Think Positive

If you want to live longer, be happy, healthy and successful, all you have to do is tell yourself that you can do it by tapping the healing forces within

There is no greater joy than a healthy, positive life. You feel exhilarated, energetic, happy and on top of the world. A sense of total well being permeates your mind. The future looks bright. You feel good to be alive.

Great, but how do we get out of our innumerable worries, tensions and fears that the increasingly competitive life burdens us with? Simple! Tell yourself that you are good, healthy and capable. That is the power of positive affirmations.

Such affirmations are also called self-suggestions. It is a powerful tool for transforming your inner self into an amazing health generating, self-healing entity. You can record these affirmations on a tape synchronized with pleasant instrumental music and replay them often to make them more effective and permanent.

I am… said:

Great, but how do we get out of our innumerable worries, tensions and fears that the increasingly competitive life burdens us with? Simple! Tell yourself that you are good, healthy and capable. That is the power of positive affirmations.

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Hi I am, I know what you're talking about, I've been there for some time. At first I felt great, indeed life tasted different. But, you see, it's one thing to remark the beautiful side of your soul, its potential, but it's another to ignore the dark part of it. It's a blind position.
Think about the following : each night, you have a bad headache, so each night you have to take your drugs. In a sense, you don't care WHY your head hurts, all you want is to get rid of the pain.
You can extrapolate this example to your assumption : when something is wrong in your life, you just ignore it and reverse it into something good, positive. For some time you're going to feel so much happy, but one day all those negative sides will resurface and you won't be able to handle it with posiive thoughts because it will be "too much". What you realise then is that all that time, you've just LIED to yourself.

Just my 2 cents

Hello I am... and welcome to the forum.

I agree with what Acaja has written.

Yes, it is important to have a positive set of mind about one's life and obstacles ahead, but more along the lines of: whatever the problem now and whatever may come, I'll just do my best in exploring what lies behind each aspect of darkness and self-delusion. I need to explore these aspects first and on an ongoing basis and work on integrating new insights. A positive attitude of "I'll make it, I'll do everything I can do to make it" will help me with it.

If, on the other hand one is simply forcing oneself to be positive about everything no matter what and with refusing to look at what really is going on, one is doing nothing but prolonging and deepening one's state of being within a delusional bubble, or in other words: one keeps stagnating or even down-spiraling into ever more delusion.

So one has to walk on a certain line here. New Age teachings exaggerate this aspect of truth of needing to be self-confident and trusting life and universe. New Age simply states that all you need to do is think and act positively and everything will work out just fine. But it is not that easy.
The whole of our lives is based on lies, even our own self-image is lies, the way we see other people: lies (or rather distortions based on our own inner distortions). There's thus no way to assess anything with any certainty as long as one is swimming on the surface of outer life and trying to force a layer of positive thinking on the bundle we call ourselves. But: we surely can use positive thinking in the form of an inner state of strength, hope and faith. While always making sure to explore and look at our inner darkness. These aspects are the material with which we can work. If we do not use this material, there's no way of growing.

Another angle would be to simply have a look at nature and life and its cycles: there will for example always be the cycles of birth and dying. There are the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, all of which represent the different states of both positive and negative. If you transfer that to a human's psyche there's such a vast body of differing emotions, both positive and negative. Maybe it would be useful to ponder this and look real close. And reading The Wave would certainly clarify very much on this subject.
Choosing only the positive goes hand in hand with working with the negative. You can barely move into an old rotten house full of bugs and mold and simply put in new and good-looking furniture and call that a healthy living environment, no matter how beautiful the furniture might be. Blotting out the negative side of life is going against life, because life has within it both aspects. So, if we choose to learn and grow we must work with both aspects.


My two cents. :)

I am… said:

If you want to live longer, be happy, healthy and successful, all you have to do is tell yourself that you can do it by tapping the healing forces within

There is no greater joy than a healthy, positive life. You feel exhilarated, energetic, happy and on top of the world. A sense of total well being permeates your mind. The future looks bright. You feel good to be alive.

Great, but how do we get out of our innumerable worries, tensions and fears that the increasingly competitive life burdens us with? Simple! Tell yourself that you are good, healthy and capable. That is the power of positive affirmations.

Such affirmations are also called self-suggestions. It is a powerful tool for transforming your inner self into an amazing health generating, self-healing entity. You can record these affirmations on a tape synchronized with pleasant instrumental music and replay them often to make them more effective and permanent.

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Sadly, those self-suggestions are buffers - as Gurdjieff called them - to cope with reality. But nonetheless, they are only subjective illusions that will do nothing for you in your spiritual path. If you want to go further, you might consider confronting reality and watch it as it is. Is the hard work that will get you there, that of course, if you have the drive and the will to do it.

My two cents, also.

Navigator said:

Sadly, those self-suggestions are buffers - as Gurdjieff called them - to cope with reality. But nonetheless, they are only subjective illusions that will do nothing for you in your spiritual path. If you want to go further, you might consider confronting reality and watch it as it is. Is the hard work that will get you there, that of course, if you have the drive and the will to do it.

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Yep, and here you are more info if you are interested I am :)

In 4th Way psychology, a buffer is a sort of thought-proof compartmentalization of the mind. The term comes from the buffers which absorb shocks between railroad cars. Buffers make it possible for man to ignore almost anything and generally serve to keep one living in subjectivity.

Repeated denial of facts may over time create a buffer. For example, buffers make it possible for one to apply entirely different principles of ethics to different groups of people.

Getting rid of buffers is an aim of the Work. However, buffers should not be deleted too quickly, even if they could, since some are necessary for survival, at least until one's internal constitution is strengthened enough to withstand reality without the dampening effect of buffers.

(In Search of the Miraculous, pp. 154-5.)
"You often think in a very naive way," he (Gurdjieff) said. "You already think you can do. To get rid of this conviction is more difficult than anything else for a man. You do not understand all the complexity of your organization and you do not realize that every effort, in addition to the results desired, even if it gives these, gives thousands of unexpected and often undersirable results, and the chief thing that you forget is that you are not beginning from the beginning with a nice, clean, new machine. There stand behind you many years of wrong and stupid life, of indulgence in every kind of weakness, of shutting your eyes to your own errors, of striving to avoid all unpleasant truths, of constant lying to yourselves, of self-justification, of blaming others, and so on, and so on. All this cannot help affecting the machine. The machine is dirty, in places it is rusty, and in some places artificial appliances have been formed, the necessity for which has been created by its own wrong way of working.


"These artificial appliances will now interfere very much with all your good intentions.
"They are called 'buffers.'

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Even more in the Cassiopaea glossary

I think there can be a valid use for an affirmation if it is formulated correctly and is used to hold yourself steady in the face of a storm.

As a general purpose self-suggestion though, it would seem to be equivalent to auto-hypnosis. If a person really was "good, healthy and capable", reality feedback would probably confirm it, osit. :)

Bud said:

I think there can be a valid use for an affirmation if it is formulated correctly and is used to hold yourself steady in the face of a storm.

As a general purpose self-suggestion though, it would seem to be equivalent to auto-hypnosis. If a person really was "good, healthy and capable", reality feedback would probably confirm it, osit. :)

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I don't see how affirmation instead of observation and intencional work can change anything, can you give us an example?

Bud said:

I think there can be a valid use for an affirmation if it is formulated correctly and is used to hold yourself steady in the face of a storm.

As a general purpose self-suggestion though, it would seem to be equivalent to auto-hypnosis. If a person really was "good, healthy and capable", reality feedback would probably confirm it, osit. :)

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I think that these self affirming phrases, auto-affirmations and self-suggestions are a way into self-deception. This being promoted by our very mind, in the form of what Castaneda called, the predators mind. The way to avoid falling into this trap might be the objective observation of oneself. Knowing our machine, so to speak. And of course, the networking with others committed to the same purpose.

Could this objective mirroring from others be possible in a group or society where everyone repeats these mantras?

Ana said:

I don't see how affirmation instead of observation and intencional work can change anything, can you give us an example?

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The affirmation examples that were provided were much too general to be useful and as I indicated: auto-hypnosis designed to hide the facts of reality from one's view.

The other sense would be an example like "I wish to remember myself", "I will remember my dreams", "I can withstand this", "This too will pass". Certainly not affirmation in the conventional sense, but that's what I was refering too. Was I being a bit too gentle about it?

Bud said:

The affirmation examples that were provided were much too general to be useful and as I
indicated: auto-hypnosis designed to hide the facts of reality from one's view.

The other sense would be an example like "I wish to remember myself", "I will remember my dreams", "I can withstand this", "This too will pass". Certainly not affirmation in the conventional sense, but that's what I was refering too. Was I being a bit too gentle about
it?

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Let me quote some definitions on affirmations:

_http://ardictionary.com/Affirmation/2927

affirmation meaning said:

Definition: Confirmation of anything established; ratification; as, the affirmation of a
law.

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_http://www.thefreedictionary.com/affirmation

affirmation meaning said:

1. The act of affirming or the state of being affirmed; assertion.
2. Something declared to be true; a positive statement or judgment.
3. Law A solemn declaration given in place of a sworn statement by a person who conscientiously objects to taking an oath.

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Now your first example,"I wish to remember myself" is not an affirmation it does not confirm anything it does not close the possibilities, instead it opens a new welcomed possibility.

The second example,"I will remember my dreams" is an affirmation of the future events, it is closed, an open one would be I wish to remember my dreams, osit

The last two examples,"I can withstand this"and "This too will pass" are not affirmations but openings to more possibilities, if you try to see a more deep meaning in the sentences, you will see how some of them open the flow while others restrict it.

An affirmation implies that the results are closed to that one conclusion as it happens with a denial, and both are the result of black and white thinking, osit
As I see it the best approach to day to day life is a willingness attitude to learn the lessons wich does not need affirmations or denials but faith/opening.

Furthermore if we look at ourselves as a work in progress no affirmation or denial makes sense, everything even us must be placed under the law of three, osit


Edit: Added one more sentence :)

Ana said:

...if you try to see a more deep meaning in the sentences, you will see how some of them open the flow while others restrict it.

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I see what you mean. You are pointing to the difference between open and closed possibilities.
I erroneously thought that the word "affirmation" also had the sense of that meaning of 'open possibilities', but I see that I was mistaken. "Openings to more possibilities" represents the idea I was trying to express, so thank you very much for the clarification. :)

In US official/corporate culture, talking truth about the possible failure or related thought it is truth are considered pessimistic. so every body is expected to talk only positive stuff , it doesn't matter whether it is para moralistic or lies. One can whisper in some body's ears, but not in front of every body. we know who benefits from that.