What I learned in 2013 is that our thoughts affect other people. Not only our actions, but our very thoughts. When Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he wasn’t speaking metaphorically, as I once thought.

It is true. What you think becomes reality. I don’t know how, but it certainly can.

Here’s how I know.

I feel a lot of compassion for folks diagnosed with schizophrenia. I also “get” them. Someone can be talking what sounds like gibberish to another person and it will make sense to me. As a result, I’ve made a couple of friends who suffer from schiz. This was not without problems, however, as I soon learned that building these connections exposed me to some pretty intense stuff.

One of the people was attracted to me and sent me sexual thoughts, which I picked up and thought were my own until he clued me in. To say I had a freak-out moment would be an understatement. At least it explained why I had been feeling like a randy 18-year-old guy. I discontinued that relationship, because it felt inappropriate. The feelings went away.

With the other guy, I began to pick up on demonic craziness. I honestly felt as though I was losing my mind. It was horrible. I cut off contact the second I picked up on those feelings and they went away.

As someone who wants to help heal others, this was frustrating, to say the least. How can you be helpful and supportive to another person if all their stuff is literally rubbing off on you? I don’t have the answer to this question.

Some folks apparently have the ability to project their emotions more strongly than others. But I’m thinking that everyone does this to some degree.

If this is true, then we are very responsible for what we think. Not only to ourselves, but to others. If you think bad thoughts about an enemy, you may very well cause them harm in some manner. It’s like negative prayer. Hence, Jesus’s command to love and pray for our enemies is non-negotiable.

Science supports this idea, by the way. Ant colonies and bee hives, for example, have a “hive mind” and demonstrate social behaviors that could only be learned through the cloud. Is it so far fetched that people might have a similar cloud of consciousness connecting them to one another?

If that’s the case, I want my contribution to the cloud to be love. Not fear, not anger, not jealousy. Love.