Negative Thought Patterns
Be Unclutched
You can do a small exercise. For ten minutes sit silently and observe the thoughts that arise in your mind. Don’t try to control or stop thinking. Just be silent and witness the thoughts coming. The moment a thought comes quickly write it down on paper. At the end of ten minutes read out whatever is written. You will see that it’s a mad man’s diary. There is utter chaos. There is no connection between the previous thought and the next one. All the thoughts are un-clutched and unconnected. Only when you write down your thoughts you come to know that the thoughts have no real connection. You may be thinking about having a cup of coffee and the next moment you may think about some office work which is pending. There is no real connection between having a cup of tea and the office work. Both are independent events. Even if there are two consecutive thoughts about the same event the thoughts are unconnected as there is no continuity. There exists a silent gap between these thoughts of which one is not aware.
The thoughts by their very nature are un-clutched. The problem starts when we start connecting these thoughts. When these independent and unconnected thoughts are linked up, we create illusions of pleasure or pain based on the nature of thoughts that we choose to link -up. This is a play of the mind that is constantly happening within us.
For example; you might have eaten ice cream ten years ago, you might have eaten ice cream seven years ago and you might have eaten ice cream two years ago and you might have eaten ice cream yesterday. All these experiences might have been very pleasurable for you. You might have enjoyed the ice cream on each of that occasion. The trouble starts when these experiences are connected and an imaginary shaft or an understanding is created that eating ice cream makes you happy. But sometime in the future eating ice cream may not be as enjoyable as on the earlier occasions. Even if you don’t enjoy the ice cream you will make yourself believe that you like the ice cream. Because you have got into the habit of connecting the thoughts; you unconsciously start accepting that you enjoy ice cream. Here the imaginary joy is one aspect of the illusion while the other is the recording of the false emotion deep within you. Similarly so many such incidents and thoughts are connected and recorded as illusions rather than as independent moments of pain or pleasure.
Similar is the case with painful experiences. The pain which you experienced ten years ago, the pain which you experiences seven years ago, the pain which you experienced three years ago and the pain which you experienced yesterday are independent events. There is no connection between these events. But through connecting events of similar nature you are creating a shaft that gives you the feeling of prolonged agony. This will leave you feeling that your life has been miserable and painful all along. Similarly connecting all the pleasurable experiences in your life gives you the feeling that that your life is pleasure.
But actually neither of it is true. Your life is neither pleasure nor pain because the very process of connecting these events is a mistake. The idea that the thoughts are connected is a misconception. Ironically we don’t connect all the thoughts. We only connect those that we remember and create the shaft. It is similar to how a bouquet is created by picking just a few flowers from a garden.
When we create the shaft we suffer. If you have created a shaft of pleasure we try to extend it because you want to experience the same pleasure again. But if you have created a shaft of pain then you try to break it because you want to avoid the pain. You can neither extend the shaft nor break it because it never existed in the first place. The shaft itself is a myth.
All your experiences are indepen
