Chapter 15 

You Have Got the Idea 

It is now widely accepted that a good diet is helpful to a healthy life. We are beginning to see the need for such a review of our emotional diet. A meal of artificial feelings, overdone attitudes and cold lifeless caring will not be helpful, especially if we pour on the salt of fixity and the vinegar of suffering. Everything in the physical realm has its equivalent in emotional terms. Even the first-aider’s kiss of life has its counterpart in emotional first aid. There is no substance without the thought form that is behind it. Just as we have come to trace the difficulty that is caused by a diet that is imbalanced, heavily saturated by fat, starch and sugar so we will recognise that an emotional outlook that is strongly held by negative thought forms will cause us ill health. An emotional block is a constriction of the life force as surely as a blocked trachea restricts the flow of air or arteriosclerosis and atheroma constrict the flow of blood. 

Once we have got this idea one of two things are likely to happen. We may look positively upon the prospect of working so directly upon our health and life. Alternatively we may react emotionally to the idea. If we start to look at it this way we might well feel that we are to blame for the mess, we might feel guilty for our failures and begin to reproach ourselves for what we feel we have done to our life and to others. Understandable response. But it is itself a negative emotion and we can actually be free from it. The lessons of life are not intended to induce guilt, rather to help us to be happy. So we need to begin by lovingly accepting ourselves and not feeling guilty for what has happened. Life has mystery in it still and nothing is made clear and no problem solved by dealing out blame. 

It is inevitable that in life we make mistakes and it even appears to be that we must make mistakes and will go on being given life difficulty until we see and admit that we do. The issue is then not one of blame for making mistakes but what we do when we find out our failings. The ideal might be that we stay balanced in a loving acceptance of life but usually we topple over into a pattern of negative emotion. Each of us has a tendency to topple a particular way. That tendency shows our disposition to the remedy types that Dr Bach delineated: the 3 8 remedy states. 

We might see it like this. As people interact with life there are inevitable tensions and difficulties that arise. They are part of the dynamic of life experience. In some cases we turn away from the life force as it enters into us since it can be painful, in others we accept the life force but cannot utilise it effectively. As we ‘rub off’ our difficulties upon one another so negativity can arise between us emotionally like static electricity. The pattern of fear or hopelessness, the pattern of irritation or indifference, indeed any of the human states of mind, builds as a voltage charge in our being. As the static builds we find it increasingly difficult to hold the charge. 

Sooner or later the static must be earthed out. We use the force of this static charge to create thought forms. These thought forms could be positive or negative in content but since they arise from the friction or pain of contact they tend to be negative. We then look for an opportunity to unburden ourselves of them. We can do this to one another or agree to do it to the third party (scape-goating). If we wish to we can project them over a considerable distance to another person though the effect of ‘earthing’ is lessened and slower then. 

If we witness the earthing out of these thought forms we will see the life force dissipate in the drama of the exchange. If we are disposed to irritation there will be an outburst - sparks will fly. If we are disposed to self-pity we will collapse in floods of tears. If we are fearful we will find the difficulty builds until we get to the point where what we feared actually occurs (we have created the reality from the charge). Alternatively we may bury it in our guts where it festers as resentment, or we may attempt to smother it and suppress the force until it explodes. If apathy is the response then we allow the charge straight through us so that the life force ebbs away - even those who come near to us will be earthed out by the pattern so that they will leave depleted. 

Quite often we get drawn into life dramas that will force us to work with these difficulties. In terms of the remedies we often recognise that in relationships people actually work the pattern together. Thus a Vine person who is domineering requires a Centaury person to order about. The Centaury person who is weak-willed equally needs the bossy Vine for the expression of the life lesson. In the same way the Chicory type needs someone to be Chicory with: the emotional binding must be made upon someone. So life provides an external expression for the thought form - hurdles for those lacking in confidence, loads for those who are burdened by life and worries for the anxious. What would we do if we had no problems? We would invent them! 

To begin to clear the pattern and all the attendant problems we have only to start work upon it. Changing our diet begins with the first meal. What is required is that we act to change our thought forms and as we change into a more harmonious, positive, life-affirming outlook so we will be well. First we will notice the change as we become happy. Negative thought forms create unhappiness and as they change so we become happy. Then, whatever ill has taken hold of our body it will be eased. Even if the process of degeneration has gone to a point where it is irreversible still the heart will be eased and a gentle and positive acceptance of life will suffuse the body. 

A simple and practical way to set to work upon ourselves is through the use of the Bach Flower Remedies. Bach discovered the remedies to help those who were sick in the body but we now can see a way to use them to heal the balance of the mind even before the body becomes an expression of a disease that requires healing. Taking a flower remedy can help us to contact the positive force of life that will counter the negativity. In that case the static charge will be neutralised in us, not earthed out through another person nor turned inwards to cause internal suffering. 

It is also possible to work directly with the life force so that we can neutralise the negativity in ourselves, or that which comes towards us. Essentially all that we need for this is a recognition that the negative and positive states exist. Then, instead of building the negative thought form, and earthing it out on another person, we can consciously neutralise it by creating the positive thought form. If we are handed the negative thought form of another person the same applies. We can create the positive thought form in ourselves first to neutralise and then to broadcast the force outwards. 

In practice what must we do? First let us look again to see what would be the action of the flower remedies. If we are stuck in a pattern that is refusing to work with the forward movement of life experience, where we are constantly looking back, rerunning the film of memories with a longing for the happiness of the past then we are refusing to be active in the present. This Honeysuckle state as Bach identified it has a romantic nostalgia. To take Honeysuckle as a Bach Flower Remedy would act to bring us to life in the present, conclude the lessons in the past and to free us from the binding of memories. In consequence the life force coming into us would be used to enhance the present and not feed the thought forms of the past. 

In such a case as this the negativity is not an active force that is earthed painfully upon another person but a drawing force that sustains the images of the past. Yet the action is deadly. It works to maintain thought forms that would naturally decay, to keep in life things that should be dissolving back into other levels of existence. It is not so sweet. 

If we used Bach Flower Remedies to work on such a state we would find help. But once we recognise that the process is built upon thought forms we would find meaning. We can work directly upon the thought forms themselves. This means that we create thoughts that are the opposite: in the positive of Honeysuckle they are seen as moving into the present and deliberately creating thoughts that are here and now. The example of a different remedy will serve to further illustrate the process. For the Cerato state which in a negative form is imitative and uncertain we can create positive thought forms that will determine that the intuition is responded to, decisions are made and held to. The positive thought form of the tired and weak will be for strength and soon. 

However, these thought forms are more than words. They are actual force patterns. It takes an act of will to create such things and it requires our constant effort to sustain them. Bach describes the process: 

We must steadfastly practise peace, imagining our minds as a lake ever to be kept calm, without waves, or even ripples, to disturb its tranquillity, and gradually develop this state of peace until no event of life, no circumstance, no other personality is able under any condition to ruffle the surface of that lake or raise within us any feelings of irritability, depression or doubt. It will materially help to set apart a short time each day to think quietly of the beauty of peace and the benefits of calmness, and to realise that it is neither by worrying nor hurrying that we accomplish most, but by calm, quiet thought and action become more efficient in all we undertake... and though at first it may seem to be beyond our dreams, it is in reality', with patience and perseverance, within the reach of us all.³⁹

In this way we can bring ourselves to really learn what the Bach Flower Remedies can teach us. For while they are always of benefit as a physical helper the true virtue of the remedies is in their showing of the mental states and how we may each work with them for ourselves. Whether we begin with affirming the positive idea of the state, by contemplating the image of the flower, by attuning ourselves to the natural world, whatever way we endeavour to work we are trying to move towards a harmony of understanding. Bach said that disease was only here in order to help us to see the nature of our conflicts. Equally the substance of any thing is only here to lead us towards the idea so that we can see and understand how it is. If we see and understand already we can do without the substance. If we work with the substance we will come to understand. That is the story of life. 

In our world, animals are subject to the limitation of the thought forms that create them. We see animals as bounded by instinct for this reason. A tiger is held within the pattern of its nature just as a gull is patterned to its gull behaviour. The same is true of the animal level in humans. This means that we are bounded by the limitation of our ideas. We can be caught in the web of thought forms such as illness and health, in conflict and violence, in the ideas of polarity, in the concept of materialism that gives us the appearance of being subjected to materiality. But it is actually possible for human beings to realign their being by reference to new or different thought forms. A donkey will always be bound into the limited thought form of donkey: a human being has the potential to transcend. 

By consciously creating a new thought form for our being we can change what we are. If our thought form does not contain the illusion of our difficulties they will not exist. In terms of this animal-level problem of illness we can create the thought form of health and realign ourselves accordingly all the way through to the physical. Dr Bach showed us that disease derives from the negative emotional states and that positive emotional states lead to happiness, health and well-being. As such he was aligning himself with a long tradition of wisdom that has always known that mankind creates its own difficulties and has the power to overcome them. 

We all know that human individuals are capable of change. As we change as individuals so the world will change. The quality of our thought forms creates the quality of our life. It is our thought forms - yours and mine - that will help to determine what happens. For every thing there is a season, a time when this thing alone is right and proper. Who can stand in the way of an idea whose time has come? It will explode into the public consciousness and no pattern of restraint will withstand it. Life is about change and a love of life brings a joyous exclamation of being without limitation. We must love life more than conflict, we must love life more than illness, we must love life more than unhappiness, we must love life more than any fixed pattern of ideas. Then we may love and accept the life lesson for our being and rejoice in the experience of being alive.