How to remove negative thoughts and tame your monkey mind, Part 2
This is a continuation on the series on removing negative thoughts. Please find Part One here.
Have you given the previous levels a good solid try? It’s important not to skip ahead too fast. It’s almost never as bad as you think it is, and by moving on to the higher levels you are giving yourself added stress.
The Third Level – Letting them slide
If the thoughts persist after a sustained effort at the second level, don’t despair. What you’ve done there has laid the foundations for this level.
This level, then, is simply about letting your thoughts slide by without attaching to them. I find it helpful to visualize a large blank screen, and the thoughts as little ants that scurry across them. Prodding or playing with those ants make them lose their way and they can’t find their way off the screen. In other words, don’t judge, don’t analyse, don’t hate. These are all forms of clinging or playing with your ants. An even better choice is to imbue the screen with a pleasant feeling, and let the ants disappear into the warm glow of the feeling.
The next step is to know there is something inside you that finds a strange pleasure in this pain. It could be your need to be right, or superior, or it could even be your suffering has become a parasite living off your pain. I’ve covered it more in Why do we cling to our unhappiness?
Knowing there is something inside you that wants to attach to your thoughts and feed them helps you in letting them slide by. You don’t have to do anything. There’s no need to try to stop them. Let them arise, step outside your mind, and watch them drift by.
The Buddha compares this to a man who looks in the other direction to avoid looking at objects that move into his line of sight. In modern terms, it’s like trying to read a book while a spoilt brat is trying his hardest to distract you by being rude. The more you hate him, or force yourself to ignore him, the worse it gets. Just let yourself naturally tune it out. Even better, smile at the child. Let it know it can’t affect your calm, and he’ll give up and play with something else.
As KL Masina says in her great article, paying attention to your thoughts energizes them and can cause emotions. If they bring up emotions on their own – and not because you are energizing them - then your situation is unresolved. More information in the emotional mastery series.
The Fourth Level – The thought source
Imagine yourself fighting a whole army of robots. You are shooting them all down as they come, but the hordes are endless. What do you do? Easy – you blow up the factory that is making these robots.
Up to this level, we’ve been dealing with the thoughts themselves. Now let’s get serious. We’ll deal with the factory – the Buddha calls them the thought formations – that produces these thoughts.
To paraphrase the sutra: “Just as a man walks slowly when he finds no reason to walk fast, and a man stands when he finds no reason to walk, so too will your thoughts stop when they can find no reason to exist.”
This requires some deeper work. There are many things you can do at this level.
- The story behind the thoughts. For example, my most prominent negative thoughts are memories of humiliation – some of them a decade old.
The core belief, then, is that I shouldn’t be humiliated. In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, they recommend you change this belief to something less rigid – “I prefer not to be humiliated.” The Work
of Byron Katie goes one step further. It uses something called the turnaround, one of which is - “I should be humiliated.”
Now this is dangerous because it is easily misunderstood. Is she saying that you should let yourself be abused, or go out looking for humiliation? No. There’s more to it than this, but for this article, simply interpret this as applying only to the past. Why? Because you can’t change the past, no matter how hard you try. And all you can change is the belief that is causing pain. She should have humiliated me. Why? Because she did. I can’t argue with the past, because I will always lose. Does that make sense? It’s got nothing to do with how people should treat me in the future.
What do you do with this belief? Visualise the memory or the event or whatever is causing your thoughts, while holding this new belief. Take all the time you need, and feel it. Does it feel any different?
- The present. This might sound like common sense, but not everyone does it. Is there something going on that triggers your thoughts – a song that reminds you of your old lover, perhaps? If so, turn the radio off.
- Cultivating Love. This is the one I like to use. It takes a lot more time, but it forms better habits in my mind. I send loving feelings towards the hurt. I see the factory of my memories, for example, as a part of me that has been hurt by event.
Like a scared baby, it wants your attention and care, and the only way to get your attention is by crying. Will you annoyed by the cries of your precious baby, if it is scared? Talk to it, reassure it, send love and compassion to it. I tell myself that it’s all okay, that I did the best I could, and they didn’t know any better. How would you reassure your crying baby, if you had one? When I have these negative thoughts, I feel a tightness in my chest, and treat that as the formation that produces it. I talk and send love to the tightness. It takes a while, but it slowly disappears.
Depending on the thoughts you have, this baby metaphor might not be the best – but you get the point. See what works best for you. I find this a long and slow process, but it is one of my favourite and most transformative meditations. Part of it is covered in the final post of the emotional mastery series, but there is more, which I will cover in a future post.
What’s next?
In the coming posts I’ll cover the last step of the Sutra - I get the feeling that it’s for the worst cases only. There are also many other systems of mastering your thoughts – so subscribe to my RSS feed!
Link Love
I’d also like to say hello to a couple of friends here, and recommend their blogs as well. The fantastic Robin Bal of Fortune Watch has been a long time supporter and friend of UrbanMonk.Net, and he runs an equally fantastic blog on Personal Finance, debt elimination, and smart investing, amongst others. It covers all the areas in detail and is written with eloquence.
Another man I’d like to say hello too is a very big hearted man named Takuin Minamoto. He runs a couple of blogs – the most relevant to most of my readers would be Takuin.com, a blog that is amazing for spiritual seekers. I spent hours there, and still can’t get enough. He’s been kindly talking me through some deeper material via email as well.
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17 Comments, Comment or Ping
Quint
Hi Albert,
Another excellent post. In my journey of dealing with pain, I have found what you refer to as cultivating love to be very powerful. It is amazing how much the thoughts and emotions will quiet themselves when you stop trying to shove them back into the dungeon. By acknowledging them, and sending loving, reassuring thoughts to them, and even just accepting them as they are, they will often dissipate without anymore effort. As you said though, this process takes time.
Aug 7th, 2007
Albert
Heya Quint, you’re fast!
Thanks for the comments. Yes, loving-kindness meditation is one of the most powerful meditations I have come across. I didn’t start it with the purpose of calming my emotions, but I’ve been doing it for a couple of hours a day and it’s completely cleared up any emotions remaining from my emotional mastery post.
The purpose of loving-kindness meditation is to cultivate altruism, but I might be defeating the purpose because I do it because it feels so good, haha. I seriously feel better doing it than going out for drinks with the boys and all the other stuff I enjoy.
If anyone’s interested, I’ll be happy to type up the loving-kindness meditation into a post.
Aug 7th, 2007
Takuin Minamoto
Thanks for the link-love at the end! That is very kind and completely unexpected.
One of my favorite quotes from Byron Katie is, “We stand, we sit, and we lie down. Everything else is an unquestioned thought.”
As I have said before, thoughts will let go of you when they have nothing to hold on to. Even a seemingly normal response - wanting to be free of the painful thoughts, for example - keeps you attached to them.
Thanks again for the link! Arigatou Gozaimasu.
Takuin
Aug 7th, 2007
Albert
You’re very welcome Takuin, your blog will help my readers immensely if they’re on a spiritual quest, and you’ve helped me so much that I have to express my thanks in any way I can
.
Thanks for the insight as well, I’m really starting to be able to see the truth in that statement. I’m not a 100% there yet, though.
Aug 8th, 2007
FortuneWatch - Robin
Hi Albert,
I subscribe to your RSS feed and needless to say I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts. I love your writing style and the content, wonder how much time you spend in research and coming up with a post. What I like most is that you write with passion.
I just checked my site meter and noticed some visits coming from your end so I knew my good friend Albert, must have been up to something. Thank you very much for your kind words mate, I appreciate that.
Keep up the good work.
Take care and cheers.
Aug 8th, 2007
Harsh
Dear Friend Albert,
I was just accessing the net for some great articles in spiritual growth when I came along you wonderful site. The insights you have laid on your site are really amazing and true.
However, as I went through your own details in the section ‘About the urban monk’, I found something illegitimate and would like to give my views and in general the views of some other enlightened Gurus (like Buddha) in the spiritual field.
It’s mentioned in that section that you are an urban monk, live in the urban areas and like other people, drink alcohols and have sex. While it’s true that there’s nothing harm in enjoying modern luxuries, it’s also true that a for a person seeking enlightenment or even a little growth in spiritual field, even a slight indulgence or ego-identification is detrimenal to spiritual growth. Sex is definitely not a thing one should indulge in as it causes a hindrance to the path of enlightenment (I know it’s hard to believe but then, it’s a hard truth too). It saps one’s innocence and purity of heart which is an obstacle to spiritual growth. As Buddha said ‘Desires lead to suffering’ and moreover after one becomes egoless and shrinks to nothingness, definitely one would not like to indulge in sex and alcohols and all. It’s advisable to have sex for the purpose of reproduction (with life partner) but not for the fulfillment of one’s sensual desires. And mental mastery includes mastery over sense organs too. It’s so true: “Too much of Romantic Love leads to selfish love and no love at all leads to evil.” It must be balanced to egolessness and thereby true and unconditional love.
Note: While it’s true that the views mentioned above are hard to understand to the full, I surely believe that they are by no means conservative or orthodox. They are pragmatic and true. It’s my hearlfelt and egoless advise to an otherwise Modern Guru Albert. I really loved your views on rest other topics and wish you a great journey ahead.
You may visit http://www.sanuja.com for more details on clarity on the Sex and Love topic. They may really interest you (as I believe that Learning is a never-ending process). And yes, I will definitely distribute your e-book too among my friends. It’s really worth recommending to all.
Thanks,
Harsh Vora
Aug 8th, 2007
Albert
Heya Robin,
I appreciate your friendship and your SU help! Thanks for the kind comments again. I go periodically on a huge research and self-experimentation trip that lasts for weeks and weeks, where I just read and practice and take notes. I just came out of one such trip, hehe. That gives me material for a few months… actual writing takes about 2-3 days per post.
The link love is the least I could do
Aug 8th, 2007
Albert
Hi Harsh,
Thanks for the kind comments and the good intentions, I really appreciate it. I’m just pasting this here in case my email reply didn’t get through…
I fully understand where you are coming from, and again thanks for the kind intentions. As for myself, 50% of that about page was just for fun, I didn’t take it seriously and didn’t expect any one to as well.
And yes, I do find it a bit hard to let go of these sensual desires. And so far I’m trying to detach myself from them, while partaking once in a while. The past few weeks, I’ve been starting to see the wisdom in your words. One of the five hindrances in Buddhism is sensual desire, probably the biggest one I’m struggling with. (Laziness is the other one haha!) This is probably because when I started developing myself, I did so with very materialistic goals – to end suffering, to get more money, to get more love. I didn’t expect the pursuit to end suffering to lead me down a spiritual path and put me at odds with my other goals.
When I wrote that page, it was quite a few months ago, I was just a beginner in the spiritual path (and I still am), and I had intended the blog to cover a wide variety of topics including dating and romance. I didn’t realise that it would sort of head down this path. I was a very different person then. I think I should rewrite that page
I like to think of the blog as a practical one, rooted in experience and psychology, and not so much of a spiritual one. I leave out spiritual terms as much as I can and make sure that I cross-reference everything with psychological texts, and practice it myself to make sure it works in real life.
This is simply because I don’t want to give out the impression that I’m some sort of enlightened guru – I don’t pretend to be one, I don’t hide the fact that I’m just a psychology student who found the spiritual path the best to escape his own personal suffering. I’ve not been formally trained or ordained in any spiritual or religious path. That said, I really appreciate that everyone (including you) who sees me in such a kind light. It’s very humbling to have people think of me as a guru.
Once again, I really appreciate your kind intentions. It’s a great feeling to know that someone can show such concern for me
I’m reading the site you’ve given me now, always more to learn.
Aug 8th, 2007
Harsh
Dear Friend Albert,
I must tell that you are really a nice human. And real too. I am really glad that you didn’t take my advice the other way like many others do. Afterall, in this wired world, one needs to get aquaint with all the knowledge and views and believe only what he finds to be true and just. Please take me as a friend and not as a critic. It was just my humble feedback.
And yes, no body can easily claim to be an enlightened human these days when there are so many temptations to drift one form his/her path easily. I too am struggling like you to hold on to the right path. You are true that you may have written that for fun. But then, people from all over the world visit your site and hence it’s better to write only the truth. I too cannot claim to be all-round pure so far as sensual desires are concerned but then wise men are only they who never accept defeat against the wrong and evil, right? And son’t woory, you don’t need to compromise your own beliefs just for others’ satisfaction.
And yes, thanks and kudos to you for being so much broad-minded. Proceeding on the spiritual path (mind, I am talking about religious path) doesn’t require a person or a teacher. As buddha said on his death bed, “Take your own refuge and work out your own salvation yourself.” There are so many resources in the world. Just as the resources for sins and evil increase with the passing of time, so does the resource for goodness and righteousness (like your site). There are so many books out there. So it’s not necessary that a Guru must need a Guru. Just like that old cliche “Experience is the best teacher”.
Wish you a great health and life ahead. Pray for you all the growth. Wish you keep doing what you do and find peace.
Take care,
Harsh Vora
Aug 8th, 2007
Harsh
hey, that was : i am not talking about religious path…. sorry.. i forgot to write NOT
Aug 8th, 2007
Albert
Hey Harsh
Thanks, I do take you as a friend. It’s hard to find someone who shows such concern for a stranger – and I meet many via my blog, so it’s something I’m grateful for. All feedback is good, and I think all feedback good or bad will have truth in them.
Agreed; I’m going to write a new about page tonight.
I wish you the best life ahead as well – and thank you again for all your kind support. Please feel free to contact me again anytime – keep in touch!
Aug 8th, 2007
Harsh
Dear Friend Albert,
I believe in the saying,”You get what you celebrate more of”. And given that, it only makes sense to give great feedbacks on what you love more of.
Hey, it’s such a great day outside today. Rainy climate and yet it rains only little. It’s cool here and I take more joy to write to you. So, no worries.
Yup, I will stay in touch… And I invite you too to do the same. We are friends on the same path.
Thanks,
Take care,
Harsh Vora
Aug 8th, 2007
Modern Worker
Cheers Albert, on a great two-part post. I thoroughly enjoy your writing on leaving negative baggage behind.
Aug 10th, 2007
Albert
Hi Modern Worker! Thanks man, I got one more part coming up - this time with all the modern psychological methods!
Aug 10th, 2007
shiva
hi nice thoughts
Jun 23rd, 2008
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