How to get rid of a persistent thought?

[Newborn]

I am not a noob, in fact, i am a self-help junkie and have tried almost everything to improve the way I feel and the quality of my thoughts (naturally pretty negative and harsh). Meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelics, hypnosis, affirmations, visualization, subliminals, law of attraction, endless books, courses and videos but nothing really worked. 

In the end, my natural state is negative and depressive.

I feel like swimming with a heavy anchor attached to my feet, almost drowning even if I try hard and if I don't, it is worse.

There is this persistent thought about ending up homeless, a complete failure in life, because i cannot handle life on my own. 29yo male (almost 30) needing financial help from my family to pay the bills and still 20k in debt. This is also a constant feeling in my body, a heavy dense fearful feeling.

No amount of positive thinking or letting go was enough to dissolve this.

Seem like i am heading to an inevitable disastrous failure and i cannot do anything to stop it.

The strange thing is that this thought is my biggest fear and it is slowly coming true.

I would love some perspective on this issue

[Nahm]

22 hours ago, Newborn said:

I am not a noob, in fact, i am a self-help junkie and have tried almost everything to improve the way I feel and the quality of my thoughts (naturally pretty negative and harsh). Meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelics, hypnosis, affirmations, visualization, subliminals, law of attraction, endless books, courses and videos but nothing really worked. 

In the end, my natural state is negative and depressive.

I feel like swimming with a heavy anchor attached to my feet, almost drowning even if I try hard and if I don't, it is worse.

There is this persistent thought about ending up homeless, a complete failure in life, because i cannot handle life on my own. 29yo male (almost 30) needing financial help from my family to pay the bills and still 20k in debt. This is also a constant feeling in my body, a heavy dense fearful feeling.

Suffering ends where humility begins. 

That thought is not your greatest fear. Fear describes how it feels when you focus on that thought. It discordant with the truth that you are creating, and can focus on what you do want… that’s why it feels that way. 

If self help isn’t working, try therapy etc, get some help. Take advantage of all resources available to you. That is also self help. Don’t just try one or two or three things, find what works. If there is trauma, go to a trauma specialist. 

Making false claims feels like making false claims. It isn’t right or wrong, it’s innocent ignorance, and yet it is also discordant. When you focus on these thoughts, you feel that way. That you are a junkie, that there are states, that ‘yours’ is naturally ‘negative and depressive’… imaging being homeless, thinking of yourself as a failure, that you can’t handle life… the discord of these thoughts does weigh on and take a toll on the body. All of these thoughts create discord because none of these thoughts are true about you. The body is the truth, listen to how the body feels, not thoughts. Listen to the emotions, not thoughts. 

There is nothing wrong with ‘where you’re at’. Nothing wrong with having 20k of debt. Nothing wrong with receiving help from your parents or anyone else. 

There isn’t really anything ‘wrong’ with judgement either, but there is how discordant judging is in terms of feeling. The end of suffering could also be said to be the choice of feeling better, vs believing discordant thoughts. No one can shift focus for you, but there is otherwise more than enough help available to help you to. 

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No amount of positive thinking or letting go was enough to dissolve this.

There is only now. 

That this was let go is a false claim, evidenced by the focus upon it now. I agree, no amount of thinking adds up to letting it go. I don’t mean that flippantly, but for your well being. It is good to realize if the way I feel is related to that there is falsity and thus discord, in what I am believing and saying about myself. That tells me much about myself, if I listen to how I feel. 

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Seem like i am heading to an inevitable disastrous failure and i cannot do anything to stop it.

There is no future to stop. It’s the thought, now, that is discordant. This is worrying, and it would feel better to acknowledge that sometimes doubtful thoughts do arise, and worrying and doubting results in disappointment, and so on. 

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The strange thing is that this thought is my biggest fear and it is slowly coming true.

Fear isn’t a thought, fear is an emotion. Emotion is guidance for humble newbs. 

If feeling better is desired, willingly let the discordant claims making go. 

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I would love some perspective on this issue

Let it go. That is the only way there can be the experience of a different perspective. Use the scale to express each emotion. 

?

Thought is not something to get rid of, ‘something to get rid of’ is a thought. There is no problem with thought. The change desired is in attitude.  ‘Persistent thought’, is one thought, just like ‘a hundred thoughts’ is one thought. A golden attitude is within you already to be allowed to shine. 

[peanutspathtotruth]

13 hours ago, Newborn said:

I am not a noob, in fact, i am a self-help junkie and have tried almost everything to improve the way I feel and the quality of my thoughts (naturally pretty negative and harsh). Meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelics, hypnosis, affirmations, visualization, subliminals, law of attraction, endless books, courses and videos but nothing really worked. 

In the end, my natural state is negative and depressive.

I feel like swimming with a heavy anchor attached to my feet, almost drowning even if I try hard and if I don't, it is worse.

There is this persistent thought about ending up homeless, a complete failure in life, because i cannot handle life on my own. 29yo male (almost 30) needing financial help from my family to pay the bills and still 20k in debt. This is also a constant feeling in my body, a heavy dense fearful feeling.

No amount of positive thinking or letting go was enough to dissolve this.

Seem like i am heading to an inevitable disastrous failure and i cannot do anything to stop it.

The strange thing is that this thought is my biggest fear and it is slowly coming true.

I would love some perspective on this issue

I can relate. I have financial struggles and the fear of future scenarios is sometimes quite burdensome. Thoughts and feelings can be hard to allow. But this is the work you chose, so don't give up now

This issue you're having has multiple layers, and they are all important:

• Start taking full responsibility for your survival. You need to allow the perspective that despite all the spiritual truths you might want and have seen, you gotta think, speak and act (in this case) from smart pragmatism. IF you decide you want to survive as a human body - this being your ultimate nature or not - then do something about it. It doesn't even have to involve delusional beliefs or ego. Be like a lion that just does what it does to survive, and you can be peaceful and content with that. Do the life purpose course, act consciously and lovingly, but also just work a lot if right now you need to. You gotta work yourself out of your debt, and you can do it. Build your life purpose at the same time. This is not the deepest truth and it is not sexy, but you gotta do something NOW. Think about what your heart wants and do that until it is the only thing you need to do to survive. This can take a few years. Take your first step NOW.
• Do the "Loving What Is" work from Byron Katie. Get the book, work through it, see that your worries and fears are not true. This is crucial.
• You need to understand that your biggest intention - the intention of changing how you feel - is what is the problem. Can you have the intention of seeing things as they really are? Clue: You're not miserable, you're not doing anything wrong and you are loved so much that you couldn't handle it. But to find this out you need to FACE your feelings, your beliefs and you need to inquire into them deeply. Use the firey energy of frustration to investigate who you truly are and what is true about you. You have to be bold and ready to feel all your misery and your feelings - their pure energy, without the story. These feelings will unfold by themselves, but only as long as you let them. When you grasp on to your thoughts, this won't work. Investigate your thoughts and dive into the pure ISNESS of the feelings you are so scared of. 
• Most important point: Whatever you do, you gotta open your heart. This changes EVERYTHING. Listen to Matt Kahn as soon as you can (!) and learn what self-love really means and how your thinking eclipses it. See how all this is not about awakening yet? Do this work first and you will naturally want to dive into Truth more and more
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agGBT2tsJGg&ab_channel=MattKahnAllForLove

[RevoCulture]

2 hours ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

I can relate. I have financial struggles and the fear of future scenarios is sometimes quite burdensome. Thoughts and feelings can be hard to allow. But this is the work you chose, so don't give up now

This issue you're having has multiple layers, and they are all important:

• Start taking full responsibility for your survival. You need to allow the perspective that despite all the spiritual truths you might want and have seen, you gotta think, speak and act (in this case) from smart pragmatism. IF you decide you want to survive as a human body - this being your ultimate nature or not - then do something about it. It doesn't even have to involve delusional beliefs or ego. Be like a lion that just does what it does to survive, and you can be peaceful and content with that. Do the life purpose course, act consciously and lovingly, but also just work a lot if right now you need to. You gotta work yourself out of your debt, and you can do it. Build your life purpose at the same time. This is not the deepest truth and it is not sexy, but you gotta do something NOW. Think about what your heart wants and do that until it is the only thing you need to do to survive. This can take a few years. Take your first step NOW.
• Do the "Loving What Is" work from Byron Katie. Get the book, work through it, see that your worries and fears are not true. This is crucial.
• You need to understand that your biggest intention - the intention of changing how you feel - is what is the problem. Can you have the intention of seeing things as they really are? Clue: You're not miserable, you're not doing anything wrong and you are loved so much that you couldn't handle it. But to find this out you need to FACE your feelings, your beliefs and you need to inquire into them deeply. Use the firey energy of frustration to investigate who you truly are and what is true about you. You have to be bold and ready to feel all your misery and your feelings - their pure energy, without the story. These feelings will unfold by themselves, but only as long as you let them. When you grasp on to your thoughts, this won't work. Investigate your thoughts and dive into the pure ISNESS of the feelings you are so scared of. 
• Most important point: Whatever you do, you gotta open your heart. This changes EVERYTHING. Listen to Matt Kahn as soon as you can (!) and learn what self-love really means and how your thinking eclipses it. See how all this is not about awakening yet? Do this work first and you will naturally want to dive into Truth more and more
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agGBT2tsJGg&ab_channel=MattKahnAllForLove

 

Very nice....

[gettoefl]

live day to day, die every night, if you wake up enjoy the day and do the same again

is there any problem preventing a perfect day today

[axiom]

@Newborn

First of all, realise that you are likely better off than 95%+ of the people on the planet.

Secondly, take the focus off yourself. The 'I' has likely remained at the core of all of your efforts to shift the negativity thus far.

Actually, it can be said that the extent to which you focus on yourself, your own shortcomings, your own dreams and aspirations IS the extent of your misery. It's the same thing.

The secret to happiness is the absence of self. 

So... my advice for this juncture of your life is to:

1) Take the focus off psychedelics. They have their place, but not in your current frame of mind;
2) In fact, take the focus totally off self-improvement altogether. 
3) Put the focus on *others* starting now. Volunteer to help people in your family with little jobs, or expand out to the wider community. Help an elderly person with their shopping for example. 
4) By all means continue to meditate, but this must absolutely be supplementary to 3) above.

Every time you start feeling sorry for yourself, think instead of the pensioner up the road who just lost their wife to cancer, has no immediate family, and is now totally alone.

Look for opportunities to help others - and I bet that heavy, dense fearful feeling will soon evaporate. Good luck.

Edited February 18, 2022 by axiom

[Vercingetorix]

Did you develop enough awareness to catch these thoughts real time when they show up? If so what do you once you notice them?

You can try to find the root childhood events (memories) that made you develop these thoughts and do therapy work on them - expressing and doing things that you wanted to do and say but couldn't as a child and giving the child what he needed in these events. With this technique you can really nip the mechanisms from the root.

 

 

[Cathal]

@Newborn hello there. I think you are expecting these practices to somehow translate into reality in some dysfuncational way,, god realization or self-realization practices or enlightenment itself makes no such translation. chop wood carry water before enlightenment, chop wood carry water after enlightenment

 

the issue is that you are not doing inner work, only practice. learning to adapt to people and society is some serious hard work, confronting belief systems and understanding your emotional core you developed as a child -your inner child- your conditioning, your attachments to what you like and dislike so on basically truly transforming your experience of the character while also being the witness is your whole effort.

this homeless fear is being created because you never built integrity inside of yourself and you don't trust yourself to do what has to be done

what do you think you need to feel in order to begin to build a life for yourself that is more fulfilling?

 

[mandyjw]

@Newborn Who is that in your profile picture? 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, mandyjw said:

@Newborn Who is that in your profile picture? 

Ramana Maharshi

[mandyjw]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Ramana Maharshi

The begging monk? The one we revere, is also that which we fear. 

[WelcometoReality]

22 hours ago, Newborn said:

I am not a noob, in fact, i am a self-help junkie and have tried almost everything to improve the way I feel and the quality of my thoughts (naturally pretty negative and harsh). Meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychedelics, hypnosis, affirmations, visualization, subliminals, law of attraction, endless books, courses and videos but nothing really worked. 

In the end, my natural state is negative and depressive.

I feel like swimming with a heavy anchor attached to my feet, almost drowning even if I try hard and if I don't, it is worse.

There is this persistent thought about ending up homeless, a complete failure in life, because i cannot handle life on my own. 29yo male (almost 30) needing financial help from my family to pay the bills and still 20k in debt. This is also a constant feeling in my body, a heavy dense fearful feeling.

No amount of positive thinking or letting go was enough to dissolve this.

Seem like i am heading to an inevitable disastrous failure and i cannot do anything to stop it.

The strange thing is that this thought is my biggest fear and it is slowly coming true.

I would love some perspective on this issue

The fearful thoughts are based on that dense feeling in the body. When you stop letting go or do positive thinking in order to get rid of it or run from it by distracting yourself, and instead welcome that dense feeling of fear. Sit with it and embrace it, then the denseness starts to dissolve. Then positivity will come naturally.

[Alex_R]

Try to find happiness in presence itself, this Present Moment