Health And Worth Of Thought

Recently on my Twitter feed, I read this quote by @psychologicalqt: ‘If you realised how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.’ This got me thinking (no pun intended), whether an insight into mentality and spirituality, both of which have to do with thought, can improve health.

The most obvious quality of mentality is that it depends on mind. In health matters, it is employed mainly by psychology, and to a lesser extent, religion. Spirituality depends on spirit and is employed mainly by religion. Without wanting to get out of my depth by delving in the deep waters of psychology, of which I confess, I am no expert, I shall base my comments of spirit and mind on the more familiar basis of spirituality – specifically, Christianity.

The overriding reason for this cogitation is to determine the relevance of the power of thought for health and healing. Can good health actually begin with a right thought? If it can, then the worth of thought has just gone up considerably. It is certainly obvious that what individuals experience begins with a thought – whether it is joy, appreciation, love; or negative emotions such as anger, hatred, resentment and so forth. Indeed, the feeling of an ache or a twinge also begins first with the thought of it. Listening to advertisements of symptoms of ill health have been known to result in the listener thinking whether such symptoms are manifesting in their experience.

This being the case, how important then to watch thought, and either guard against thoughts of ill health before symptoms develop, or correct existing thoughts of ill health with spiritual thoughts. Thoughts based on the goodness of God, have a positive and beneficial effect on health, as well as promote healing. Lissa Rankin MD of California USA and founder of OwningPink.com, discovered from her extensive research that a diagnosis by a doctor tends to bring about the expected outcome in the experience of the patient, even when further tests show the diagnosis was wrong. This is food for thought.

Spiritual thinker, Mary Baker Eddy, in her internationally acclaimed book Science and health with key to the Scriptures, proffers a practical solution thus: ‘Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring and true. Suffer no claim of sin or sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that God is no more the author of sickness than he is of sin. You have no law of His to support the necessity either of sin or sickness’.

So, for practical results, it is important is to base thought on God, rather than positive thinking; to begin with spirituality rather than psychology; to have spiritual conviction in the ability and reality of Deity – the divine all-knowing Being-, rather than mere blind belief in a vaguely corporeal God and his mortally minded man. The good news is that results come one right thought at a time. And thinking is natural to man.

M_asolanke@hotmail.com @CSCOM_NigWest