You may say that your mind is addicted to negative thinking, but in truth it’s “you” who is addicted to negative thoughts. The “mind” only responds to your vibration and interest, in other words the “mind” does not have a life of it’s own but it does gather momentum from your attention. Through your constant attention to negative thoughts, you have given a lot of momentum to the negative thinking in your mind, and now it feels as if your mind has a life of its own and that it’s thinking negative thoughts constantly. The first step towards freedom from negative thinking is to become “conscious” of your own dysfunctional movement towards feeding negativity.
You don’t become a “realist” by thinking negatively
Most people defend their “habit” of thinking negative thoughts by stating that they are being “realistic”. They feel that they are only being “truthful” when they think negatively about their life and the world in general. Some even feel guilty about thinking a positive thought, or a thought of well-being. The truth however is that whenever you align yourself with a negative thought, you align yourself against life, because life cannot support you in a negative thought.
The reason you feel “bad” when you think a negative thought is because in that moment you are pulling yourself away from the vibration of life (or the wholeness of you). When you are disconnected from the vibration of life (which is based in love and joy), you end up creating a reality that is based in fear and lack. So when you are thinking a negative thought you are not be a “realist” you are just being a “hinderer” of your well-being.
Negative thinking is a habit
Like any addiction, negative thinking gathers momentum with daily use. You may be a person who has been predominantly thinking negative thoughts since your childhood, so now you’ve become deeply addicted to the habit of negative thinking so much so that you start feeling a loss of “identity” when you try to align with joy or love. This is a highly dysfunctional addiction because it causes you to stay disconnected with life itself, and hence it keeps you rooted in a reality which perpetuates suffering.
Just to see this dysfunction in you is enough to create a “shift” within. You have to be willing to let go of your “defensiveness” and acknowledge that your negative thinking is the only reason for the negative reality you are living in. Stop coming up with excuses to defend your addiction to negative thinking.
When you start becoming more and more conscious of this dysfunctional habit in you, it starts slowing down in momentum. You can consciously move your attention away from the stream of negative thinking in your mind (which has a momentum to it), and stay alert so that you are not pulled in by the momentum. With time, the mind will start losing the momentum that it had gathered. Once the mind loses its “negative thinking” momentum, you will be free to think in the direction of your desires, and thus align with the vibration of joy (which is the vibration of life).
Letting go of negative thinking can feel like a loss of identity
The mind does have a huge momentum and so it takes sometime before it slows down and eventually dissolves all patterns of negative thinking. Be patient with yourself and allow this process to happen. It can take a few months, or even a year, for the mind to fully dissolve the momentum it had gathered due to your attention to negative thinking. It’s very normal to feel a sense of “disorientation” when the mind starts losing its “familiar” patterns of negative thinking.
A lot of people feel a sense of “loss” or emptiness when the mind starts dissolving its old patterns of negativity, as they stop feeding it with their attention. There can even be a lot fear associated with moving out of the familiar domain of negative reality. One has to be rooted in the knowing that the dissolution of negative thinking is ultimately going to result in the creation of a positive reality, a reality aligned with your true nature of love, joy and peace. When you are grounded in this truth, you can make this transition quite easily.
Hi Sen, it has been two weeks and i am practicing your advise. I am getting better and better every day. Sometimes my obsessive thoughts comes and gives some fear and lack but i am still not giving attention to my mind, stay as a watcher or stay by side watching my mind how it goes crazy to think about garbage things that they have no value. It is hard sometimes allowing this process, because when your body in tense, relaxation not 100 percent, but i am sure by the time i will be more relaxed and allow this negative thoughts pass through my mind more smooth and easy like you say cloud passing the sky, ice meltin in the water in very natural way.Today i had a tense my body and i did not relaxed that much better then other days, i found myself fixated to the thoughts then when i relazed i got pulled away myself from the negative thoughts then again fixated, somedays it is realy hard to be open of negative thoughts and let them pass through your mind.
Cihan – It won’t be long before you start feeling “free” of the mind’s pull. The negative thinking in the mind does have a strong momentum owing to the fact that you gave it a lot of “attention” in the past. Now that you’ve stopped feeding these negative thoughts with your attention, the momentum of negative thinking will start subduing and slowing down, and one day you will realize that negative thinking is no longer able to pull your attention – this is a place of full liberation. Stay with this practice, don’t be hard on yourself and don’t feel discouraged. Stay in a relaxed consciousness no matter how strong the pull of negativity that arises in you.
It’s like a car going at 100 miles and hour, when you remove the foot from the accelerator, it takes sometime before it comes to a full halt. You can pull the brakes on your car and bring it to an immediate stop, but it’s not possible to jam the brakes on the mind to bring it to a sudden halt, usually it has to be allowed to slow down and finally come to a halt.
Your consciousness will keep getting brighter and stronger as you stay as as detached presence. Sometimes you will get dragged into the mind, and that is completely fine during this process. With time the mind’s pull will fall away considerably so that it’s no longer able to pull you in this way. Just be patient with yourself and continue staying as relaxed consciousness.
Cihan – It would be helpful if you do the sitting meditation for 30 minutes every morning for a while. I have explained this practice in the following link – sitting meditation
Hi Sen,
I have read many of your articles and they all make a lot of sense when I read them, but it can sometimes be difficult to put them into practice. I feel like when I have one negative thought, after some time if I am able to rationalize and finally let it go, almost instantly, it is replaced by another negative thought. Then suddenly, I don’t fear the one I was thinking about earlier at all, but this new one gains a lot of momentum and speed quickly and suddenly THAT one is all that I can think about. And it continues this way…
I agree with what you said that you’re almost afraid to let go of the negativity and be content and happy once you are feeling calm…that your mind almost goes searching for what else it can think of to upset you. It is so upsetting when this happens because I am almost afraid to feel happy when I am, in fear that I will think another bad thought that will upset me again. Will staying with this practice you talked about help end this cycle?
Arb, it’s not possible to be free of the mind’s fear-based pull as long as you fear the mind. The first step is to stop fearing the mind, even when the mind is fearful. You are not the mind, but a space of awareness outside it that can watch it. If you were only the mind/brain you wouldn’t be able to watch the mind – the fact that you are able to observe the mind shows that you are “before” it. When you know this, you can first start seeing the brain/mind for what it is – a machine or an organ in the body, programmed for survival and physicality, nothing more. To say you are afraid of the mind is like saying you are afraid of your computer. First, you need to come to a place where you don’t fear the mind anymore, only from this place can you start seeing through its conflicts/resistances and thus dis-identify from them through your awareness of them. If you are asking “how to stop fearing the mind”, well it’s not a technique, it’s just about an openness, a open courage, to allow the mind to be and see it as it is without trying to suppress it, until you no longer fear it. The practice of staying as a space of awareness to you mind is just an invitation to start seeing the mind as it is, and thus no longer be over-whelmed or afraid of it.
Thank you Sen. And is it normal to feel guilt sometimes when you have a negative thought? Will letting go of the negative thought also get rid of the guilt that can come with it, because sometimes that can feel worse and make you feel like you’ve already done something wrong…when you have not. It was just a thought, alone.
Actually “guilt” is a negativity which arises from over-sensitivity, unworthiness or mindset of suppression where you try to suppress the natural movements of the mind. The mind naturally has dimensions of love, hatred, fear, joy, boredom and sexuality in and it’s going to produce thoughts from all these dimensions. Why feel guilty when its the mind producing the thoughts? It’s not as if you have a control over which thought will come into your mind 10 minutes from now. The only reason you feel guilty is because you are taking “personal ownership” for all the thoughts of your mind, because you are so fully identified with it – taking it to be who you are in. The mind is the mind, it’s just an aspect happening in your awareness, just like your heart beat. Just let the mind be, if its thinking a negative thought, allow it without believing it – don’t make its thoughts so personal, its just a machine connected with human consciousness and it picks up a lot of stuff like an antennae.
Hi Sen,
Thank you for you articles, I really understand what you are trying to say throughout, I have been off and on suffering from anxiety, mainly lots of negative thoughts. By biggest fear/thought is ” will this ever pass, will it consume me. Will it make me go crazy blah blah blahWhy don’t I have the control, I just always feel so mixed matched all the time. I’m reading constantly And visiting sites looking foe a breakthrough, trying affirmations, information overload, why can’t I do it ?? Please shead some new light, I need some help.
Lu
Luisa, the problem is that all your pursuit is stemming from a place of fear – you are afraid of the negativity and are trying mightily to get rid of it, but this not how you come to a place of freedom. When you fear something, you are automatically shackled to it. If you really want freedom, you need to stop fearing negativity and become “allowing” of it fully in your being (not as a means to get rid of it, but just as the natural state of being open to life). Negative and positive are both the polarities of life, and you cannot try to cling to positive and avoid the negative, the mind is bound to have both these polarities all the time. But when you become allowing of the fear/negativity, its intensity, and grip on you, start coming down and dissipating. All your search, affirmations and efforts are coming from a place of fear and hence cannot take you to a place of freedom from fear. If you want to be free, become “allowing”, just let go of your futile attempt to run away from negativity, stop and just allow it all inside you. Only in this fully allowing can the intensity of your negativity come down and dissipate, there is a balance/stability that starts coming into your as you keep becoming more and more allowing of the negativity within. You can also read this post – allowing the release of suppressed energy for more insights.
Sen, when you love another person, does that love come from the mind- or is it a recognition of oneness with the other?
I was just reading your reply to Arb, where you say the mind has various dimensions; fear, hate, love- and I thought that sounds kind of clinical- love is just a function of the mind- I loved dearly, and felt that love was something beyond the mind?
Again huge thanks for taking the time to write, and reply to all of us out here- I feel truly grateful to have found your pages , and thank-you for your patience .
Stella.
Stella, the question is why is it that you don’t feel this type of love towards everyone (since it’s all one), and only towards some specific person? It’s because as a human being our love is “selective”, and this selection/preference happens in our mind(brain) and heart, the hearts find compatibility as much as the minds. Since love is not just confined to the mind, but also comes from the heart connection, it feels “beyond the mind”. Moreover, when you love someone, you inherently become a vibration of love which is also the vibration of life, and hence you become connected with your life-stream, with the wholeness of life, which gives you a feeling of going beyond the mind. Of course, the mind can then start becoming needy of this person because it associates this feeling of wholeness with this person, this neediness creates fear, and this fear creates a resistance within which eventually causes us to block the feeling of love and get rooted in the feeling of fear.
wow, thanks so much.
Hi Sen!
Can you explain why you say life vibration and energy is positive and is based on joy and love not negative based on fear and hate? What is the evidence to that?
Paddy, since you are also life-energy you can see the evidence in yourself – ask yourself, if you had a choice between having love/joy or having fear/hate what would you prefer? The answer is obvious, any living being would prefer joy/love over hate/fear, because joy/love is what feels good – and the reason it feels good is because its our natural vibration. The reason fear/hate feels bad is because it pulls away from our natural vibration, and this pulling away is what feels like “suffering” or resistance or stress in our body. The reason why a lot of humans become rooted in fear/hate is because there is no space of awareness within them to see through this negativity, and they just become unconscious identified with the mind’s misguided perceptions.
Thank you. This makes sense.
Thanks a lot sen… I was so depressed last night. And read yours various articles which really calmdown my negative thoughts. And i feel better…. Actully i am continously going on failled in my ca final exams since last 3 years. Just because of that i am so much depressed and i need a right idea which bring out me from so depressive mood.
Your logics behind the negetivity are very soild….
Apert from this you give solution how to control your negativity … It is very importent
I have no words to say…. Except
Thanx Sen
dear sen ,
if i have a obssesive thought related to past which makes me feel guilty , if there is a battle between me and my mind if i am really guilty or not , what should i do ? its been years and i havent been able to find answer . how do you dissolve everything without finding the answers?
Ryan, what’s required is to first allow yourself to see these thought patterns and allow this feeling of guilt without trying to escape them. In this place of allowing let yourself also be “impersonal” and see the thoughts for what they are, if you get too emotional (like feeling guilty) you will not be able to see the thoughts for what they are. Some thoughts require you to reason it out and to gain clarity before they can be let go of (or dissolved). You can use the below logical thinking to see through these thought patterns.
1. Your past is a platform from where you learn, evolve and grow. None of us are perfect, we are all constantly evolving and growing. Making errors in judgments, making mistakes, doing something unwise, being imbalanced is all part of the journey as we grow into a better awareness and wisdom as a being. If you did something in the past (or think that you did something) that makes you feel guilt, acknowledge what you might have done differently and see if it’s something that you would do as a part of what you feel is right or as a part of some fear-based belief of what is the right thing to do. Now you can let go of this thought knowing that you’ve learnt from it and it has allowed you to be clearer about how you would like to conduct yourself in the future.
2. Are you using guilt as a means to stay rooted in the familiar domain of feeling negative, in which case you may be holding onto the thought out of habit and it may have no reasonable meaning in your current life, as the person you are right now. If you think its just a habit that you’ve developed you need to let go of this habit of thinking by understanding that it’s a choice on your part to do so – just like quitting a smoking addiction requires a choice to let go of the habit of picking up a cigarette.
Emotions dissolve in momentum when you are in a state of allowing, but some thoughts would require you to bring a “reasoning” ability and the awareness to see the reality (and the delusion) in them to let go of holding on to them.
(Sorry about the delay in reply, I sometimes miss some comments while replying, sometimes I think of coming back to a comment later to reply but I forget about it, not intentional, it’s just a slip – if I don’t see value in a comment I would most just delete it rather than leave it un-replied to)
dear sir ,
one last question i would like to ask is , by bringing in the awareness and bringing down the momentum of my mind and accepting the negativity of guilt and anger to arise willingly , will i be able to calm down my emotions and mind because as of now , its just a vicious cycle , my mind is pumping in all guilt and anger every few seconds .
thank you
Ryan, allow the emotional energy of guilt, and anger, to arise, along with the thoughts related to these feelings, in the space of openness. In the past your habit would be to identify with these emotions and thoughts when they arose, and this caused you to keep re-fueling/re-cycling their momentum. What’s needed now is to consciously see them as a presence of past momentum, and not derive your personal identity from them – just let their movement happen in the mind and body while you stay in a space of relaxed awareness. Also, bring yourself to understand that what happened in the past does not define the person you are now, you can learn from your past mistakes or past errors in judgment but not make an identity out of them. The way to learn from the past is to “observe” without deriving an identity, just acknowledge if there was an error in your judgement or if your behavior was imbalanced and bring yourself to grow from it towards a more evolved and mature thinking.
The reason it has so much momentum is because all along you’ve been re-fueling it by either fighting its presence or by getting a personal identity from this past occurrence. Just allow yourself acknowledge if there is a learning/growth you need to have from this past experience, and then just allow the energy to release by no longer deriving a personal identity from its presence.
dear sen,
i thankyou again for the detailed reply ,i have totally allowed the negative energies of anger and guilt to come up freely and ofcourse the thoughts too , its close to hell if not real hell , everything yo said in your articles is happening , the wrath of my mind is unleashed , i can see its fury but irony is theres some place inside me which is at peace within , i cant understand why but even when everything is distorted and confused , its like i am floating in a stormy sea .
lastly as you said i should learn from my past mistakes , i agree to it but i would again be a slave of my mind if i fear not to commit the mistake again , its paradoxical , ofcourse im not crossing the line by comitting sins which are not forgivable, i am talking about the unethical things to do to survive in this world , i wanna be fearless within before i set rules for myself . i thankyou sen deeply for being the guiding light for people like us . (my idea of replying is not to trouble you everyday but only to guide me if i am wrong )
Ryan, that’s true, you can work on first reducing the momentum of emotion/mind before working with the thoughts – reducing the momentum allows your awareness to work better with seeing through thoughts and gaining clearer understanding about the growth aspects from certain past events.
Hello Sen,
First of all I want to say what a weird affect this article had on me, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s caused my way of thinking and realizing that I was identifying with my mind was a revelation of sorts. This as explained many of the questions I’ve had since my early teens, especially related to having any form of identity that I could see in myself. Just the idea of the mind and myself being two different things as had a positive affect on the way I looked at my thinking. It’s still early, two days have passed since I read your post but already I’ve noticed myself taking a step back and watching my thoughts from a distance, letting negative and positive thoughts take their course without me endlessly analyzing them. However I seek some advice on a few matters.
I would very much appreciate your advice related to ‘staying the course’ when external factors that you can’t really control attempt to knock you off this new course of thinking. You see I suffer with severe chronic pain (rheumatoid arthritis) on a common basis and I’ve known for many years now that no matter how strong my mental strength and willpower may be, once the chronic pain hits (a negative factor) it knocks me back down on the floor again so I’m often back where I was before. Right now it’s as if I can feel my mind trying to fight it’s way back into the old ways of thinking and the severe pain I’m dealing with at the moment as been knocking me towards my old way of thinking to.
Another factor that I’ve had serious issues with is depersonalization, which hit me badly today. In fact it was one of the worst cases I’ve had of depersonalization I can ever think of, I wonder if this is because I have changed the way I’ve been thinking. But never as spells of depersonalization left me shaken, like this one as. I went numb, blank and stared intensely with tunnel vision. The confidence I had with this new way of thinking as weakened and I’ve fallen back to the urge to let the depersonalization take over and a few symptoms of anxiety have started. I’d appreciate any advice you might be able to give me related to these issues.
Thank you for writing this helpful post, I feel as if it’s one of the few articles related to the mind that I’ve found truly enlightening. So thanks.
Hey Sen, firstly thank you for the work of God that your doing. Around two or so months ago i quit marijuana and about a month ago I realized I had a problem with masturbation and pornography. I related my orgasm to some actions I found arousing on my screen. I have been getting constant thoughts of losing my sex drive/ my erections and I never had to face these thoughts before. I guess in a way I was so used to the pattern of watching pornography which resulted in an obvious erection which I abused by always masturbating, even if I was getting late or could have been a bad time. I have been through journeys of the mind to de-power thoughts and trying to realize that sex/ erections/ sexual acts are sacred and this could be a result of abusing our gifts maybe?
Priz, if you sense a lack of freedom with respect to your sexual habits in the sense that they seem to dominate your better judgment, it’s simply a wake up call towards finding a better sense of inner balance in a conscious manner. The last thing you want is to get into some light-natured ideology about the whole thing, labels like “sacred” can easily become new ways of either creating suppression or new forms of guilt around any aspect. Sexuality has its light and dark nature, and it’s expression can be enjoyed in a balance of light and dark, for example, it’s fine/normal to have certain “kinks” like role-playing etc and it can just be a creative expression of sexuality, putting labels like “sacred” can cause you to suppression some aspects of creative expression that may be natural to you. The deal is to find a sense of inner balance for which you first need a foundation of inner freedom from the pull of sexuality, this space of freedom comes through when you work on the state of allowing (for ex, when you sense the pull of sexual energy in you, you can simply stay in a space of allowing the energy without being pulled into the action forced by the drive), as you work on the state of allowing you will reach a point where you no longer feel “dominated” by the pull and this is a place of inner freedom. From this place of inner freedom you can now allow for balanced expression of your sexual energy, aligned with your natural preferences, creativity and personal drive, coming from a place of natural wisdom not from a place of guilt or some light-natured ideology.
Hey Sen, thank you for the work you are doing here and all of your replies. I suffered an anxiety attack 3 months ago which was so severe I had to be stabelized at a psychiatric hospital for two days. Since then, I’ve had ups and downs mostly in terms of depression. I have finally realized that it’s all due to my thoughts, since whenever I get distracted I’m as good as ever.
I’ve been seeing a psychologist and at the moment she has suggested that I just keep my active concentration on something else than my negative thoughts. I can do this. The only problem is I have a constant awareness of my negative thoughts, and even though I’m trying not to think them, they are right there in the back of my head. It’s really frustrating, especielly because this eventually leads me to think stuff like: “Can I really keep doing this all day?”. This is one of the typical negative thoughts I get and they can really bring me down.
I really feel like I can’t keep supressing these thoughts and I’m kinda bewildered in terms of what I should do. Increase medication or meditate?. That’s when I found this site and became interested in your idea of allowing them to just go through me. I know they are just useless thoughts, but still they can smash my mood and energy. I’m kind of confused of whether I’m getting better or worse. I would love to know more about how to just allow your thoughts to go through your mind and seperate my mind from who I am? I know I ask alot but I’m just very frustrated at the moment and wonder if what I’m going through is normal?
Secho, the state of allowing is simply an openness, or state of no resistance, where you let go of trying to do anything (including trying to hold your focus or trying to think positive). The past momentum of your emotions, and your mind, will run through you (sometimes even more intense when you are enter into a state of allowing) but this momentum will keep releasing as you simply stay in this openness – of course it’s not pleasant when this momentum is running through you but you just need to allow the unpleasantness also, it’s just a required journey towards allowing the release of the past momentum. You can read my recent post – The phase of release – for more details on the same.
Hi Sen,
I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions I have. With anxiety I have found myself becoming irritable at the silliest of things. I know full well in myself that they are things that are “not worth” getting annoyed about, but it is as if as soon as something arises, I try and figure out in my mind how to accept these things, which I guess is suppressing them, and getting annoyed about things for longer than I should. Another example is losing at sports, I seem to “try” too hard to not get too upset about it, but cannot help myself, again still knowing that it is pointless getting upset about it, then my friends will give me stick in a jokey manner, and I find it hard to go along with the laughs (something which I am usually very good at, and good at giving back!). My question from this then, is when all my negative energy has ebbed away, how will I cope with these sorts of situations? Will it be easier to brush things off? Will I not need to “try” to not let things get to me? I am really starting to grasp the idea of “the mind being a computer and at the moment it is being fueled by my over-association/negative energy”. Hopefully in time I will see more clearness and I hope my question is straightforward!
Thanks,
Nick
Dear Sen
I have been struggling with obstructive sexual thoughts for quite some time (read as years). During my childhood, I used to refrain from discussing anything related to sex. I was curious like any other child but i wanted to be a good person so I did not indulge in anything. But curiosity or nature had its own way. Out of no where weird thoughts started to coming to my mind and some of them were related to incest as well. I did not pay them any heed and had a good life. But now that i am having a bad phase, these thoughts are coming again and I feel contaminated and guilty about them. From childhood, I was always told that you are your thoughts and You are telling that these two are different things. I feel that my mind is getting the better of me and my integrity, values and basic goodness has been compromised. I don’t want to have these thoughts and be the good old me. Would really appreciate your inputs on the same ?
Wonderful article! I could relate so much of myself to it. As has been said, watch the mind and remain detached to your fears by watching them from a distance. When you are trying to play the blame game by seeing yourself a victim in the situation, you no longer can resist the temptation to fear more. To fear less, watch your mind from a distant psychological space.