The Power of positive Thoughts and its Limitations

I have been writing a lot about different religions and of course different philosophies and perceptions of life remain interesting to me and I enjoy analyzing them. I believe that it does not do you any good if you blindly believe in a religion and just sit down, don’t move and hope that God will fix your life. I always recommend that you should take things into your hands, that you should take responsibility for your actions and their consequences and that you can change your life. There is a misperception of this idea however which has turned into another very popular way of thinking: the idea that you are an almighty God.

If you hear this statement by itself, it may sound a bit crazy: I am God. A spiritual person could argue however that we all are God, everything around us and every single human being. That sounds like it makes sense. Everything is God? Okay. So this means you are the creator. I agree, you are the one who creates his world. If you want to be happy, you can laugh and if you want to be sad, you can cry. But then the modern ‘Newage’ scene goes one step further and that is where I cannot agree anymore. They believe that the power of your thoughts and your mind, the power of being the creator yourself, can cross the laws of physics.

This is a topic that has to be treated very carefully in order not to be misunderstood. There are thousands of books that want to teach you how you can be happy and successful with the help of positive thinking. I do agree, there is much too much negative thinking in this world! If you think in a positive way, you will make a different impression on others, get less pressure and thus will be happier and most probably also more successful.

There are also hundreds of lecturers who tell about the power of your thoughts when it comes to illnesses and physical problems. Use affirmations, see the source of the problem, change your thinking and get healthy in this way! Yes, to a certain degree I can even agree with this. There are ways of acting and thinking that cause problems in our body. Stress for example creates high blood pressure and can even lead to heart attacks! If you learn how to be calm, if you don’t get too excited about small problems, you can avoid major health risks.

Where I see the problem is when people think that through their positive thinking they can actually change the reality. By just imagining how cancer shrinks and vanishes, you cannot finish the tumor in someone’s body! If that worked, wouldn’t everybody be able to cure themselves? By simply praying for world peace you won’t stop others fighting! If that was true, don’t you think enough people are already praying for that?

This unrealistic idea does not stop there. Apparently, if you take your hands and make an upward movement around your head as if you straighten flower petals that are hanging down around your head, you can energize yourself and don’t need to sleep. People tell others they should visualize a ball of golden energy around their car when they are on a journey and it will prevent them from having an accident!

No, positive thinking is a great tool and we should all use it further but there are limits to what it can do. I believe one of the most dangerous aspects of modern spirituality is that everybody can just invent anything and sell it as the truth, even if it is just impossible and unrealistic.