How can we disconnect from undesirable thoughts?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Once we understand that some thought is undesirable, how do we disconnect from it? See, negative thoughts, or in general we could say thoughts of themselves, they are like darkness. Now there is no way to drive out darkness, per se. The only way to drive out darkness is to turn on light.
If I treat darkness like a physical object which I will try to push out, I can’t do that. But I just invoke the light, the darkness goes away. Similarly, thoughts cannot be driven out, but thoughts can be crowded out.
That means, when we fill our consciousness with some other thought, then that thought goes out. So what we need to do is, suppose somebody tells you, please don’t think of a blue monkey. Now in your life, you may never have thought of a blue monkey.
But when I tell you, don’t think of a blue monkey, the mind will go to the thought of a blue monkey. So we just can’t… don’t think about this if somebody says, that doesn’t work. Because we have to think about something.
So when we notice there is some undesirable thought coming in my mind, at that time we have to trigger a chain of desirable thoughts. So one ready way to trigger positive thoughts is simply to chant the names of Krishna. When we chant the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra.
Now we just chant it, initially we don’t get absorbed, but just keep repeating it, keep repeating it, keep repeating it. The consciousness gets absorbed in that. And as the consciousness gets absorbed, the negative thought goes out.
And just as there is chanting the name of God, there are different manifestations. We can have kirtans, we can have some pictures of Krishna, we can have some shlokas. There can be spiritual stimuli, which we have to find out which stimuli we connect with quickly.
Which stimuli we can get absorbed in. And those stimuli which we can get easily absorbed in, we need to make those stimuli readily accessible to ourselves. In spiritual terminology they are called as uddhipan.
Uddhipan means that which stimulates us, which makes us active. So if we have something which we like, something which we can connect with easily, and then we keep that ready with us. Then as soon as the negative thought chain starts coming in my mind, I can’t drive it out, but I can crowd it out.
So I immediately redirect my thoughts towards a positive thought chain. So it can be something as simple as some insightful quotes, some insightful thoughts. We just keep that in our phone and I quickly read that.
Immediately that will redirect the thoughts. And that way we can stop that negative thought chain. Not by driving it out, but by crowding it out.
Thank you.