New thoughts can come from taking a new perspective on things. To do that is to challenge the assumptions that exist. For example, is love really a feeling of desire or attachment? This is a common assumption, but what if we challenge this?
New Thoughts on Love
Desire and attachment can be strong feelings, and they are often called love in certain contexts. Attachment can be for bad reasons too, right? Desire too can come from less than noble places. What is an alternative definition of love?
How about a recognition of value? Seeing the inherent value in a person, like the beauty you see in a painting or hear in a melody. To be attached or even desirous of beauty, to enjoy it. The enjoyment that you take in another’s existence then could be a definition of love.
Love is more than an emotion, though. How much love does a mother have for her children if she feels fond towards them, but doesn’t feed them? Love in this context has to include action, doesn’t it?
This points up the real problem with defining concepts like love. There are a hundred things we want to communicate. Yet we have just one word for them. Rather than re-defining love, we need to create a dozen new words. Now there’s an area for some new thoughts.
Another way to have new thoughts is to just look for new ideas to replace old ones. On the new idea, to see what value you might find in it. New thoughts, without expanding on them (help yourself).
– Why do we encourage uniformed people to vote? Maybe it’s better to encourage people NOT to vote, unless they are willing to educate themselves on the issues.
– Is multitasking really a sign of efficiency? Maybe the fact that we need to be so busy just to get what we want shows that our actions aren’t effective enough.
– Why can’t we pay less for a surgeon who kills more people on the operating table? Why not recognize that there are better and worse doctors, have that information available, and pay accordingly?
– How about wonder instead of faith? Faith is just believing without reason. Wonder is to marvel at the world and accept that we don’t have reasons or explanations for everything.
Finally, what if our level of creativity, and ability to have new thoughts isn’t just something that is set at birth. A systematic process, one that may not be recognized by those who use it, but can be identified and copied? All of us can train ourselves to have creative new thoughts.
The New Thought movement (also Higher Thought) is a spiritual movement which coalesced in the United States in the early 19th century. New Thought was preceded by "ancient thought", accumulated wisdom and philosophy from a variety of origins, such as Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Taoist, Vedic, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures and their related belief systems, primarily regarding the interaction between thought, belief, consciousness in the human mind, and the effects of these within and beyond the human mind.
New Thought holds that Infinite Intelligence, or God, is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right-thinking" has a healing effect. Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general, modern-day adherents of New Thought share some core beliefs:
- God or Infinite Intelligence is "supreme, universal, and everlasting";
- divinity dwells within each person, that all people are spiritual beings;
- "the highest spiritual principle [is] loving one another unconditionally... and teaching and healing one another"; and
- "our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living'
William James used the term "New Thought" as synonymous with the "Mind cure movement", in which he included many sects with diverse origins, such as idealism and Hinduism.
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