Meditate with Urmila: Holding healing thoughts
A thought is conscious. It has the ability to impact your body, emotions and mental processes.
What you think, holds true for you. Accordingly, you are impacted. For example, if you think ‘I can’t do it’, then it is true for you; you can’t. If you think: ‘I can do it’, then it is true for you; you can.
Thoughts respond to your intention. Thoughts are mutable and the moment you change your intention, thoughts will change too; the mind and body will comply accordingly. If you think complaining will help you, then it will, and you will have to complain each time you seek help as without invoking the energy of complain, help will not come (just as without invoking positive energy, positive will not come).
Whatever energy you invoke, it will respond to your invocation and will attend to your call. Whatever thoughts you want to revoke, meaning, you choose to let go, they will go (non-dominant thoughts go, don’t they?) (Read: Taking Change with Ease; May 1, 2021).
Thought Implications
Holding a helpful thought to emerge of an unhelpful or a miserable situation has its implications: It will keep the head clear, body lighter; there’s a “good” feeling in the being. Holding a complaining, (meaning, any dense/heavy) thought has its implications too: heavy body, clogged mind.
When the body is heavy and mind is clogged, then know that you are holding negative/dense/heavy thoughts. When one feels lighter, cheerful and operates from the clarity of the mind, then the thoughts embodied are lighter, non-toxic.
In adverse situations, it may be difficult to hold a positive thought. But that exactly needs to be done to pull the self out of any sinking thought-action process.
When we say, ‘I can’t let go of this or that (unhelpful) thought out of my mind’, it is not as if that unhelpful thought is holding you, you are the one holding it; in holding an unhelpful thought long enough, one tends to become prisoner of the thought. This is because, by then, the thought has descended to become (an unhelpful) belief and descended further to be a program. (a belief entrenched fully).
By way of example, structure of an unhelpful/ rigid belief can be: ‘I AM right’/ ‘THIS IS correct’/ ‘THIS IS the way it should be’/ ‘this is the way it shouldn’t be’ etc. Structure of an (unhelpful) program: ‘THIS is HOW it is.’ THIS is ‘normal’. ‘This IS the way’ (belief underneath: change is not possible; change is not required/necessary).
Every individual construct their own beliefs/ programs, helpful or not so. A sum-total of individuals create larger beliefs/programs -helpful or not so- that translates into dominant belief-system/program of a community or society.
Six Thought Stages
There are six stages to a thought-dwelling and transformation process, from holding to letting go: 1. Awareness, 2. Living in that thought — awareness, 3. Escalating that awareness, then, in order to let go 4. Mutating/modifying that thought — awareness 5. De-activating/decreasing unhelpful awareness and finally 6. Dissolving the unhelpful thought — awareness.
A seed has to go through certain stages to be a tree; this stage-wise process is gradual and hence transformation is also gradual. It can’t be hurried, neither can a stage be bypassed.
Transformation takes place when right conditions are met. In case of thoughts and emotions, the right conditions are living in balance. Just as water doesn’t boil or become ice until it reaches the right temperature, similarly, transformation doesn’t completely happen till thoughts and actions come to a right balance. For example, aggression has to find balance in humility.
Moving from one stage to another is a conscious work and an ongoing process. The desired transformation gets tangibly seen, but after a period of time, as progress gathers pace.
Urmila Rao is an emotional healer and a forgiveness teacher. All the ideas expressed herein are her own and not professional advice or medical prescription. Her email: hellokarmicwellness@gmail.com