The Contagion of Thoughts

Contagion: The communication of disease by direct or indirect contact. 
Thoughts: The formation of (dualistic) opinions, especially as a philosophy or system of ideas, or the opinions so formed.

A short story…

It was 2006. I was a graduate student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. I held a part time job as a lobbyist’s assistant, in which I was learning the ropes for my new career choice. 
Even in the soup of mass consciousness, an experience I was enjoying immensely, I could still physically see energy movement and sometimes hear people’s internal thoughts word for word, something that has served me greatly in this life.

I was sitting in South Congress Café, a trendy restaurant that lines South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, with three friends – all about to graduate from their respective advanced degrees. We were having mimosas and enjoying each other’s company, as there was not much time between study sessions to relax with one another.

At the age of twenty-six we were all coupling. Two of us lived with our boyfriends. Another friend – N – talked about her somewhat new relationship. The last friend was getting married in a few months. It was all an extremely human experience, one I was enjoying. 

Sitting across the table from me was my friend getting married and N. As the engaged friend talked about the wedding details, why she was doing it –the logic behind it, and what she hoped to gain from it, I literally watched a thought pattern come from her head and into N’s head.
 
Thought patterns, to me, look like clear molecular structures, almost like viewing cultured cells in a petri dish through a microscope, like in eighth grade biology class.

Subsequently, in a split second, I saw a light bulb go off in N’s head. I heard her thoughts loud as day, “I’m going to marry my boyfriend. I want that life she is describing.”

N did not say it out loud. She sat silently nodding and sipping her mimosa. 

She did go on to marry that boyfriend, and while the marriage has had its problems, I am sure she loves him as much as humanly possible. It was simply the choice for a human experience, and I hold no judgment. 

I was simply observing how thoughts move from one vessel to another. It was an education, which serves me with my clients when they find themselves in situations that do not reconcile with their soul’s voice and desires.

Later in my experiences in which I participated in yogic, spiritual, and conscious groups, I have witnessed a million times over the thought contagion spread with my own two physical eyes and my third eye, which remains, sometimes much to my chagrin, wide open. I have witnessed it in myself, too, of course.

The thought or concept launches into space, and looks for an open space to land. Discernment is, at its core, the ability to decipher whether we are choosing to allow the molecular structure of a concept to land and root, or whether we are acting from within. Acting from within rather than in a cause and effect continuum is freedom from karma, the law of cause and effect. There is no logic in the soul space.

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause great commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle,” Sri Yuketeswar once told Yogananda as a student, quoting from the hindu scriptures (Autobiography of a Yogi, page 133). 

The thought pattern landing in the shallow end of the mind, can impact an entire lifetime and cause ripples than span many incarnations. Sovereignty requires the expanse of the oceanic mind to which nothing can attach. Instead effortless, logic-less action undoubtedly comes from the omnipresent God within us, the soul.

Through witnessing the thought patterns jump in contagion of human actions and reactions, I have seen, first hand, this does not only exist within human groups, yet it has become even more pronounced within the spiritual groups I have participated in, with even more implications. 

People who have declared themselves karma free, myself included, become even more susceptible to such a disease of thought because they are no longer looking for it. As we end the cycle of our seemingly required lifetimes on Earth, maintaining the oceanic mind and the open communication channel of the independent soul's vibrations becomes a practice of the highest significance, as our self-realization depends on it.

As I move deeper into my sovereignty, it is with greater awareness of how this law of cause and effect – one many have declared is no longer theirs – impacts and shapes the embodied enlightenment experience. It is nothing short of fascinating. This truly is the grandest adventure to be had on Earth - the return to SELF.

​Lauren Hutton writes about her adventures of the embodied enlightenment experience, in books and on her patreon page. While the act of being human is wildly courageous, in and of itself, she holds an ineffable honor for those who dare to dive into the co-existence of the human and divine.