Bad Medicine

Disease of the mind. Do you know what that phrase means? What do you think? I’ve learned that disease of the mind is something that is highly contagious. It’s a horrible epidemic in our reservation society. People also talk about “bad medicine.” Disease of the mind is an example of “bad medicine.”

Disease of the mind happens when people get together and gossip, or when people get together and bully someone else, whether it be on the job at school or in the community or in other public settings. For example, praying before meetings and then immediately attacking others in the meeting is disease of the mind. Nowadays, there’s even bullies within the family. Family violence is a good example of disease of the mind.

Some people believe we can go back to the “old ways,” but before we can get back to the “old ways,” we’d have to overcome our addiction to engaging in disease of the mind behavior, such as gossiping, jealousy, bullying, violence, as well as wishing bad on other people. These are all examples of “bad medicine.” Whether you believe it or not, “bad medicine” starts in the mind. When you are afflicted with disease of the mind, the more your mind is influenced by this invisible disease the worse you are going to treat or think about people. So, what can you do to cure your individual disease of the mind?

No one can do that for you. as there’s no magic pill. There’s no magic tea. There’s no magic when it comes to disease of the mind, it’s all up to you as an individual to go within and truthfully admit to yourself what your thoughts actually consist of and who they are directed at on a daily basis. What are you really wishing upon other people? Sometimes when your voice your thoughts it causes trouble, even if you didn’t intend to. Look at what this week brought from the President Trump, who said some terrible things on social media, threatening to annihilate others.

His disease of the mind is probably incurable because in order to cure yourself, you have to be able to look at yourself and admit that you did something wrong or that you intended to do great harm to someone else. One of the hardest things in the world is to be able to look within and admit that you need to change things. No one can do that work for you. No one can process the emotions that you’ve held inside, perhaps for decades. You’ve role modeled all your bad behavior to your family and your children. that’s where the disease of the mind is contagious because sometimes when you watch your family, you see they act just like you. So, if you are a bad person your family is going to act just like you. If you don’t want to change for yourself, maybe you should think about trying to change for your children.

I don’t think our ancestors had disease of the mind the way we do. So, there’s no way we can go back to the “old ways” (whatever that means) until we process and cure this disease of the mind that we’re all afflicted with. Start by monitoring your thoughts – what are you thinking right now as you read this? Is it good or bad? Bad thoughts are definitely disease of the mind. How are you going to transform those bad thoughts? How would you clean up your mind if you knew others could hear your thoughts, as if you were speaking them out loud?  Think about it.