THE POSITIVE THINKING MITH

The POSITIVE THINKING MYTH
[The entities able to influence reality with their thoughs are very rare! ]
POSITIVE THINKERS IGNORE THE WORLD'S SUFFERING.
"The most accomplished figures in the positive-thinking tradition – including philosopher William James (a lifelong experimenter in mental healing) and Rabbi Joshua Loth Leibman (whose 1946 bestseller Peace of Mindinaugurated the post-war climate of self-help) – counseled realism and bravery, not blindness, in the face of catastrophe. Addressing survivors after World War II, Liebman noted: “A half loaf eaten in courage and accepted in truth is infinitely better than a moldy whole loaf, green with the decay of self-pity and selfish sorrow which really dishonors the memory of those who lived for our up up building and happiness.” See more : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitch-horowitz/positive..

DAVID BOHM: IF YOU ENGAGE IN POSITIVE THINKING TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE THOUGHTS, THE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ARE STILL THERE ACTING. THAT'S STILL INCOHERENCE. IT's NOT ENOUGH JUST TO ENGAGE IN POSITIVE THOUGHTS WHEN YOU HAVE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS REGISTERED, BECAUSE THEY KEEP ON WORKING AND WILL CAUSE TROUBLE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Q: What she just said might suggest that this is more of a psychosomatic process than we realize. We tend to think of it as a mental process, whereas maybe there's more involved than that. Maybe we have to keep an awareness for that other aspect
of it.

Bohm: As I pointed out we were saying yesterday that it is one system; the thoughts, the body, the emotions and also other people, are all part of one system. And when you raise questions intellectually they may affect the non‐intellectual parts or vice versa ‐ the other elements affect the intellect. Therefore you have to see it as one system. That's the crucial point, because otherwise you will never be able to deal with it. If it is one system you deal with all the parts.

Q: Is it possible to fit the concept of addiction into what you were saying? I think of addiction as including not only physical addiction to things like drugs and alcohol but also various kinds of thought addiction. There are supposedly positive and negative ones. A negative thought addiction might be racism. A positive one could be the whole legion of books that have been written in the area of ʹthe power of positive thinkingʹ. Is this thought addiction part of the incoherence you're speaking about, or can it be manipulated in positive ways?

Bohm: If you engage in positive thinking to overcome negative thoughts, the negative thoughts are still there acting. That's still incoherence. It's not enough just to engage in positive thoughts when you have negative thoughts registered, because they keep on working and will cause trouble somewhere else ‐ I’ll just say a few words about addiction. One point is that when you take a substance such as morphine, it acts by covering up certain nerves or pain receptors so you donʹt feel pain. Now, the body can create natural substances of similar molecular structure, called ʹendorphinsʹ, which do the same ‐ perhaps even better. In fact, people say that sometimes soldiers who have been badly wounded in battle feel no pain. They have a lot of endorphins at the time, and only later do they feel pain. So that has a useful function in that it helps them to survive. But it is also possible for thoughts ‐ reassuring thoughts or pleasant thoughts ‐ to produce endorphins. And then you could in some sense become addicted to those thoughts, saying I wonʹt give them up; even if they're wrong I'll believe them to be trueʹ. You can't bear the idea that what you want to think might not be true, because that would remove the endorphins and then the pain would start coming back. So you can say that there is a kind of addiction in the thought process which is possible. In fact, it's one of the things that holds us. The thought process is neurophysiological as well as intellectual and emotional. It has physical and chemical elements. Medical investigators have demonstrated this when they do various scans of the brain. Every time you think, the blood distribution shifts all around and all sorts of changes occur inside; there are electrical brain waves that can be measured. Thus thought has, at the very least, a certain basis in this neurophysiological process; it can never be separated from it. Thatʹs something we have to keep in mind. And that process is part of the system we're talking about. Also, if you physically alter that process ‐ by purring drugs into your body, for example ‐ you've altered the system.