have the pressure to produce any specific content to their thinking. They see thought for what it is: a function of consciousness, a voluntary ability that shapes our experience of life. Does this mean that people who understand that thought is a function will intentionally think negative thoughts? No, of course not. Neither does it mean that negative thoughts will never enter their minds. They merely understand that negative thoughts, in and of themselves, have no power to hurt them. To them, thoughts, whether positive or negative, are simply thoughts.
Stacey’s Story
Thought as a pure function of consciousness doesn’t have any content until we put it in. Our beliefs, ideas about life, underlying assumptions, and opinions will determine the content we put into our thinking, but thought itself is harmless, an empty concept until we fill it with meaning. Suppose, for example, that when Stacey was a young child, her parents hired a live-in babysitter to help take care of her. When Stacey grew up, she believed that the most important element of being a good parent was spending the most amount of time possible with her children. One day while she was reflecting about her parents, a thought came to her mind that her parents weren’t as attentive as they might have been. After all, they had hired a live-in babysitter for her. Why didn’t they want to take care of her themselves? Maybe they didn’t care about her as much as they said they did.
But how does she know that? What is she basing that conclusion on? Who just put the content into her thoughts about parenting? She did. A thought came to her mind about her parents — a simple thought to begin with, until she added the content that said, “Maybe my parents didn’t care as much as I always thought they did.” Never mind that Stacey had a perfectly healthy and loving relationship with both her parents — a thought has come to her mind. If she takes this thought seriously and runs with it, it will definitely lower her spirits. She could discuss it with her friends, her spouse, or if it seemed really important, she could even bring it up to her parents and take issue with them. In fact, popular psychology would have her do just that — analyze the static, then act on it. The idea of getting something off your chest and expressing your feelings is thought to be a good idea — but is it always? If Stacey understood where her feelings were actually coming from, would she choose to bring them up with her parents?
All this grief, and much more like it, comes from a simple misunderstanding of the nature of thought. Rather than seeing her thinking as something that she was constantly doing, Stacey tended to take her thoughts to heart. Had Stacey recognized what was happening, she could have dismissed her negative thoughts about her upbringing — allowing her to maintain a positive feeling and feel secure about her life.
The story of Stacey and the live-in babysitter will come up again in the next three chapters to demonstrate how the five principles work together to create a happy life.
Thought Systems
All of our past thoughts can be clustered into our “thought system,” a self-contained unit through which we see the world. Every decision, reaction, and interpretation we have is colored by our individualized thought system.
Our thought system is like a filter that information passes through before it gets to our awareness. It is a complex, perfectly woven pattern of thought, linked together into concepts, beliefs, expectations, and opinions. It is our thought system that enables us to compare new facts or situations with what we already know from past experience.
Your thought system contains all the information you have accumulated over your lifetime. It is past information that your thought system uses to interpret the relative significance of everything that happens in your life. In this sense, a thought system is the source of conditioned thought. When you rely on it, you are thinking in a habitual manner, your usual way of seeing things. Here is where your habitual reactions to life are formed.
Thought systems contain our view of “the way life is.” They are the psychological mechanisms that convince us when we are right, accurate in our understanding, or justified. Thought systems by nature are stubborn and do not appreciate being tampered with. They are absolutely self-validating. If your thought system includes the idea that our country’s schools are horrible and are the cause of most of our problems as a nation, then the following scenario would be possible: You’re reading the evening paper and on page thirty-six, you come across an article near the bottom of the page that says, “Twenty-one students fail literacy exam in district.” You smile; you are proven right again. You show the article to your spouse, “You see dear, our schools are falling apart. It’s just like I’ve been telling you.” You don’t know that on the front page of the same paper, the headlines read, “NATION’S SCHOOL TEST SCORES UP 17% OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS!” But such is the nature of thought systems. Due to the way they are wired in our minds, there will always seem to be a logical connection among things we perceive to be true. Our beliefs will always make perfect sense to us within our own thought system.
Our thought systems lead us to believe that we are realists and that the way we see life is the way life really is. The fact that one person can view a situation as an opportunity and another equally intelligent person sees the same thing as a major problem doesn’t bother a thought system. Our thought system dismisses the other point of view as off track, well intended but wrong, or not quite right.
Because our thought systems are filled with our memory of the past, information we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes, they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way. We react negatively (or positively) to the same situations or circumstances over and over again, interpreting our current experiences in life as we have in the past. A person who believes that people are inherently critical will become defensive whenever anyone offers a suggestion, regardless of whether the person meant to be critical. This will become a theme in his life unless and until he understands the nature of thought systems, particularly his own. Understanding this concept will help him see that he is not seeing reality, or truth, but an interpretation of reality through his own thinking.
Because our thought systems are so familiar to us, they seem to be giving us true, accurate information. Because of the self-validating aspect of thought systems, we accept familiar ideas and disregard the rest. This is why people rarely change their political or religious views, and why they hesitate to even discuss them with friends or family. They “know the truth” and can come up with examples and arguments to support their claims. They also “know” that their family and friends “don’t understand the truth,” and because they are stubborn, they probably never will. We know the result of locking heads with other thought systems — usually frustration is experienced on all sides. This is why people gravitate toward others who share their beliefs, and become impatient with those who don’t.
Understanding the nature of thought systems can change this. When we know that other people (and ourselves) innocently interpret our beliefs as if they were reality, we can let go of the need to be right. We can see that our beliefs are merely a function of past conditioning and experiences. Had our past been different, our ideas about life would be different. Other people’s beliefs are also a result of their past experiences. Had things been different, a totally different set of beliefs would have surfaced.
“This may be true,” you say, “but my view of life is a good one and not only do I still think it’s accurate, I wouldn’t change it even if I could.” The point here is not to change your thought system or your ideas about life, but to see the arbitrary nature of them. We only need to see the fact of thought systems, not tamper with the contents, to reduce the frustration in our lives. Unless we understand thought systems, we can rarely hear other points of view. We interpret what others say and do based on what we already know. Information comes in and we decide whether it makes sense, based on our previous knowledge. Unless the information is something we already agree with, our thought system will have a tendency to discount it. In short, new information is usually unwelcome within our existing thought systems. This is why we can be bothered by the same events or circumstances over and over again throughout our lifetimes. We have developed recurrent cause-andeffect relationships between certain events and reactions.
For example, you might believe that whenever someone gives you a suggestion, it means that they disapprove of you as a person. You won’t question this because your thought system will validate it. It always