Processing negative thoughts

To one extent or another, we are all plagued at times by negative thoughts, whether while meditating or while going about our ordinary everyday lives. They often come to us unbidden and they have the power to take over our minds and effect our moods and dispositions. They make us uncomfortable or even miserable, and they can effect our performance at whatever we are trying to do. They can be brief enough to provoke an emotion, and sometimes they can be extended to the point where they become full-blown obsessions that occupy what feels like a major portion of our brains.

Here’s one Biblical example of a negative thought having a bad effect: Consider Peter walking on the water towards Jesus when the sea was rough and the apostles were threatened by the waves.  He was doing fine until a negative thought arose: “when he saw the wind we was afraid” (Matthew 14:30) and he began to sink, and he cried out to Jesus to save him. Here we see the pattern of a negative thought: what he thought when he saw the waves provoked an emotion (fear) which then played itself out in action.

As we learn to become more aware and to look at our thoughts as if from a distance rather than being dragged around by our thoughts, we develop a certain measure of freedom. (Regular meditation helps this process.) Rather than becoming victims of our thoughts we become observers of our thoughts. We can watch them arise and then subside. The unenlightened response to a negative thought is to begin commenting on it, or allowed a “video” of the situation play itself out in our head. The moment we do that, we are hooked.

Allow the thought to pass through you and don’t add anything to it at all. Always remember that you are not your thoughts; you are the thinker of the thoughts. With practice, and with God’s help, you can obtain a great measure of freedom.

More about this another time.

By the way, I am reading an excellent book on meditation called Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird and a lot of the material I’ll be using in this blog comes from that book and from my own experience and study. If you do manage to pick up a copy of the book, I suggest you begin with chapter 3 and read the earlier chapters later. Chapter 3 contains the most practical advice about meditation.