THOUGHT FORMS
As we progress spiritually, we naturally enter into states of expanded awareness. It’s from this perspective that our view of the world increases and new paradigms of thought must be contemplated. Materialist Science is only concerned with what can be measured by the five senses. However, anyone who has experienced altered states of consciousness easily recognizes that there is a much larger realm of experience available to us and that science should endeavor to measure and codify these states and include them in our scientific model of the universe.
With that in mind, let us contemplate an idea concerning Thought Forms. When we meditate, we are becoming aware of our breath and the sensations that flow through the body from moment to moment. Another observation that we can make involves our mental processes or what we refer to as thoughts. Just as we rarely care to take notice of our breath, we also rarely care to make ourselves aware of the thoughts that are rapidly emanating from our brains. By the same token, we often don’t see the connection between our thoughts and our emotional content and how that affects the sensations in the body. During meditation we are becoming aware of this process and in practice, we are able to gain insight into this mind/matter matrix. Our thoughts affect our body and produce sensations just as sensations in the body can result in thoughts. In this way a feedback loop is created and this makes up our general state of being. Let’s say we are plagued by a memory from the past where someone inflicted pain on us. Naturally, this is unpleasant and will trigger negative sensations in the body. Perhaps we experience heat or pressure in the chest or loss of our natural way of breathing when this thought arises. This thought may fill us with anger and if we are not aware we may release that anger on someone else who does not deserve it. We have lost the balance of our mind, it has created an unpleasant sensation, and we have compounded that misery by inflicting abuse onto another. This is why awareness is so important. In meditation, we can connect the fleeting thought with the sensation and through the practice of non-reaction sit with anger until it passes. We can practice this with a wide variety of emotions and in doing so change our behavior patterns, which in turn will change our lives for the better. It bears mentioning that thoughts, for the most part, are things which take us away from the present moment. When we have a thought it has certain characteristics that move us away from now. A thought can be focused on the past, like a pleasant memory or maybe a trauma or abuse. It can be a hope for the future or a worry about something that may or may not happen. It can be focused on the self or onto another. These are the four places our mind can go to take us away from the present. The past. The future. The Self. The Other. If we contemplate this idea further we can see how our thoughts affect our reality.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1487-88, by the young Michelangelo,
Let’s conduct a thought experiment to illustrate how this works. Let’s consider that our thoughts are energy and that when we have a powerful or persistent thought it gives birth to an entity that we will call a Thought Form. Thought Forms are not necessarily physical but are energetic beings that live on the astral plane. They are not eternal like us, but naturally have the instinct for survival. In order to live they need food that is provided to them by their creator, which is us. Their food is our emotional content. So let’s say we have a persistent thought about the future. We are worried that we cannot pay our rent or that some type of catastrophe is on the horizon. A thought form of worry is then born and we have filled it with fear. This thought form, god bless it, wants nothing more than to survive. It wants like any other entity to live and to thrive so it comes back to it’s creator for more food. It comes back for more fear. In order to secure this food it torments you with worry and triggers more fear and anxiety. The more you give it the stronger it gets and the more power it has over you. It’s like a demon constantly hovering around you siphoning fear and terror and consequently ruining your life. But this is something that you have created, something that you have chosen to feed and water and allow to grow. By the same token, we may have a thought for the future which is positive and filled with hope. This is less dangerous but if we have hope for something that doesn’t materialize we risk disappointment which can then result in misery. So it’s through meditation that we can begin to gain some modicum of control over these thought forms. By practicing awareness we can easily see these thoughts arise and pass away from an objective point of view. We view them with equanimity. We don’t feed them and consequently they lose their charge. The more we practice the more we begin to clear the cache of thought forms. Without their food, they wither and die off and this clears our path forward. There are no impediments to our direction forward and we can enter a state of flow. Try it, you’ll like it. I swear.
