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Thinking too much? Why it can make you ill

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Thinking too much
“Hmm… I should have thought of that.”

Thinking is a good thing, of course. If we didn’t think, we would get nothing done. There would never be any brilliant new ideas and there would be no education. Life would be a series of responses to basic needs and not much else. The ability to assess, calculate and learn is a staggering faculty that we take for granted. It is one of many aspects of a miraculous state called consciousness, though certainly not the only one. Thinking intelligently is a great gift, but most of us – and I most certainly include myself in this – suffer from unintelligent thinking. It is this that has the potential to make us ill.

Thinking without thinking

More than ever, there is a pressure in society to have an opinion on just about anything at all. It is so important, that corporations spend billions of pounds every year on ensuring that we do. Addiction to social media guarantees that at any given moment millions of people are expressing their opinions on this that or the other. Click Like if you agree. (No, please don’t – that was a joke.) The end result is that our minds are constantly active on things that don’t really matter. So how can this affect our health?

Too much focus can easily create tension

Energy flow

For good health, we need vitality. For that, our energy needs to flow easily through the body. When the flow of energy is blocked or restricted for any length of time, discomfort can build up, eventually leading to illness. We know if we are too sedentary or eat unwisely, there can be a negative impact on the body. But probably we don’t consider the effects on the body of our thinking.

Awareness, not thinking

The fact is that all our mental responses affect our energy circulation in some way. In short, too much thinking creates tension that interrupts the free flow of energy. Yet the nature of consciousness is not to be in a constant state of activity – it is to be aware. It really does pay to stop sometimes. Stop thinking and just be aware. It’s a treat for the body and a boon for the mind. Oddly, it’s great for our health, too.

How we can reduce unnecessary thinking is explored in my third book The Art of Not Doing. Available in print and on Kindle.

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Chaos? Yes, but there is a way out of this

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Chaos in the worldChaos seems to be the order (or rather disorder) of the day. Wars still carry on, megalomaniacs continue to run nations and in the UK one might be forgiven to think we are governed by headless chickens. The history books of the future will provide much wonderment and amusement about this age of chaos. Perhaps global warming will have been sorted by then. We are not in the future, though, so what can we do now?

Chaos is the result of lost connections

Humanity has gone rogue. Some people go rogue when they stay in a hotel. If they were staying with a friend, they wouldn’t steal the toiletries and the towels, or worse. They feel no connection with the hotel and so their not-so-good human qualities come to the surface. Humanity is rather like that at the moment. We forget we are an integral part of the world. Instead, we behave as though we were staying at Hotel Earth – guests without any responsibility. The result is chaos. We are not guests, though. This is our home.

A paradigm shift is essential, but how?

As the chaos is the result of humanity’s collective consciousness, how we think must change. Education, both formal and informal, is a major player, then. But there is something else. We have to restore our energetic connection to Earth. Our minds are too Yang and we need the calming effect of Earth’s Yin energy. When we allow that to happen, how we think changes and so our behaviour does, too. Standing Like a Mountain is one of the simplest ways of reconnecting to Earth Qi. Just a few minutes, or even a minute, can help to restore balance. Meditation is also enormously helpful. We may think we don’t need to for ourselves but the effect isn’t just for us. It’s for the world. And we need to do it now.

Learning how to stop overthinking

Free guided meditations

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Knowledge can be seriously bad for your health

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Knowledge or facts
Too much information?

Knowledge is good. Of course it is. But knowing a great deal is not the same as being wise. Thanks to technology, we have a plethora of information at our fingertips. Social and news media keep churning out all manner of assertions that are sold as facts. Whether they are true or not is one thing. More of an issue is the strain on our consciousness of digesting all this information. As our bodies become ever more obese, our minds, too, are becoming overloaded. We have mental indigestion and this affects our wellbeing. Knowledge of this modern ilk is seriously bad news for health.

Real knowledge is fact-free

Real or pure knowledge is completely different. It is like a cosmic computer. We can only access it when the mind is still. The route to it is through the intuitive faculty of the mind. When the intuition is awake, knowledge comes as and when it is needed. We know how to act, what to say and when to remain silent. Love and compassion are natural bedfellows of this way of knowing, so we respond with warmth and, at times perhaps, with fire. This is Actual Intelligence, as opposed to Artificial Intelligence, and it comes from learning to practise stillness. A short fact-free diet could do us the world of good. Who knows?

Read The Art of Not Doing for more on this

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Mirror, mirror in my head – the biggest liar of them all?

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The magic mirror in the tale of Snow White knew a thing or two. “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who is the fairest of them all?” is not a question that is asked in our house. Our mirrors are not magic at all. In fact, as far as possible, we avoid them unless absolutely necessary. They don’t hide anything. They just throw back a reflection of “how it is”. But what about our internal mirror?

mirror of consciousnessThe mirror of consciousness

It is virtually impossible to describe consciousness in words, so the old teachers often used analogies. Consciousness is like a mirror, they would say, because it simply reflects what appears to it. A more modern analogy is that of a cinema or television screen. The screen does nothing. It is just the medium on which images appear.

So where do hate, love, anger and kindness come from?

There is far more kindness in the world than there is cruelty. But the message we keep seeing and hearing is that the whole planet is a disaster zone. Instead of seeing things as they are, we are influenced by what other people tell us or have told us in the past.

Our mirror is tainted. Smudges and scratches on the glass distort what we see. Not only do we see a narrow, partial picture rather than the whole, we become excited or upset at what we think we see.

Placing a judgment on everything is pretty exhausting. No wonder so many people become depressed. We need to work on it.

Start polishingpolishing mirror

How do we clean the internal mirror, the one in our head? After all, if everything we see is wrong, surely it is just going to get worse?

Okay, it will take quite a while to have a highly polished reflector. But we can start the process right now. The immediate thing is not to add to the distortion and dirty marks that are already there. We simply interrupt the cycle of making judgments. (That may also necessitate changing our newspaper!) We stop shouting “hooray” or “yah boo” at everything we see or read about.

A mirror of peace

Eventually the liar will give up – because no-one’s listening. Accepting things as they are, and importantly not necessarily condoning them, we begin to develop a mirror of peace. And surely that can only be a good thing.

Thanks for reading this. If you liked it, you may enjoy my book The Art of Not Doing

Evening workshop 5th June 2017 in Staffordshire “Pacifying the Mind”. Details here.

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Compassion: 4 reasons it’s good for you

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The incredible, dynamic nature of compassion

Compassion is extraordinary. The transforming effect it can have is so powerful that it can change an individual for the better for the rest of his or her life.

Compassion has the power to change because it is dynamic. It releases something within us and unleashes energy that alters our perceptions and the way we think. It breaks down blockages of energy in our system and brings a sense of fulfilment that nothing else quite equals. We sometimes talk about the amazing energy of love; compassion takes that a step further.

Why wise compassion brings joy and completeness

In essence, we are not separate from anything or anyone else. At the deepest level, there is no “else”. As we move a little closer to realising thatcompassion globe in life, barriers and prejudices in our thinking and in our communications begin to dissolve. As they do, we feel more complete.

What is compassion? It is a loving, deep awareness of the needs of others. More than that, it is coupled with a spontaneous desire to remove others’ suffering. It is an attitude of total selflessness, yet it brings immense benefits.

Four reasons we need compassion

  1. Compassion liberates us. It gives us freedom because we have to let go of self-interest. In energy terms, that means we let go of all clinging or grasping and as we do that our energy channels become more open. We release mental and emotional tension and consequently physical tension, too. We feel freer in ourselves because we focus less on our own problems or what we perceive as our problems. As we do that, they fall into perspective and shrink in importance.
  2. Compassion helps us in our relationships because we become less concerned with what we want out of them. The same principle applies whether it is a close, personal relationship or a business one, for example. Outwardly, our behaviour may not change very much. The important thing is our attitude. Our view of the relationship will be easier and often the other person will sense we are easier with them. Sometimes we may see a difficult relationship in a different light. For example, we may have been straining to be liked and discover we can let go.
  3. Compassion can benefit our health. Both physical and mental health will tend to improve as we let go and start to give of ourselves more easily. The brain produces more endorphins and so we feel happier. As a result, the immune system tends to be stronger and the quality of life improves. The prospects of life being shortened by stress are much reduced. We could say, therefore, that compassion is good for health, for quality of life and for longevity!
  4. Compassion develops the heart energy centre. The heart centre or chakra unfolds as we develop our spiritual qualities. As it does so, energy to the other chakras in a very natural and safe way. Those who try to “open their chakras” by artificial means are often beingcompassion heart circle misled by those who really ought to know better. Artificially trying to force our energy centres to open rarely works satisfactorily. It is always safe to work with the heart centre by developing the qualities of love and compassion. The results are strong and stable.

Compassion needs wisdom, too

These wonderful results come from wise compassion. Being compassionate does not mean being soft or being a do-gooder. A truly compassionate person is strong, stronger than most in fact, and is not easily manipulated. The compassionate person can say no when necessary. He or she doesn’t have a hidden agenda which demands that they need to please the other person. True compassion requires honesty and truthfulness. That doesn’t mean we have to be blunt. If to tell someone the truth is going to them pain, the compassionate person will strive to reduce that hurt to a minimum and will know not to say anything at all if it isn’t necessary.

To know which is right takes wisdom and wisdom comes from being in touch with our own nature. This doesn’t happen overnight. Developing true wisdom and compassion is a task for life. But every step on the way brings us closer to completeness and being a better, and more useful, human being.

From The Secret Power of Compassion, chapter 7 of The Great Little Book of Happiness

More books here

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