Bad day? Try thinking about it differently - Sentinel & Enterprise

My daughter’s favorite expression is “thoughts become things.” It’s a quippy, simplified way of saying that thought precedes all action, but in ways that hint that more is occurring than the typical cause-and-effect scenario as we understand it. It has a bit of mysticism to it.

In the most basic and understandable way, first we think of something before we can do it. We mull it over in our heads. We contemplate. We envision. Typically, this envisioning process helps us work out a few kinks before we more fully invest in our ideas. A lot of times we think about things first so that we can get used to the idea of them.

Something I often find myself both talking and writing about is the physics of prayer. I’m always careful when using words like “prayer” because people have very strong feelings about the word. People feel conclusively that they know what it means to pray. Depending on your faith, or lack of it, you already have a preconceived idea about the nature, practicality, usefulness and even reality of prayer.

I’m asking you to go deeper than that. I’m asking you to go under the traditions and the words you’ve been taught to say and the stereotypes and the preconceived ideas about what’s occurring when we “pray.” Because the underlying thread is key.

I think it would be unfair to say that the prayer style of one religion works better than the prayer style of another. It would be unwise and unhumble to make assumptions about what God is listening to or why. It would be equally arrogant to say that God speaks English but not Spanish and, therefore, English is somehow superior as regards prayer. That doesn’t feel like an idea with any merit, regardless of your belief in God. If God listens to us in all languages — should God exist or listen at all — then how can It not be listening to us in all forms of prayer?

So, if thoughts really do become things, what’s occurring within the physics of those thoughts? What are we transmitting? And when are we transmitting it? To whom are we transmitting it?
What are we transmitting? Everything we are thinking and doing. When are we transmitting it? All the time. In prayer, out of prayer, it’s all prayer. To whom are we transmitting it? Your guess is as good as mine. As it should be.

Lavender’s favorite expression doesn’t pass any judgments on the quality of our thoughts or the things that result from them. The axiom of “thoughts become things” merely claims that A plus B equals C. Its own faith is that all consequences are natural, logical and understandable.
That doesn’t mean we always like the consequences of our thoughts, but we must own them if we wish to evolve, if we wish to hone our skills at the thoughts we have closer toward the life we want.

What does a completely peaceful person look like? Do they get bothered by things? Probably. But how much? What would your day look like today if someone stood over you right now with a magic wand, waved it three times, said the magic words (and if you know what they are, please do tell the rest of us) and poof! you became a fully peaceful person?

If suddenly all of your ability to derive angst from a situation melted away, how would you then feel? What would be different about your day? How would you handle an argument with your spouse? Or might the argument never even occur in the first place?

We can imagine that our thoughts impact the nature of the information. We know that when we’re having a bad day, it seems to continue relentlessly in an endless stream of bumped elbows and flat tires, adding insults to our injuries. Like a train going off the tracks one car at a time. We feel powerless to stop it.

It’s not that you had a thought, “Gee, I’d really love to have a bad day today.” Maintaining inner peace prevents you from concluding, after you’ve hit your not-so-funny bone just getting out of bed, that now your entire day is going to look like this. It’s all about the positive thought you’re choosing when it would be perfectly natural to have a negative one.

I tend to give a piece of advice when people tell me they’re having a really bad day. I suggest to them that they spend five minutes thinking about three things that make them feel grateful. Just pick three things and set the timer on your phone if you must, and ruminate for a bit on why you feel such gladness for them. Consider their details and their blessings. See if you can think of things you hadn’t considered before. Deliberately run out of fingers and toes in counting them. And then resume your day. See if it alters the kind of experience you have. It just might. It works for me.

Based on the teachings of religious and spiritual traditions throughout human history, we might surmise that using the notion that thoughts genuinely do become things has at least the ability to alter our perception of a day. Our faith may even give us the option of considering that we project a positive energy forward from us, somehow telekinetically altering circumstances that might otherwise have caused us harm.

What do you believe?

Wil Darcangelo, M.Div., is the minister at First Parish UU Church of Fitchburg and of First Church of Christ, Unitarian, in Lancaster, and producer of The UU Virtual Church of Fitchburg and Lancaster on YouTube. Email wildarcangelo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @wildarcangelo. His blog, Hopeful Thinking, can be found at https://ift.tt/2J5igoD.

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Bad day? Try thinking about it differently - Sentinel & Enterprise
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