My Thoughts and My Life

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Society, Spirituality, Consciousness |

Sometimes I forget about the link between the condition of my thoughts, and the condition of my life. The two are undeniably linked; this is an obvious statement, but the obvious is quite often overlooked. It’s a two way process; our thoughts effect our life, and in turn our life effects our thoughts. It is a bit like sailing, sometimes the sea is calm and you get a smooth journey, and other times the waves are threatening to tip over the craft. There are a number of things that can give negative energy to our thought patterns. Once I realize my mind has whirled down the plughole and found itself in some dank sewer, there are a number of things I do to bring myself back up again. This is an important process, because when thoughts stay in the dark for any length of time, they begin to manifest into your life.

Dark Thoughts

Pretty soon the turbulent thoughts, cause low emotions - which in turn feeds arguments, pessimism and general cantankerousness. Left for too long and your thoughts will slowly drag your life down into that proverbial sewer. It’s a slippery slope and one that is quite easy to find yourself on. So the first step is a form of realization; “Hey, I am feeling crappy. My thoughts are dark and things around me are getting a bit grim.”

That’s a good start. Observation of something, leads to recognition, which in turn leads to awareness. Once you have a bit of awareness about something, well then you can consciously work with it.

Negative thoughts tend to feed themselves; they are like giant magnets which draw other negative energy towards them. Sometimes when I am in a bit of a dark brooding mood, I tend to focus on dark brooding subjects. A personal situation, or a person or two that I may know, if that doesn’t work then the media is full of negativity. And so on.

Negative thoughts are strange, because they love to focus on situations that either can’t be fixed, or situations that your ego really doesn’t want fixed. In any event, shining a big bright light on the dark internal thought process instantly starts to cast shadows. And it’s those shadows that are causing the problems, because they are personal negativity which likes to hide inside the dark areas of the mind.

Dark Mind

That is what I mean about conscious awareness of the thought process. Once you get to observe those shadows, they panic or even more amusingly, act with a sort of guilty embarrassment like you discovered them naked. Sometimes they then try and flee into a crevice. Already you will feel a bit better.

There are a number of things you can do now. One that personally works for me is to make friends with those shadowy thoughts. They are pretty lonely in there, and that is half the problem. So give them a bit of recognition; acknowledgement is half the battle. Work in very simplistic terms. Making things simple helps to break many constricting chains.

Here is a personal example: I have always felt mis-understood. It’s a personal issue born from a lack of recognition from my parents, a burden which I then carried - and over the years added considerable amounts to. This acts as a kind of filter, resulting in me seeing certain issues through a dark tint. A common issue is for people to disagree with how I raise my daughter, because my methods are not contemporary. For example we don’t watch any broadcast TV as it is largely nonsense, meaning our daughter also watches very little TV. A lot of people (who spend inordinate amounts of time watching TV themselves) fail to understand this, and no amount of explaining can alleviate their (somewhat conditioned) opinion.

So on occasion - in such situations - I start finding fault with people, and in my mind, I begin to belittle them somewhat. After all - my dark little shadow thinks - I know better than them! Before long that dark shadow occupies an increasingly larger space in my thoughts - finding fault with this and that. Things begin to get depressingly dull in a world full of perceived idiots. Eventually, pretty much everything becomes jaded with that same shade of tint.

But then I stop for a moment, and consider my negativity. Awareness of the thought process, gives rise to conscious thought. Conscious awareness shines a light in the mind. That little neglected and often mis-understood shadow guiltily looks into the torch light. “Ah!”, I think “So I’ve caught you again!”

I have a special relationship with that particular shadow. Once you discover them, you can work with them. I learnt from this shadow of its feelings of emotional neglect, and that it felt it was never given much recognition for its intelligence and ability. So - quite childlike assertions then. That is how most of these shadows are…and when you see them and understand them it casts an entirely different light on feelings of negativity and problems in life, don’t you think?

Comments

One Response to “My Thoughts and My Life”

Chris on August 26th, 2007 10:22 pm

I have always felt misunderstood and judged too, but I wonder now in retrospect if this is something I created, a perception, and thus cannot blame others. It IS all about the AWARENESS of the negativty. Before I used to think the negativity was its own force, but becoming AWARE that I am the force behind the negativity allows me to become aware that I can CHANGE it…. so long as a person thinks they are doomed to be negative, they are denying themself, and their power.
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