What to do with a thought.

[Harikrishnan]

So i was  reading a book and a thought came of my ex getting married and it had a feeling of little anxiety and it went.(single thought) should i go back on reading like thoughts are just nothing or should i go and find the thought and embrace the emotion fully and let go?

[MuriloPais]

Don’t identify with the thoughts, observe and grasp him, after this you let go. 

 

[Harikrishnan]

i didnt identify with the thought but there was feeling. I was confused whether if i continued reading without looking at thought will that be a supression of thought.

[OctagonOctopus]

Allow it, be aware of it, accept it, continue reading. If a thought comes up that is not easy to do that to then I would write it down somewhere to inquire into it later to see what is bothering one about it

[Myegolikestacos]

49 minutes ago, Harikrishnan said:

i didnt identify with the thought but there was feeling. I was confused whether if i continued reading without looking at thought will that be a supression of thought.

@Harikrishnan Of course you let it go... because it's not real, you just made it up. If she actually gets married you will have to learn to accept it guess what you will still be ok. If you start feeling bad for yourself remember you are creating those thoughts also and let those go too. 

[LastThursday]

@Harikrishnan there is a belief that we are like vessels full of past emotions and fears and anxieties. And if we dip into the vessel that we can somehow 'fix' our problems or have some form of relief or resolution. This belief is not useful. Psychiatrists have it wrong.

A more useful belief is to know that thoughts and bodily sensations arise of their own accord. We then out of habit, 'attach' an emotion to that thought or bodily sensation and call it something like 'anxiety'. 

The thoughts and bodily sensations will also disappear of their own accord  - and this is crucial - if we let them.

Sometimes the emotion we attach to a thought, makes the thought keep coming back, because we have given it importance. And a vicious cycle is set up.

To break the cycle, we need to get out of the habit of 'attaching' emotions to thoughts.

You have to do this consciously and very deliberately and trust that the thought or sensation will go of it's own accord.

At first it will seem extremely difficult not to react out of habit. But it can be done.

 

Here's an example:

I have given up smoking many times. I have clearly observed the cycle when trying to give up. I would be minding my own business, when a thought to have a cigarette suddenly appeared. This 'caused' me to have an emotional reaction, something like a mix between anxiety and hunger in terms of intensity. This emotion kept the thought alive, which in turn kept the emotion alive, until I succumbed to a smoke.

To break the cycle I had to realise that the thought would naturally go away if I paid no attention to it. In other words I made the thought less important over time, and eventually my emotional reaction would not get triggered - the cycle was broken.

See, this is much better than dipping into stories of my childhood and why I took up smoking in the first place and talking and thinking about it endlessly with no resolution! That didn't work.

[Spiritual_Seeker]

It's never healthy to suppress or try and stuff our thoughts and emotions into a little bottle. If that bottle is shaken enough, it'll explode and then you'll have a mess to clean up. 

What you can do is acknowledge the thought, accept that it's making you feel that way, and go back to what you were doing. 

Emotions are powerful. The negative ones have a lot more power over us than the positive. Our negative feelings do have meaning but that doesn't mean they need to have power over us. 

A book called The Brilliance of Emotions explores how we can process and feel connected to our emotions. There's a review of it here in case you want to read about it before you buy. Review.

[Liam569]

You need a lot of bright and good emotions + a lot of employment, then there will be no bad thoughts, as well as time for all sorts of nonsense

[Harikrishnan]

1 hour ago, Liam569 said:

You need a lot of bright and good emotions + a lot of employment, then there will be no bad thoughts, as well as time for all sorts of nonsense

True.

[Harikrishnan]

14 hours ago, LastThursday said:

@Harikrishnan there is a belief that we are like vessels full of past emotions and fears and anxieties. And if we dip into the vessel that we can somehow 'fix' our problems or have some form of relief or resolution. This belief is not useful. Psychiatrists have it wrong.

A more useful belief is to know that thoughts and bodily sensations arise of their own accord. We then out of habit, 'attach' an emotion to that thought or bodily sensation and call it something like 'anxiety'. 

The thoughts and bodily sensations will also disappear of their own accord  - and this is crucial - if we let them.

Sometimes the emotion we attach to a thought, makes the thought keep coming back, because we have given it importance. And a vicious cycle is set up.

To break the cycle, we need to get out of the habit of 'attaching' emotions to thoughts.

You have to do this consciously and very deliberately and trust that the thought or sensation will go of it's own accord.

At first it will seem extremely difficult not to react out of habit. But it can be done.

 

Here's an example:

I have given up smoking many times. I have clearly observed the cycle when trying to give up. I would be minding my own business, when a thought to have a cigarette suddenly appeared. This 'caused' me to have an emotional reaction, something like a mix between anxiety and hunger in terms of intensity. This emotion kept the thought alive, which in turn kept the emotion alive, until I succumbed to a smoke.

To break the cycle I had to realise that the thought would naturally go away if I paid no attention to it. In other words I made the thought less important over time, and eventually my emotional reaction would not get triggered - the cycle was broken.

See, this is much better than dipping into stories of my childhood and why I took up smoking in the first place and talking and thinking about it endlessly with no resolution! That didn't work.

I have similar experience with porn. When a thought seeing porn comes and i say oh its just a thought and give no important to it, it tend to go quick. I dont think about porn for next couple of days.  Meditation has helped me to have less thoughts this days, and lately my thought about a thing are single thought, it just come and goes no more stories or expanding. But i still have sudden emotion like in the above case a anxiety. 

[PatternsFormThought]

Complete disidentification (with beliefs here - for me it would involve ensuring that I'm not creating any false narratives that I'm personalising) while completely identifying everything (relevant) in the experience.

Thus the absolute removal of denial. If one knows that some unpleasant emotions are present then one should investigate said emotions, experience them fully through a process of vipassana, which is no judgement, invalidation or lack of experiencing the authenticity of them. Simply allowing the process to wash over you; learn and grow from the experience most of all.

I wish I could impart this lesson easily but I can't, all I can say is that its available to those that really wish to experience it. That is, well a bird just took the mate of another bird right now, a lion just killed a gazelle, thousands of people died today, thousands of people were born today. Literally right now, probabilistically, there's thousands of humans cheating on other humans, from the physical (so with respect to sexuality) to the ideological (professing alternate views contrary to their tribe).

 

[PatternsFormThought]

And wow yeah, all those people just whacking off to porn right now, pretty much in every moment for the rest of our lives there's probably at least one strange person in the world whacking off to porn haha. They're no different to a dog dry humping some persons random leg. It's humorous.

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[CreamCat]

19 hours ago, LastThursday said:

I have given up smoking many times. I have clearly observed the cycle when trying to give up. I would be minding my own business, when a thought to have a cigarette suddenly appeared.

Which one between smoking and masturbation is harder to quit?

[LastThursday]

5 hours ago, Harikrishnan said:

But i still have sudden emotion like in the above case a anxiety. 

This is just the cycle I mentioned above. You are fooled, because you think the emotion comes first and then the thoughts after, because it all happens very suddenly.  But it's always thought and bodily sensations first, emotions next. You can still break the cycle.

The other thing to notice, is that emotions also come and go, just like thoughts. They may last longer, but they're never permanent (they just seem that way). What happens in practice, is that emotions keep being triggered over and over again by thoughts. Is a depressed person really depressed 24/7? No, they're just depressed over and over again many times a day, otherwise how do you explain when they have a 'good' day?

In a way, an emotion is itself just another thought. What's the difference between anger and excitement? Both produce adrenaline in your body, your body may tremble, and you feel hot and your muscles tense - what's the difference between the two? It's all just context and how you label it.

What's the best thing to do with emotions? Pay attention, take action if needed, otherwise just let them subside and go away.  Break the cycle.

 

[LastThursday]

31 minutes ago, CreamCat said:

Which one between smoking and masturbation is harder to quit?

Without a doubt smoking. But guess which one I've quit? Maybe I'm just very deluded. Maybe I should get a partner and have kids, but that's waaay higher investment that Porn***.  Being an older bloke, my hormone levels are way lower, so not so much pressure build up anyway, my gratification is manageable, but it's still a low consciousness activity that I should definitely quit.

Edited June 6, 2019 by LastThursday

[Beeman]

I think digesting the thoughts will help.