belonging to Religion B. Though, person A is not going against the person B or Religion B but person B still get frustrated or irritated because the egoistic mind has the tendency to consider only his beliefs more superior.
We all face similar situations in our daily lives where we get frustrated or feel offended when our suggestion/recommendation or ideas are rejected by someone else. This can be mostly noticed in corporate life as well.
When the belief system is challenged very strongly or repeatedly by someone, we don’t only start feeling intolerance towards such person but also towards his religion, culture, caste etc. With such intolerance, the feelings of hatred, anger, frustration, irritation etc. follows automatically. Even the feelings of jealous and enviousness are developed when we saw them progressing and growing. Because of just one feeling of intolerance, so many negative emotions are developed.
"Destructive thoughts and emotions undermine the very causes of peace and happiness. If you think clearly about it, it makes no sense to think you're seeking happiness, if you do nothing to restrain angry, spiteful, and malicious thoughts and emotions."
- Dalai Lama
In last 100 years, we have already noticed so much of intolerance and anger between people holding different religious beliefs. In last 10-15 years, we have also seen so much of intolerance between people holding different political beliefs. The social media is flooded with posts and comments of people abusing, criticising people of other political beliefs. All of these posts generate so much of negative emotions which are devastating to our health.
Proof – Thoughts can affect our physical body.
Many people don’t believe that thoughts or emotions have any connection and can affect our physical health. The lack of awareness about such things in our education system is the main reason behind this.
Let’s do some practical exercise:
1. Think of any person you hate.
2. Check your emotions you are developing.
3. Think of the event or wrong things he/she did with you.
Are you not feeling angry?
Only one single thought of person generated so much of anger and stress, right?
Let’s take another example of sexual fantasy. This is something not to prove that how a single sexual thought can make the changes in physical body of a man. How just a single sexual thought converts soft muscle into hard bone? What else proof do you need that thoughts have direct impact on our physical body?
What you think repeatedly with conviction will tend to materialize. It's just a matter of time.
Jealousy – The main cause of many negative emotions.
Jealousy is one of the main negative emotion which leads to many other negative emotions. Here, egoistic mind plays a greater role in developing the feeling of jealous.
Jealousy can be found in families, friends, office and even in spiritual organisation. In most of the families, children are more jealous of their siblings because they feel their siblings were more loved by their parents. This only doesn’t create jealousy for the siblings but for the parents as well. Children always carry some kind of hatred for their parents unconsciously since their childhood.
We call ourselves best friend but the moment we see our friends growing and progressed than us, then we start getting the jealousy inside of us even though we show fake happiness on our face for them.
In school, the ranking system also makes us jealous of other classmates. Sometimes, we feel jealous who scores just one above us. The teacher is friendlier towards top ranked students and show unhappiness towards low grade students. This also develops the feelings of jealousy against teachers and high-grade students. Many parents compare their children with their friends which also develop the feeling of jealousy in child against the friend as the children start considering his/her friend as competitor. Along with this, child might also develop the feeling of rejection and unloved.
In office, we are jealous about our colleagues who come late; who leave office early; who gets leave approval easily from manager, who get nice appraisal etc. We feel jealous when our opposite political party wins, or when our opponent wins in game.
There are many areas where we can observe jealousy growing within us on daily basis. When a seed of any negative emotions has been sown for someone, it tends to grow with time unless we forgive the person from heart. Once the hatred has been developed for someone then the anger, frustrations, irritation and the feelings to criticize them or curse them automatically follows until we start developing compassion for them .
From childhood to corporate life, we live with jealousy which brings more negative emotions and can even lead to feeling of revenge and vengeance. It’s a time now to think how much heaviness we are carrying within us since childhood and what steps have we taken to remove it.
It’s not just the health which gets affected with negative thoughts but it’s the relationship which also gets affected very badly. Just because of this intolerance or tendency to be superior, many feuds have been observed between brothers, couples, friends where some of them even turned to kill each other.
The feeling of jealousy only develops when we have been taught to compete rather than contribute. This is the fault of our education system and our parents where they have always wanted us to stood first. But what parents can do when they have also grown up under such environment only?
Our egoistic mind has the tendency to be superior but it can be controlled with right moral education and right thought forms in childhood. Whatever a child is taught before teen age, it acts as a seed which later blossoms in actions. If the seed is of competition, child will always consider himself different from others as will try to win always at any cost. If the seed was of contribution, it will bring change in society by contributing in growth of others. Look at the world around you and ask yourself that what kind of people are more needed in this world currently – competitors or contributors?
You see how just a thought of competition brings jealousy and then hatred and then revenge feelings with other host of negative lower emotions. If the thought of contribution is planted and competition is avoided, all the following chain disappears.
Impact on Physical Health
In subtle world , the chain goes like this:
A thought or memory comes in mind >> Associated emotions emerges>> Impact our mood.
Let’s understand the chain with two opposite examples:
- An enemy >>Hatred and Anger>> Affects our mood badly
- A helpful person>> Happiness>>Feel light and makes mood better
Let’s see how this works in subtle world:
When a thought is generated, it comes from mental body and goes to emotional body which generates emotions based on the vibrational frequency of the thought generated. Negative thoughts are of low vibrations frequency whereas positive thoughts have high vibrations. If negative emotion is generated, it affects the prana flow in the meridians or nadis located in energy body. Depending on which meridian is affected, it starts affecting the physical organ to which affected meridian is associated.
The medical science cannot understand beyond physical body yet and this is the reason many physical problems appear again even after successful surgeries. This happens because the root cause is not in physical body but in our emotional and mental patterns. Though, the neuroscience has made some progress in some last years by conducting multiple researches by scanning the different regions of brain during negative thinking and positive thinking. Such studies have revealed that our brain releases unhealthy neurotransmitter(like cortisol, the stress hormone) in our blood when the person thinks negative. When the person feels happy, it releases serotonin(a happiness neurochemical).
"If there was nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know that you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream."
- Eckhart Tolle
The problem is that we people become the slave of our thoughts and emotions where all problems start. Eckhart Tolle, an author of bestseller book ‘The power of Now‘ has explained well in above quote that we are not the thought- We are more than that. Therefore, we need to stop identifying ourselves as thoughts or feelings. We are the Soul, not the body or thoughts or emotions. We need to strengthen our connection with our source. There are Soul affirmations, Soul Meditation and other spiritual teachings which help in strengthening our connection with our soul or the source. When we are highly connected with our source, all this drama of worldly affairs stops affecting us and we just observe the things as they are without getting trapped in that drama. The definition of the term ‘Source’ may not be same in all spiritual schools. Some call ‘Source’ as the Supreme God or universe, some relates it with their Guru or their Higher Soul. Eventually, all the references help in strengthening our connections and helps in uplifting our consciousness to universal level. In the last, I will add one affirmation below from ‘Eckhart Tolle‘ which helps in strengthening our connection with our source.
"I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the now. I am."
- Eckhart Tolle
In this article, we learnt that how negative thoughts and emotions can affect us physically and psychologically. We also learnt the importance of spiritual science and spiritual practice. We understood that the spiritual process is continuous and should be considered as daily practice so that we can stop our thoughts and emotions controlling us.
If you relate this article with yourself and need help in psychological healing, you can try consulting healers listed with us.
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