There are plenty of spiritual teachers - especially in the New Age, but also among Christians - who assert that 'thinking' is a bad thing; and making various suggestions as to what should be done to ignore or stop it.
By my understanding; all such notions become a lethal problem in a world dominated by evil - since any individual that is simply immersed in his environment, passive and absorptive, doing what comes 'naturally in response to whatever is around him... as of 2020 any such person will be doing the work of evil.
Yet it needs to be acknowledged that there is some validity in the criticism of thinking. It could reasonably be said that bad thinking is a bad thing - and most thinking is bad!
On the other hand, 'good thinking' - which I have variously termed the primary thinking of the real self, intuition, and direct knowing - is perhaps the most important thing, here and now.
Interestingly, both those who regard all thinking as bad, and those who recognise the importance of good thinking, are often united in prescribing meditative practices and disciplines that in one way or another aim to 'control' thinking.
I have come to believe that this is misguided; and that thinking cannot valuably be-controlled; because every attempt to control thinking uses, works-from, some lower from of mental activity such as habit (which is a sub-human behaviour), deliberately altered consciousness (e.g. by drugs, active imagination or 'shamanic' practices), or will-power (which is a superficial and labile, personality-level motivation).
So what can be done if 'good thinking' cannot be achieved by any kind of 'systematic effort'?
Well, we can recognise when good thinking is-happening. We can know that this kind of thinking is intrinsically a good thing, and can attend to it; and later reflect-upon it.
Such behaviour is iteelf (to some extent) an act of attunement and alliance with God's creative work.
Thus recognition, discernment, attention, and reflection on good thinking will therefore both encourage and detect God's creative work as it applies to us.
So we can expect to get better at recognising 'good thinking'; and can expect also that 'good thinking' will happen more often; since we are actively-helping God in that providence by which he brings potentially-beneficial events to pass in our own specific lives.
