All human pain is caused by words...

....as is all joy according to a Yogic sage.
"We create words to define our experiences and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure....I'm lonely...I'm a failure....I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while , then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words." This is from Eat, Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

When I read this I thought YES!!! This is so true. but if we stop talking our thoughts take over for us with more words and often these are more compelling as we can hear them more clearly when we aren't talking. This is one of the reasons people try to stay busy as much as possible, they are trying to escape this incessant thoughts or words.

But the only way to stop these incessant thoughts is to listen to them and refute them. Give them your full atttention for a few minutes and then senf them away. They remind me of small children when Mum is talking with friends, they tug on mum's dress going "Mun, mum, mum, mum,..." over and over again until Mum gives them a moment of her undivided attention, addresses what they need and sends them off to play. We need to do this with our thoughts.

1. Stop and listen to them
2. Address them and the issues. ie I'm a failure... Am I really? Is EVERYTHING I do a failure?
3. Say to the thought, NO!~I may fail at some things, but so does everyone, it's part of being human. I am okay!
4. Send them on their way. ie Ok I've heard you now & we know you are exagerating so off you go.

To do this we need to stop every now and then and be quite and still firstly to hear our thoughts and then to deal with them.

If we do this we will find our words start to bring us joy instead of pain.

Often finding time and a place for quite reflection is hard so if you want to set up a healing or quite place look at my "Healing Art" images and add one to your room so that you can sit and contemplate a beautiful nature scene while you give time to your thoughts and dealing with them.

If you want to know more please leave a comment or contact me.

The Power of Thoughts

This morning as I was laying in bed, I had a thought....
How would it be if everyone could see and hear our thoughts as we think them.....
I hear the screams...NO WAY....and yet it seems to be happening more & more, we see in the news when someone has been fired for what they said on Facebook or Twitter. We tend to put our thoughts down, without really thinking and then post them for the world to see.
Is this a bad thing or a good thing.
The bad is obvious from what we see in the news and hear ourselves when the wrong person reads those thoughts, but could good come out of this as well?
We are starting to think about our thoughts!
Thoughts have always been said to be powerful and yet so often it is an automatic function that we don't pay much attention to & yet suddenly , if you are like me, you are begining to see your thoughts and think about how others would percieve them if we put them into cyberspace.
This can just cause people to push their thoughts down and live in a pollyanna state, but what if we were to use this as a tool to look at our thoughts and deal with them as we think them.
Let me give you an example. I have just heard that I have to have an operation, my first thoughts are, what if they find something bad, what if I don't survive the op, what if I pick up a bug from the hospital?
Notice they are all negative.
Because I am more aware of them now I can take that one step further and analyse them.
First one, What if they find something bad...if they do then at least we will know what to do to fix it and if they don't we don't have to worry anymore, so this is actually a good thing.
Second one, what if I don't survive the op, this  is a risk for anyone, but a very small risk and if it happens then I won't know about it, none of us know when our time is up, so it gives me a chance to get my affairs in order just in case, another positive.
Third one, what if I pick up a bug. It is again unlikely, but if it happend we'll deal with it.

So if I was to restate my thoughts it would be, "I have to have an exploritory op, but thats good because we will know what we need to do so I don't get sick again"
Suddenly its not a catastrophe, mearly another part of life. So if we can use this caution we need to exercise with social networking and our thoughts we can turn it into a wonderful, positive tool that will help us and those around us.
Give it a try and let me know how you get on.