When you wish well for your near and dear or pray for someone’s recovery from poor state of health, you always imagine or wish that it reaches that person, however remote she or he may be!
Lot of research has been conducted whether wishing or praying for someone’s wellbeing helps her/him or not. Praying for something good to happen or someone’s good health is practiced in one form or another in all races and religions in the world. Remote prayer is classically known as Intercessory Prayer (IP).
In 2006, Harvard professor Herbert Bensen had conducted systematic study of therapeutic effect of IP on more than 1,800 people; but no conclusive proof could be found. Work done by other researchers – Dr. Charles Bethea, Richard Dawkins, Jeffery Dusek etc. did not bring out consistent effect of IP or existence of any divine intervention consequent to IP. Such research over last several decades has been done in several permutations and combinations:
- Prayers (or good wishes) by strangers remotely
- Prayers by strangers locally
- Prayers by known people remotely
- Prayers by known people locally
Above 4 combinations gets multiplied by 8 times, considering that people praying had belief or no belief in prayers, prayer was offered with or without knowledge of concerned person, concerned person had belief in prayers or not and prayer was offered in anticipation of an event or post event. That brings a total of 32 types of prayers and there can possibly be more!
In many societies, there are rituals for inviting divine powers to bestow good things like peace, prosperity or rains, in case of famine.
What is striking in all of above examples is that the biggest beneficiary is stranger, who holds strong belief that her/his (sincere) prayers or wishes do work and next is that recipient of good wishes, who feels good or grateful to the people, who prayed for her/him, regardless whether she or he is benefited or not!
Do thoughts travel from one to another point or person?
There is no scientific evidence yet; it remains a conjecture! Also, far cry is whether divine intervenes upon invitation through holy words or chanting!!
Yes; your thoughts or prayers affect you directly and that is what all studies prove! If the recipient’s sensory system is triggered by your expressions (on account of your thoughts or prayers), then resultant thoughts in mind of the recipient would impact him. Key is the kind of thought that gets developed in the mind of recipient. In exactly same situation, it is quite common that different recipients develop different thoughts. It is for this reason that above mentioned research on IP has shown varying results!
Why your good thoughts for others bring you more glorious results!
No doubt, you must think good about self. However, you run one risk, when you focus only on yourself – it can expand your ego, while enhancing your confidence; it may drive you into comfort zone, while compromising your efforts to excel!
On other hand, there are umpteen number of upsides in thinking good for others, regardless what they are:
- It is impossible to think good about others sincerely, without first feeling good about self.
- When you think good for others, you go beyond self! This is a real trigger for many good things to come to you!!
A manager, who thinks good for his/her customers and employees, would automatically be greatly benefited. - You become humble and honest.
- You become open minded and optimistic.
- You are compelled to drop your ego and biases!
- Your vision broadens and wisdom deepens!
- It gives birth to empathy and you start to reap rich dividend from same.
- It instantly increases your competence to manage conflicts and allow you to deal with good and bad with same candor!
If you have a difficult boss and go to meet him with decent feelings for him accepting what he is, you would have no difficult to deal with him. Even if he throws toxicity at you, you would automatically refrain yourself to get engaged with or escalate it. This can only help change behavior of boss towards you. - Seeds of a true leadership is sown, when you rise above self and think about others and their good!
So far so good; look at the opposite side!
It is seldom that we think bad about ourselves; but we are ever ready to think bad about others out of envy, rivalry, bias, anger or fear! But, we rarely realize or analyze, if thinking good for others can bring us so much good as above, then thinking bad for others can also multiply into too much bad for us!
Above is what you can watch or I can vouch that it is rampant in our daily rigmarole!
It is impossible that our bad behavior, in any form, can ever bring us success or glory. Some people claim that they get pleasure; but that is sadistic and shameful! It is not possible to have good time with bad mind!
If you are negative inside, you can never create positive outside (for others) or get positive results. Likewise, if you are genuinely positive inside, it is not possible that you can ever create negativity for others.
Very often, I hear people saying “To survive in this cruel world, you can’t be kind; look at that crook – how destiny is kind to him!” This is nothing but our illusion. Most probably, we don’t know real sufferings of the crook.
So, if you want great life, be genuinely good to others. Life would be without luster, if you flick between good and bad (which most do) or without light, if you stick to bad!
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