Five Steps Towards Transformation
Step 3: “Burning” negative thoughts

Our thoughts influence what we say, what we do and our destiny. It is easy to get use to have negative thoughts and live with them, without noticing their existence. No matter we can learn through the consequences of these negative thoughts, however, we should know we can select different thoughts, the ones that give a positive impulse to our life. What is really important is to know that there is a choice; we choose the quality of our thoughts, so the consequences of them too.

My mother’s experiences taught me the difference between pain and suffering, and how our thoughts affect us. She passed away 3 years ago. Her father died when she was a baby; she never met him. And when she was 13 years old she had a dramatic experience by losing her mom too; it was painful. So at a young age she had to live with a brother. Along her life, after this tragic event, she was feeling that she was a victim. And with continuous conscious and unconscious negative thoughts she maintained a constant emotion of suffering. Every one of us faces difficult events that cause pain in our life. But suffering is happening because the memory of this painful feeling is maintained, creating and emotion of suffering. Pain cannot be avoided, but suffering is a personal election. We cannot decide not having pain, but we can decide to take away from us the suffering. We suffer when we keep permanent negative thoughts, in our conscious, unconscious and subconscious mind. We have already talked about them in Step 2, and how to observe these thoughts, and reaching the state of self-awareness.

My mother in her last years suffered a mental disease that caused her to go back in time. At one moment she behaved like an 83 years old woman, a few months later she looked like a 25 years old woman, then like a teenager, then like a very young girl, and finally, like a baby holding her fur doll when she was dying. I noticed the precise time when she went through the age of 13 again; one day she was suffering like a victim, but the next day she was a very happy young girl. She went back in her mind to age of 13 years, before the dramatic experience of losing her mom. She passed away in the state of a happy and peaceful baby.

Imagine that keeping thoughts in our mind is like having a recorded film movie with all the memories. We have a movie that we watch it again and again. We record events and we see them back, sometimes because we want, other times unconsciously. It is good to have thoughts and memories, it is better to select the good ones, and get rid of the ones that can cause us suffering. So, how can we discard a negative though? We have already presented a method of handling them in Step 2, by changing their intensity (turning them black and white, looking at them in a distant monitor, etc.). We can also burn them.

Burning negative thoughts is a very efficient way to transform our mind. For this we need to create with our imagination a burning device. It could be a fireplace, an oven. Or like the one I use, a sophisticated and advanced technological device that absorb negative thought and burn them. Just find your burning device and change it when you need it. How does it work? When a negative thought is present in your mind, like and image, a feeling, or a sound, just imagine how you put this thought in your burning device, and how it is consumed and transformed in a higher level energy.  For example if you remember a scene that creates a nasty feeling inside you, do not reject this image or memory in your mind. If it is very painful reduce its intensity (by turning it in black and white or blurrier or smaller). Then, imagine this image or scene is visible in a screen that you fold and put inside your burning device. See how it is burned and consumed. Every time it returns, do the same. By doing this exercise, this negative scene in your inner mental movie will be discarded.

In some cases, when the memory of a negative though comes with a strong emotion, we must do something different. And emotion is like a feeling but it creates a reaction in our body. You feel an uncomfortable sensation in a specific part of your body or in an extended area of it; sometimes in most of your body. In this case, change in your burning device the fire by a strong light or energy, white, blue, pink or violet, and imagine that you get inside it. So if you feel this negative emotion do not reject it, just observe it, find where in your body you feel it. Breathe and then close your eyes and imagine you getting inside your burning device, now with light rather than fire. Let this light to clean your emotion. Alternatively to your burning device, you can use a cleaning device in your mind. In my case I use a water fall, where every drop of water emits light. When I get below this water stream I feel this brilliant water cleaning me.

If you realize that you can control your mind, rather than letting your mind to controlling you, you will modify your memories. Having negative or positive memories in our mind is our personal election. Observe your thought, transform them or burn them to create an inner transformation.

In the next step we will talk about having positive visualizations. 

Five Steps Towards Transformation – Step 2: Watching Thoughts

From previous step:

The first step in this process was to reach Serenity. It is a neutral-positive state.

By practicing it I have noticed:

• It is hard to have inner peace if continuous negative thoughts appear in the mind. However they can be controlled.
• Breathing fresh air helps to reach Serenity. I found walking outdoors, feeling the nature, wondering I am part of it, clean my mind and I feel harmonious.
• The best tool is meditation. If I practice it daily I feel great. The world could be collapsing around me but I feel imperturbable.
• If we are anxious we do not reach Serenity. We are like “farmers”: sometimes we have to be very active by plowing and sowing, but other times we need to wait until the fruit is ready to harvest it. We are “anxious” expecting the fruit is ripe when it is not ready yet.

Step 2: Watching Thoughts

Have you tried to take out from your mind a thought or a nasty image you do not want to have? The more you try to reject it, the more it is coming back. The secret is not to fight with the thoughts, but transforming them. Nothing in nature disappears; it transforms in something else.

For example, if you have in your mind an image of something that imprinted a painful mark on you, do not try to erase it. Watch it in a neutral way. Transform it by changing it until its emotional force gets weaker. Observe this image; convert it in a black and white image. Do not throw it away; just see it in its new color of black and white. Then make it smaller; don’t reject it, just transform it in the same image but black and white and smaller. Keep reducing its size until it is far away from you and its colors vanished slowly. Every time this image comes back, do the same.

A big mistake some people make is imagining that their thoughts cannot be changed, or they are part of them, of their personality. “That is how I think, and I am what I am, and I cannot change it” – some people says that. This is not true. Everything can be changed; it is a matter of time and effort. If you think something cannot be changed you cannot do it.

In this step we will observe our thoughts. Initially we will not burn them, not in this step. We will do it later, in step 3. So here, we will observe them in a neutral way. If they are producing a strong reaction, we can reduce its emotional energy, but we will not reject them.

Our thoughts are conscious, unconscious and subconscious thoughts. How can we observe something that in not conscious? We will talk about it soon.

Observing conscious thoughts: This is simple. Just observe them. Be observant of your mind, and your reactions to anything that happens around you. Be a witness of what you think. Do not judge yourself; do not be too hard on you. There is always a good reason on why you thoughts are like that. They are inside you for any reason, or you are receiving an external impulse (like an external fluidal energy that resonances with your mind).  For example, if you feel something is really bad, observe this though and give it a neutral qualification: it is not too bad as it looks like, also is not too good as it looks like. For this, you have to position yourself “above” your thoughts as an external observer. If the emotional energy of them is too strong, reduce its intensity (by changing its color, distance, blurriness, volume level, emotional level, etc.)

Observing unconscious thoughts: You have an unconscious part in your mind that does not “talk” in the normal “language”. How can we observe unconscious thoughts?  Their manifestation is in our body. Observe your body. Is there any tension anywhere? How are you breathing? Do you feel a “sensation” anywhere in your body? Is there any feeling or emotion? It is nice, or it is not? The unconscious talk to you with feeling and emotions, that we can find in our body. Just breathe fresh air and reach the Serenity state; allow this sensation to manifest. If it is strong, reduce its intensity. Do not reject it. Accept it because it is a message your unconscious mind is sending to you. Allow this sensation to flow through your body and observe it. Give it the time it requires to leave you naturally.

Observing subconscious thoughts: The subconscious is deeper in our mind. We can find its manifestation in our dreams. Observe your dreams. Take note of them. Dreams use to talk in symbols. You have the interpretation of these symbols. What is your inner mind telling you? Is there any message in your dreams? Sometimes we do not remember our dreams, in our conscious mind, but in our unconscious mind we remember them. In this case, you wake up feeling better and somehow you know answers you were looking for, no matter you do not remember what your dream was. And dreams are not only images and sounds, they could be feelings that your conscious mind cannot interpret, but you unconscious mind can.

Do you think there is another way to observe your subconscious thoughts? If so, please share it.

In our next step we will talk about one way to transform our thoughts, by “burning” them.