Outofstress Article Submission DirectoryShare your knowledge – Submit an article

If you have reached a point in your life where you want to be rid of the continuous torture of the “thought generating” mind then it’s your good fortune. Obsessive or negative thoughts can make living miserable when you are plagued by them, but this very situation can become the invitation to transcend mind and be free of suffering forever.

The mind is the root of all suffering. By its very nature the mind is negative. 80-90% of the thoughts that the mind generates are fearful or stressful. For some it might be 95-99%. That’s when you can’t stand it anymore.

Can you stop obsessive thoughts? – If you could it would have great, but the truth is that you can’t. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop thinking – may be for a few seconds you can stop and control thoughts but not more than that. Suppressing thoughts is even worse than enduring thoughts. It builds up a lot of negative energy inside.

So how to stop thinking horrible thoughts? The secret to stopping obsessive or negative thoughts is to detach from the mind. You cannot fight mind with the mind. That’s what this article is about. Let’s look at this in more detail.

What causes obsessive thoughts?

If you generated thoughts, you could’ve controlled them too. The truth is that you don’t generate thoughts, the mind does. It’s on auto mode most of the time. You can see this for yourself, can you predict what you will think 30 seconds from now? If you can’t how can you assume that you are generating the thoughts?

If you believe that you are your mind, that’s a false notion again. If you are your mind then how can you observe the thoughts? So you must be separate from the mind to see what the mind is doing.

So the mind generates thoughts, which are mostly just energy forms. These thoughts pass through like clouds. We identify with some of these thoughts and obsess about them. So in truth all thoughts are just neutral energy forms, it’s “your” interest or association with the thoughts that makes them obsessive. If you can understand this truth, you have taken the first step towards getting rid of obsessive thoughts.

How to stop and control thoughts?

If you are asking this question, ask yourself another question – “is this question not another thought? It’s a thought about killing thoughts”. All your attempts at controlling and stopping thoughts will fail because you will be using the mind to stop the mind. The police man and thief are both the mind, so how can the police man catch the thief?

So you cannot kill the mind by force. The mind dies its own death by the poison of disassociation.

What gives power to a thought? – Your interest. If you have no interest in a particular thought then it loses its hold over you. You can try this out now. Let the thoughts flow through your mind but don’t take interest in them. Just stay as a bystander or a watcher and let the thoughts float.

Initially you might have a hard time watching thoughts because of your inherent habit of associating with each thought that arises. It helps to know that you are not your thoughts, that thoughts are just energy forms created in the mind. Why does the mind create thoughts? No one knows – it’s just something it does, why bother. Do you ever ask why does the heart beat?

With a little practice you will get really good at watching thoughts and not involving yourself with them. You will stop giving power to thoughts by not giving them your interest. Thoughts die immediately when they are deprived of this fuel of interest. If you don’t associate with the thought or give power to the thought, it will wither away quickly.

Thoughts have no reality or truth to them

Past events get stored as memories. Your mind conditioning and beliefs are also stored as memories. All this is unconscious storage, the mind does all this in auto mode. Thoughts are then generated based on the past happenings, beliefs, conditioning and present life situation. It’s like a computer trying to predict or conjure up projection based on the data it has collected so far.

As you can see thoughts are just mind creations. Is there a truth to them? Not one bit. There is no such thing as a “true thought”. It’s all just perception, conditioning and belief, none of it is real to start with. Your thoughts are colored by your conditioning; they have nothing to do with reality.

Do you believe that what happened in your dream is real? Did you know that thoughts create dreams? So if you don’t believe in your dreams, how can you believe in your thoughts? They are just “illusion creating” energy forms. Let them be and they will lose their power on you.

You are far more powerful that your mind because you have the power to watch your mind. The mind becomes inconsequential when you see through its antics. It’s like an old grandfather trying to scare little children by the fireside by telling them horror stories with no reality.

The practice of watching the mind

All you need to do to get rid of obsessive thoughts is to watch the mind without getting involved. You will get really good at this with just a little practice. This practice, or “sadhana” as called in Hindu scriptures, is the root of awakening from the illusion of mind.

Without trying to understand this practice just implement it. The more you try to understand the more mind gets involved. Just watch the mind and you will soon see that you are not the mind at all. That the mind is like a machine on your head that has gone a little insane because of all the interest you gave it. Be free of your mind by depriving it of your interest. This is the only direct path of controlling the mind or rather killing the mind.