Understanding and Transmuting Self Destructive Thoughts

by Robert Wilkinson

We've certainly all had them, along with everyone else we've ever known. It's part of being human. It's also part of becoming consciously your Higher Self, since dealing with unfortunate mental and emotional patterns is key to understanding how to approach the mutual attachment of mind to feelings and how these create karmic patterns. Basically, our attachments create effects and consequences down the time stream. When ego is frustrated by the lack of fulfillment in a thing or behavior, it turns its emotional thoughts toward the destruction of that. The trick is to see what truly is or needs to be destroyed in both its outer and inner nature. By the outer symbols of our lives we know what images we identify with. Most of these, being impermanent, will be destroyed sooner or later. Our problem is in finding the right attitude while we do the journey.

Self-destructive actions, thoughts, and feelings mean one thing when we are young and inexperienced. They mean something else entirely as we learn to recognize Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence, as well as accept the Great Mystery of things we may never understand.

When we're younger or refuse to mature, self-destructive anything usually means reckless actions, feelings, and ideas. These lead to problems because an understanding of consequences is paramount if we're to come out of mental and emotional slavery. As we mature and welcome understanding our life and others' lives from an integrated view, self-destruction of certain behaviors, feelings, and ideas must be done. It's like the need to clear out the closets before we bring new material in.

It is said that Divine Mind has three aspects from which all other forms derive. These three aspects are known by many names and understandings by people on various paths to Truth. Simply, there is a Generative, Creative, Initiating Aspect. There is a Preserving, Sustaining, Harmonizing Aspect. And there is a Distributive, Fracturing, Transforming Aspect. Obviously, there are many other ways to understand this three-fold process of eternal Creative impulses being harmonized until a time of transformation. This Cosmic Process is how things manifest in our world. We learn to deal with it and ride its pulses throughout our lives.

We are born into this, and as we grow up usually learn unhelpful attitudes and feelings. We get new ideas and feelings we hold on to, while old ideas and feeling responses pass away. Always there is a process of new things showing up, sustainment for a while, then dissolution of the old, transforming into a new.

Most of us learned a host of obvious and subtle destructive mindsets and approaches, and it is by dealing with these that we come into self discipline and personality integration. We were not raised with perfect knowledge nor were we in a perfect world with perfect people, and many things we learned from others when we were children need to be changed into something more appropriate to our individualized consciousness as adults. Here radical compassion and forgiveness help, since from one point of view, we're all the blind leading the blind.

For example, there are times when we feel inconvenienced or bothered by something or someone intruding on our time or space. Well, life is for living, not being "inconvenienced." Feeling annoyed, like feeling fear, is a useless response. It is merely an emotional prod to focus our attention on how to respond to that which annoys us. We learned these behaviors and responses, and must understand them from a larger angle of vision if we want to have some ability to choose how we want to play our life situations rather than be driven by conscious and unconscious urges.

Even when I realize I am annoyed, I try not to stay stuck in vectors one moment longer than I need to. And with practice over time, I now see there are things that once annoyed me that no longer bring forth that response. It helps to surrender as fast as we can to the Divine Will, regardless of the large and small changes it's putting us all through.

There is a time and place for destroying unhelpful behaviors, especially if they lead to unfortunate consequences down the road. Then our power to note which thoughts and feelings are self-destructive to us in the present can lead us to ending those patterns. All we must do is face the motivating thought behind the feeling, and choose to redirect the thinking toward a different end.

We do not need to stay stuck in difficult feelings, but we will until we choose to deal with them directly. In learning what causes these destructive mindsets to come forth we can target the root of many things that create 10,000 problems for us down the road.

Many self-destructive thoughts and feelings masque a need to face the end of something that is no longer fulfilling. Being creatures of habit identifying with outer things, we don't like things to end. Even when they are painful, we still have a curious need to attach for a variety of reasons. However, rather than getting stuck in struggling with unhelpful patterns, we can recognize the truth that something has ended or needs to be changed into something more fulfilling for us.

Then we can choose cheerfulness and dispassion in turning away from self-destructive responses in the blink of a moment. Then if they reappear, it will be easier to remember that it's an echo of something that is no longer real, since we've already recognized the need to move on. The future always beckons to those who open their imagination to something higher, greater, and wider. It's all determined by your point of view.

© Copyright 2007 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[annie]

god bless you robert for your wisdom, generosity and abilities that you share so freely and which ripple out into the world helping people more than you might ever know.

annie
x

[Sara]

Just what I needed to read, thankyou robert :)

[Wild Horse Running]

Driving home last night, it came into my awareness how behaviors of past, had shifted...(through alot of struggle, and time)...and then this morning I find this article....sort of a validation. Several months ago I wrote to you in a panic...desperate for things to change....and then when there was nothing more to do but accept the "self-imposed prison".....and "change my attitude".....slowly things are shifting/emotional attitudes/behaviors..and Im noticing a shifting of those I am in close contact with.
Your work is much appreciated.

[Robert]

Hi Annie and Sarah - Thank you for your praise of the column. I almost set it to post about a week from now, but decided it probably needed to go out now. Thanks for validating my decision.

Hi Wild Horse Running - Yes, often our lives move on in ways that take us a while to figure out. And certainly when we truly move on, after a period of time we get perspective on how we've grown beyond the old forms, and occasionally get a glimpse of how others have shifted as well. I've found meditation on one's highest potential often yields positive movement in others who are close to us whether anyone notices it or not.

[Juliet]

Hello Robert,

In honour of Valentine's Day...a gift for you to thank you for all your wonderful insight and countless hours of counsel. Hope you like it! Have a wonderful day celebrating love with your family. (I know it's a bit early but I knew I would not be online Wed...)
Juliet :-)

Your words burst forth in a state of grace
But it's only love wearing a different face
That of joy, and hope, and peace, and faith
Timeless spirit, wander no more, you've found your place

The journey's been long, from now on clear blue skies
Great comfort be yours, never more demise
And what of those no longer in your eyes
Rejoice dear teacher, for true love never dies

[luz]

Robert, thank you very much for shedding and sharing your light and wisdom on knowledge which clarifies so much for me.

[Robert]

Hi Juliet - Thanks so much for your poetry. It's a truly loving gift for Valentine's Day!

Hi Luz - Sure. You're very welcome. Thanks for your kind words. May you and all my readers go on to become the lights in your world!

[Pat]

Dear Robert,
It was just 2 days ago that I
had negatively reacted to a request by my supervisor to go
out into one horrific storm to
do someone elses job.
Of course I climbed out of it
but in 15 minutes the storm pushed its way out and I felt
badly for reacting like that.
I made a promise to myself that
I must sincerely consider a different approach.
Walla! And now you have placed
that very sort of info in black and white. Must be spirit message. Thank you kindly~Pat

[Robert]

Hi Pat - Yes, well, it's easy to lose one's cool in the face of what seems an outrageous demand. I still deal with that, being an Aries with Sun conjunct Mars! ;-) However, it helps me know how to get beyond being annoyed or aggravated by things, which we're told is one of the fetters we must overcome to find ultimate consciousness. Glad you got beyond the negatives, and have a touchstone for future reference. Detachment is a verrrrrry good thang. And of course, you're most welcome.

[kathy]

Hey Robert!

In the interest of love, i want to affirm you for taking a nice look at what get in the way of our being more loving.

One observation i'll make from personal experience is that i had to dig deep into the subconscious, due to serious crud in the childhood software, with accompanying generalizations: grownups are mean, and they are liars who use you to get their needs met (says a feisty, ill-parented kid). So... only to say that some of our resistances are not easy to trace. So... today, on valentine's day, i bless the shovel!

[Robert]

Hi kathy - Yes, we are blessed to have shovels - and brains, and hearts, and courage, and occasionally a friendly Wizard.... ;-) And of course, friends who can help us "bucket the pond."

[toni]

Hi Robert, Well it's no longer Valentine's Day, but this article is till timely :) I am wondering, if we have someone who was once a friend in our life whom we loved, but causes us repeated unhappiness because they don't or can't meet our needs, or don't feel the same way about us as we do about them, do we just walk away, or is it more evolved to stay and work on ourselves so we get rid of all our own expectations and needs and learn to accept that person as they are?

[Robert]

Hi toni - Well, I once wrote a song "Respect is a two way street." What you ask is more complex than can be answered in a brief comment, but I'll try. I suppose the answer is each circumstance is unique and fluid. Sometimes we walk away, sometimes we hang in there, but never should we lose our self respect. I'd like to think I'm tolerant, patient, understanding, forgiving, and all the other virtues we're told we're supposed to practice. But one of the hardest lessons I've learned is not to allow my kindness to be mistaken for weakness. Being a doormat for someone else's unenlightened behavior will never bring us peace of mind. It's one thing to know "you take yourself wherever you go" and knowing what's done is done.

All relationships are a negotiation and communion to some extent, and each must find it in their continued interest to be in the exchange. The highest form of friendship is where each finds what they want and need offered spontaneously by the other and there is no element of coercion or exploitation. Anything other than that is out of balance or forced to a greater or lesser degree. And there are points when if they don't adapt to who we have become, then there's no commonality left where we can find a mutual bond. Memories alone are not enough. If we've grown in positive ways, while another has not grown or has begun to manifest negative or destructive behavior, then it's up to them to change, not us to endure inappropriate behavior. Otherwise we give the lesser Hitlers and Stalins permission to hurt us while we gaze at our navels trying to figure out how to teach a pig to sing.

[toni]

thank you