Control Your Thoughts

How to watch your thoughts:

can you observe the thoughts? So you must be separate from the mind to see what the mind is doing.So the mind generates thoughts, which are mostly just energy forms. These thoughts pass through like clouds. We identify with some of these thoughts and obsess about them. So in truth all thoughts are just neutral energy forms, it’s “your” interest or association with the thoughts that makes them obsessive. If you can understand this truth, you have taken the first step towards getting rid of obsessive thoughts.

What Causes Obsessive Thoughts?

 The truth is that you don’t generate thoughts, the mind does. It’s on auto mode most of the time. You can see this for yourself, can you predict what you will think 30 seconds from now? If you can’t how can you assume that you are generating the thoughts?

You are not your mind. If you are your mind then how can you observe the thoughts? So you must be separate from the mind to see what the mind is doing.

So the mind generates thoughts, which are mostly just energy forms. These thoughts pass through like clouds. We identify with some of these thoughts and obsess about them. So in truth all thoughts are just neutral energy forms, it’s “your” interest or association with the thoughts that makes them obsessive. If you can understand this truth, you have taken the first step towards getting rid of obsessive thoughts.

How to Stop Obsessive Negative Thoughts?

If you are asking this question, ask yourself another question – “is this question not another thought? It’s a thought about killing thoughts”. All your attempts at suppressing and stopping thoughts will fail because you will be using the mind to stop the mind. The police man and thief are both the mind, so how can the police man catch the thief?

So you cannot kill the mind by force. The mind dies its own death by the poison of disassociation.

What gives power to a thought? – Your interest. If you have no interest in a particular thought then it loses its hold over you. You can try this out now. Let the thoughts flow through your mind but don’t take interest in them. Just stay as a  watcher and let the thoughts float.

Initially you might have a hard time watching thoughts because of your inherent habit of associating with each thought that arises. It helps to know that you are not your thoughts, that thoughts are just energy forms created in the mind. Watching the thinker is essentially a technique that allows you to maintain a very present state by stepping outside of your mind and watching all of its crazy fantasies and delusions. Having experienced it in great detail, I can say that it’s a lot like maintaining a state of meditation throughout your day. It’s not as intense as real meditation, but because an actual meditation session is usually so short, it appears to be a more powerful way of bringing about inner peace.

With a little practice you will get really good at watching thoughts and not involving yourself with them. You will stop giving power to thoughts by not giving them your interest. Thoughts die immediately when they are deprived of this fuel of interest. If you don’t associate with the thought or give power to the thought, it will wither away quickly.

Your mind conditioning and beliefs are also stored as memories. All this is unconscious storage; the mind does all this in auto mode. Perceptions and interpretations are created in the mind based on its past. These interpretations, perceptions and judgments come up as thoughts in the mind, and they can positive or negative depending on the mind’s conditioning. Thoughts are generated based on the past incidents/memories, future projections and interpretations on the present life situation. It’s like a computer trying to predict or conjure up projection based on the data it has collected so far.

When thoughts are negative in nature (thoughts of worry, anxiety, stress, lack, resentment, guilt etc) they produce resistance to the movement of your life, and this resistance is felt as suffering. Negative thoughts will always stand in resistance to the movement of your life, like blocks of stone in the midst of a swift current of water. Life is a stream of pure positive energy and hence any negative thought will stand in opposition to it, causing friction which is felt as suffering in the body.

You can focus on the positive thoughts generated in the mind, and thus develop a positive momentum in your mind. Every time your mind produces some positive thoughts, e.g thoughts of love, joy, excitement, abundance, beauty, appreciation, passion, peace etc, focus on it, milk it, and give attention to it. This will cause your mind to attract more positive thoughts and thus build a positive momentum. Whenever it thinks negatively, don’t give it attention or interest, this will cause the ebbing away of the momentum of negative thinking. It’s really that simple. Once you understand the mechanics of how thoughts gain momentum in the mind, you will be in total control of your state of being.

The Practice of Watching the Mind

All you need to do to get rid of obsessive thoughts is to watch the mind without getting involved. You will get really good at this with just a little practice. This practice, or “sadhana” as called in Hindu scriptures, is the root of awakening from the illusion of mind.

Without trying to understand this practice just implement it. The more you try to understand the more mind gets involved. Just watch the mind and you will soon see that you are not the mind at all. That the mind is like a machine in your head that generates thoughts based on your attention/interest. Be free of your mind by depriving it of your interest. This is the only direct path of becoming free of the mind.

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Dreams without actions are fantasies !!

We all know it's the big one! Let us give some time to it again. We all dream. In fact dreams are the music to our lives. As kids we all remain very excited about chasing our dreams, we fatacise the process of meeting our dreams to be as interesting as a treasure hunt. Yet as we grow older and face real challenges of life we find it easier to negotiate with our aspirations, our dreams and settle down with what life throws to us. Most of the times our dreams become unrealistic suppositions for us later in life.

Let's recall a childhood story now. A man got bunch of flowers for free. He kept the flowers next to bed and went to sleep. In his dreams he thought that when he will sell these flowers,then he will buy a cow and with that money, when he will sell the milk from cow, will open a bakery, will become a rich man and then will marry a princess and will have kids. Further he went on thinking that if the kids won't listen to him, he will beat them with a stick..... Thinking and acting that, way he subconsciously moved his hand over hitting hard the flowers and the flowers went down on floor and got crushed. Here the message was that if we just sleep over our dreams, they are never gonna come true.

Just because we have a dream it's proven by neuroscience, that we have a latent ability to fulfill that dream. Otherwise we wouldn't have noticed it at all.

 The story above recreates a buzz in mind, that if we still try to overcome the negatives of our lives and put ourselves back on action mode we will be able to make our dreams come true.
I think there are 3ways to approach action with a happy heart or in an inspired way....
1. Faith: When we have faith in ourselves, our abilities, our dreams, we automatically feel motivated and love to pursue them. Pray to god, work on to have that faith. It surely will work wonders for you.
 2. Desire: We need to have a burning desire for our goals, our dreams.
 3. Choice: We need to have a dream of our choice only, not of parent's, wife's and so on. It should be worthy for us specially, for our heart. What holds us back from taking action if the giant monster Fear ! It can any kind of fear, fear of cricism, fear of failure, fear of change. I do have given few tips on overcoming fear in my last blog.
Hope it proves helpful to you. Having a daily action plan usually is very helpful in tracking our progress and ultimately meeting our dreams. Come on guys... Act now! Do something, acquire information, develop new skills, start moving, overcome your fears and relentlessly drive your plans to completion!!!

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