Blog 447 – 10.27.2016

All thoughts are not created equal. One of my favorite writers, Mike Dooley, author of Notes From The Universe says, “Thoughts become things. Choose the good ones.” If you have ever had a song or a jingle seem to get stuck in your head or found your self replaying over and over again in your head some unpleasant, angry, or fearful situation you know it is easy to think that we do not choose the thoughts we think. It may be true that we do not control the random thoughts that pop into our heads but we do choose what thoughts we dwell on.

The analogy has been made that we do not pick the stray animals that wander across our path but we can and do decide which ones if any that we take home and make pets out of. A couple of days ago I warned about mythical and magical thinking. I would like to take a few moments to explain what I meant.

Mythical thinking has to do primarily with creation usually involving some good versus evil senario and is always some kind of attempt by man’s ego to prove that he somehow created himself. This is a type of irrational thinking typified by nonsensical terms like “self made man” and “pulling ones self up by one’s own boot straps.” Mythical thinking is egotistical gravity defying and denying horse feathers. Horses don’t have feathers but they do manufacture large amounts of what horse feathers is an euphemism for. A myth is a made up story and mythical thinking is an invented attempt to explain the inexplicable. A better understanding of the anti-athiest verse, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” might be: The fool says I created everything including myself.

Magical thinking is where the ego thinks he or she is a super hero and can make things disappear just by denying their existence or make them appear by waving a wish like a wand. An example of this is that defying gravity thing again. An old adage says, “You cannot do wrong and get by no matter how hard you may try.” But yet so many buy into ego’s magical thinking i.e. “Taking a little, a little bit from a lot of people and getting rich thereby is good business.” “Lying and cheating are the way to get ahead in politics and business.” “The bigger the lie you tell and the louder and more often you say it the more people will believe it.” “The rules of honesty, kindness, and fair play do not apply to me those are for the suckers.” “A sucker is born every minute and it is my duty to releave him of his money.” “It is really my money that he has in his pocket.” or the flim flam man’s oath of office, “We only cheat the cheaters.” Some of those sound strikingly like today’s short sighted business and political model. And though they may indeed seem to work in the short term, the long term results are always disasterous not just for the victims but for the perpetrators as well of these magical thinking schemes.

Mythical and magical thinking both stem form the same single error in thinking – that we are separate, unconnected to the One and thereby to each other. Denying that real relationship we invented the false god of ego and have ever since allowed ego to weave this fantastical tale of myth and magic to make his own exixtence seem real. It is foolish to deny Who and Whose we truly are but when did that ever stop us.

Having ruled out mythical and magical thinking as viable alternatives what is left. Some might say rational thinking others intuitive thinking and I say both. If you are into proof texts I remember a few lines. “Come let us reason together…Be still and know…listen for the still small voice…and you will here a voice saying this is the way walk in it.” One more, “As a person thinks in their heart so are they.” All of these seem to offer the possibility that we can think with the One mind, with God, the Universe, our higher and best mind. Only then will be be thinking thoughts worthy of the magnificent beings we truly are, created in the image of the Divine by the Divine and that is no myth, no hocus pocus. The more we allow the Divine Mind to inform our thoughts the more agreement we will find with like minds and the more beautiful our world will become for one and all.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White