Thought Mirror: Real or Representation?
By: Rakesh Bam
Tags: Spirituality, Mental Health, Peace Of Mind, Thoughts, Negative Thoughts

What you seek is seeking you — Rumi

The brain can be viewed as a gland and it secretes — thoughts. The more you stimulate it, the more thoughts flow out. The vast amounts of technological integration in our lives and intrusions associated with it have made a lot of us disproportionately anxious and jumpy. This is mostly evident on social media platforms where users quarrel based on incomplete information on every possible subject, a modus operandi set by fragmented reality. This phenomenon also gets carried over to our real-life interactions. So often, it becomes very easy to misunderstand each other on many issues and even harbor negative feelings against friends and colleagues long after these interactions are over. I have had a simple realization that works slowly but surely against these kinds of nagging mental bugs. I hope it works for you too. For that we have to understand how we let negative thoughts misrepresent what is real.

Whenever someone acts in an unjust manner with me, it can make me resentful afterwards. This is especially true if my good behavior or intention is not reciprocated and is ignored by another for no obvious reason. These thoughts of resentment toward such a person can lead to anger and inability to maintain relationships from my side. The quick fix is not to care and move on. A lot of us step back but can’t simply move on from the inside because if we try to be nonchalant, the very act of trying to be indifferent further intensifies those negative thoughts. There is a sense of self-soothing arrogance from ones ego here. Rather, one needs some rational dissection of thoughts before one is able to truly move on.

Lets understand some subtle but obvious workings of how brain processes negative events: (1)Thoughts of someone misbehaving with us are produced in our own minds. We are not “aware” of this simple truth while we are ruminating on these thoughts and completely inside our own heads. (2) These thoughts are just representations of a person or a situation, not them. It is easy to mistake our own thoughts, the brain secretions, as those corresponding external actors when this mental movie is streaming in high definition. (3) Resisting thoughts of someone/something you dislike is not the same as resisting that actual person/thing. Please reread this and think about it. It is easy to be fooled here. When we despise thoughts of someone automatically, we should stop and realize that we are resisting our own thought processes. Thoughts are mere response to something external or new and brain uses them for representation and analysis. Thoughts should not substitute for the real thing. It is not to say that we have to condone the person who did us wrong but it is a big mistake to deny our own thoughts of them. This is where most of the pain and anxiety stems from and to some extent, it is self inflicted even when it is not our fault. Brain is inherently wired to reject something that is potentially harmful. The action potential and impulse transmissions through many layers of neuronal networks help us filter and formulate the best possible representations of real world events around us. However, in the face of life threatening danger, time is critical and it is worth allowing thoughts of danger to bypass these layers even if they turn out to be wrong later. The negative thoughts must have evolved and gained importance for our survival against natural elements but we do need to take a different approach when it comes to processing any unwarranted negative thoughts that linger for too long. Contrary to our fear of what is undesirable, this is achieved by the integration of our negative thoughts, a parallel concept to Carl Jung’s shadow integration to the self.

Instead of adopting a temporary fix of indifference and rejection, we should stop running away from negative thoughts and give them space in our mind. After-all, they come from within us. If we run away from our own thoughts and deposit them in the dark unattended corners of our mind, we run away from ourselves. How long can we do this? This makes us miserable and we ruminate on this mild pain for a long time. This process of accepting thoughts of resentment as natural part of us will diffuse suffering from relationships and this way, we will not end up hating others perpetually for doing us wrong for any reason whatsoever. This way, our mental struggles go through a due process and vanish after a while without us suffering in vain. The wounds turn into scars and the pain will dissipate. You can think of an example from your own life. Take steps to integrate your negative thoughts of someone or something that you may have swept under the carpet. Just realize that the thoughts of them is not them but it is you — your brain secretions. You can ignore the real person but accept your thoughts of them as part of you because they are not them. You don’t have to carry the weight of resentment anymore.