Don’t feed the dragons
inside your mind
ever hangry
feeding on thoughts
growing your fears
you suffer the most
from the fear of suffering
everything will be ok
if you are ok with everything
Tjen Photography - Barcelona, 2012
We are hardwired for negativity. In an evolutional setting this has had virtue, because looking for danger, expecting for things to go wrong and mistrust were critical characteristics for survival. This has been true for a very long period of time, and sometimes still is valid today. However, with our physical situations now much less at risk, we have translated our programming for negativity into the realm of negative thoughts. These dragonish thoughts are ever hungry, want to be fed, to the point that we feel good if we can gossip bad about others, we delight in horror movies, and oxymoronically, we feel good about feeling bad.
I the watcher described how we form neural pathways and how information travels over these neural highways unconsciously, a bit like driving to work. If we want these mindless thoughts to stop, we need to intervene and do so in a special way. The more we actively engage in fighting bad thoughts, the more we keep activating these ways of the dragon. To make the dragon fall asleep we need to direct less traffic on its path.
The first step is to become conscious of your negative thought patterns, so you can recognise them and observe them. It is important to realise and imprint into your awareness that negative thoughts are stupid, horrible, draining, uncouth and dim. However, this awareness is not immediately filtering through to your programmed unconsciousness that is addicted to negativity and wants to be fed.
The second step is to observe these thoughts as they come, but let them pass through. Yes, indeed, instead of beating yourself over the head, let the thoughts come..... and go. Watch them, but do not interfere, judge or otherwise give them food for thought. If this is difficult, there are a number of tricks that can help you hypnotising your dragons.
The first one is a mind game and a fun one too. Watch your mind and put all your consciousness in observing what thoughts enter your mind. Watch it like a hawk. Try it. It may take a few times to learn to quieten your mind, but if you are fully attentive, you notice that no thought is able to enter your mind. As soon as there is an inkling of a thought, it is chased away by your death stare. Great, now use this stare when you observe negative thoughts entering you mind. Become I the watcher: “Thou shall not pass”. Remember, the trick is an empty mind, not creating thoughts about banning negative thoughts or otherwise chasing them in your mind.
The second technique is technically simpler but perhaps emotionally a bit more challenging. Smile[1]. Yes, that’s right, just smile. The interaction between body and mind is amazingly direct. The brain is conditioned to relate physical smiling (even if you don’t mean it!) to positive thoughts and feelings. You therefore provide a powerful anti-dote to negative thoughts even if you think its nonsense. Something else happens when you smile: you create separation between your negative thoughts and your inner self. Your inner self smiles at your unconscious mind, as though you see through a trickster.
The third technique is to focus on your breathing, Follow your breath actively (in, hold and out) and when you breath out, push your breath to that part of your body that you want to affirm and favour. This action is similar to smiling but goes deeper.
The fourth technique is deepening of the realisation that you are not the one who thinks. This may sound a bit obscure, but it means that there is a difference between your inner self and your mind. The ‘watch your mind’ exercise proves this. You would not be able to watch your mind if you are the same as your mind. Descartes’ expression “cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”) was famously reinterpreted by Sartre who observed that the “I” that thinks is not the same entity as the one that says “I am”. This is an extremely powerful insight[1]. It means that you are more than your thoughts and that you can (re)make yourself. This is the essence of inner freedom and self-liberation[2] (including from addictive negative thoughts). It also means that you can separate yourself from your thoughts and that your Being is a holistic combination of your consciousness, your mind, your feelings, your body and your spirit.
As you start understanding your mind better, you realise that your mind is only one part of your self. Your mind is basically a machine not unlike a computer. We put stuff in it: knowledge, data, experiences, etc. that we can retrieve for future use. In addition to its content, our mind also has programs that work with the content. The programs in our unconscious mind are Basic code such as “IF X THEN Y ELSE Z”. The issue is that when we want to upgrade our mind software (i.e. no more negative thoughts) we can not exit the existing program, compile a new version and run the upgraded version. In our mind the operating system and the user software are blended into one. For us to upgrade our code, we have to de-learn the old code while we are learning the new one. During this upgrade process the mind needs to gradually switch from old to new, and the mind does not like it. It knows the old version, it runs very efficiently, it has been fully debugged and it doesn’t like the change and will even resist it. So during this process you have a period where your consciousness is aware that negative thoughts are bad, while your mind continues to operate on the version optimised for negative thoughts. This mixed up period can last for months until, with conscious efforts as described above, new neural pathways have been formed in the brain and the old ones pruned. By minding your dragons they can be put to sleep. As you can kick your habits for suffering, you free your inner self for growth and joy.
Tjen Photography - The Netherlands, 2015
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1 A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose., Eckhart Tolle
2 Cogito Ergo Sum: The Responsibility of Self-Liberation, The Stanford Freedom Project