Working Out of a Negative Mindset

Are you feeling overwhelmed from having a negative mindset from time to time? Do you find yourself acting in ways that are painful to yourself and others, but not knowing how to stop or use the power of your mind to create freedom?

During my current 7 A’s of Healing series of vlogs on YouTube, I took some time to address a question posed by a young man caught in the throes of a negative mindset with some very practical advice.

After writing it, my next thought was to share it with a wider audience on the CHEK Blog, so that more people could benefit from these tips and methods I’ve used to help my clients to create freedom for themselves. I hope you enjoy learning and practicing the creation of freedom!

Dear Paul: Why do I have evil thoughts in my head that just keep bugging me? I know it’s a big question but if possible just bless me with a short and effective answer. I’m afraid I might act out unconsciously on one of them some day. Please answer me with a speedy response. I’ve sought counsel, I’ve read all over the internet, and I feel more lost today than ever.

It’s a scary feeling… I’m turning 20 and have no idea where life will take me or where I will be when I’m 25-30. I honestly have no plans, goals, or motivation to drive me and wake me up every morning.

I’m on house arrest and have been incarcerated for over a year. I’ve been completely dead sober. I’ve had no physical contact with a woman for over a year. I feel like my sexuality is becoming warped, and I’m just struggling bad every day with my thoughts and my actions.

I’m very compulsive and have no self-control. It’s so difficult and I hate it.

This isn’t the worst part of your life!

This is a good time in your life, as odd as that may sound! You have the time to “be with yourself” and gain clarity on what gives you a sense of meaning and purpose in your life.

The first important thing for you to understand right now is that the mind works on polarities — yin/negative/dark and yang/positive/light — which are “complementary opposites” necessary for movement.

You can’t be conscious of anything that isn’t moving…

Anything in the mind must have its functional opposite. You can’t know what a woman is unless you know what a man is. You cannot know “what you want” until you are clear on what you don’t want.

From what you shared with me here, it seems you are getting plenty of opportunities to experience what you don’t want in your mind and life at this time, so take advantage of this opportunity to be alone with yourself, or it’s just wasted time.

Remember that all life is a series of choices. Choosing not to choose is a choice.

The human mind

What you think of as “your mind” is really “not your mind” in many ways. The human brain is a two-way sending and receiving station, just like a radio station or a two-way radio.

You can call others and they can call you, but that’s only possible because the signal is sent in every direction at once, just like a two-way radio.

Your mind is picking up on the thoughts and feelings of everyone “in and around you.” These are the many people who have influenced you, from your parents to teachers, friends and even the many media streams you’ve absorbed by watching and listening to them.

We have a “personal unconscious” that holds the thoughts and feelings from our whole life, even our past lives. It is called the personal unconscious because the information within it is below the radar of our conscious mind.

However, it regularly bubbles up into our consciousness, producing a mix of thoughts that reflect its contents. These can be inspiring, creative and loving thoughts or dark, negative and evil thoughts as you’ve described.

Yet, how many of them are actually “your own?”

Only by paying attention to how you use the power of your own mind and getting clear on what thoughts are actually worth “believing and acting out” will you ever be able to learn to use your mind effectively to create what you want.

When negative thoughts arrive, simply witness them and ask yourself, “Is this a thought worth investing any energy or belief in?” or, “Is this just the junk floating around on the airways of mind?”

Surely, you’ve seen garbage laying on the ground, but I doubt you’ve stressed yourself enough to walk all over town and start picking it all up. Along those lines, there are “garbage thoughts” floating around in space all the time, but you don’t have to “pick them all up.”

However, you can feel empathy for those who think that way because you clearly know how disabling and disempowering that can be!

The social unconscious is the domain of the thoughts of all human beings within any given social sphere. For you, it’s the social group you’re part of in your town.

As I mentioned earlier, your brain can tune into the “MIND” at any level. The human brain is amazing in that it can reach a very wide range of frequencies from the demons below to God and the angels metaphorically “above.”

The difference: You’re the one who controls the volume.

The collective unconscious

The collective unconscious is the domain of the collective thoughts of all human beings. Here, we come into contact with all of the positive and negative experiences humanity has ever had throughout time.

This domain is loaded with both dark and light information. When people use drugs that alter the frequency of the brain and nervous system, they gain access to these domains of mind. But drugs can disable the ego’s capacity to “switch channels or turn off the connection” too, leading a person to feel stuck in the darkness as a general rule.

The deepest layer of the unconscious is the Imago Dei, which is the source of our need for connection to each other and life. It relates to our many beliefs about what we think God is or isn’t.

This layer is the root level of all the above levels. Jung says, “It’s not clear whether your image of God makes you, or you make it.”

This is a very good time to get clear on what you believe is the source of all, for that belief is the very bedrock foundation of all the layers above it.

Personally, I’ve found that spirituality — the desire to connect to a greater whole — is much healthier for one’s mind than religious programming, which generally carries heavy polarities and leads to lots of the kinds of challenges you describe.

Naming, blaming and taming evil

It is wise to realize that evil is the complementary opposite of good or love. If it were not for evil, we would have no capacity for free will.

Evil thoughts or acts lead to isolation. Because the actual state of the universe is one all connected, any act of isolation goes against the natural state and flow of the universe. And, to the degree that we think evil thoughts or act them out, we produce progressive isolation, which for the human being, is the highest form of torture.

We cannot survive without love and connection. We must be willing to love and connect to ourselves first, or we have no awareness of what love is and don’t see or feel it when it is all around us

When evil thoughts arise in your mind, no matter where they come from, name them. The act of naming brings something up from the unconscious to the conscious, where you can effectively work with it. Otherwise, the process just keeps repeating itself and can lead to a person actually believing their own thoughts, even when they are disempowering or dangerous to one’s self or others.

When negative or evil thoughts are named, blame them for the way you feel when you allow yourself to think or believe them. For example, “I think that I’m stuck in my life, I feel defeated, weak, afraid, unhappy.” That allows you to become “conscious/aware” of the creative powers of that thought.

When you are aware of what thoughts create within you, state your dream as it relates to those thoughts so you can tame them. For example, “Dream: I am a powerful, loving, capable human being and I use this time to master my mind to live and love more fully.” This allows you to create new neural networks (neurons that fire together wire together).

By not allowing yourself to fall into the trap of believing those negative thoughts, you progressively disable those neural networks, so those thoughts eventually cease to exist.

As a result, you can have real empathy for people who haven’t learned the skills I’m sharing with you, and you’ll realize that you have something very powerful and beautiful to share with others.

There are times when all of us take tours of hell so we can become truly aware of how many people are stuck there. Those brief excursions give us opportunities to learn how to use our minds to create more of what we really want, and share it with others.

These trips help us recognize the signs and symptoms of being in hell with others so we can have empathy and compassion, and choose to share our love and wisdom to help them.

This is your chance to take advantage of what hell is offering you so that you can become a self-responsible adult, and share the wisdom you gain with others caught in the same dark places you are navigating now.

If you look, listen and learn, hell may turn out to be a very good teacher.

Love and chi,

Paul