Sweep Up the Toxic Thought Patterns

Baby Boston and Sael 

It has been my express purpose to write for some time about breaking patterns, but the idea is just fully coming into view as I have journeyed through the past months. This idea was not as easily cracked as I initially thought. I began thinking about it because I was struggling with patterns. I was seeing so many things replay through my actions, interactions and thoughts.  The circumstances I was finding myself in felt like they were on repeat, and I was tired of seeing the same things. 

Actually, what I have discovered is that patterns are not to be cracked at all. They are to be let go of, at least the nuisance of them; you can have some great patterns that lift you up and help you fly straight, and bring you home and open your eyes. But the patterns that were plaguing me most, and the type I want to speak about for just a spell, are the kinds that resemble a pistachio nut that does not want to be opened—you know the ones, the ones that have a little slit when you don’t have nails or a nutcracker small enough. Those are the ones to let go of. If you do not have the proper tools to find the ease in the situation, give the nut—though it would be so good inside if you could get in there, a break.Yet, what we do most often is not take a break but try to think our way through the dilemma. When you feel weighed down, you might think things like: "I wish I could open that. I'm not sure how I am going to open that. I'm never going to be able to open that." But if you could just give it a break, you would find that you could float with ease to the truth, many that would feel good and possible end in you having more than you asked for: you give it to the person with the longest or strongest nails. You could give it to someone with a nutcracker; you could buy your own nutcracker and let it go for a short time till then, or you could return it to the earth with appreciation for the lesson. 

The actions that we call patterns are born out of thought. They begin as a thought carried through the wringer more than once. They become habitual thought that the mind hangs on to; they become a belief. All patterns are born this way, good and bad. We see something and chatter on about it for an hour while we are mad, or for a day, month, and years until we decide to chatter about something else. These same patterns create “right” or “wrong” movement, and then in walk your manifested circumstance.

Now if you are like me at all, I have discovered I get into a circumstance and ask “how did I get here?” I know just as you do that it started a while ago. We get nervous to talk about our thoughts or even consider them, and then one day’s thought about dogs, for instance, creates synapses, connects thought to thought, builds a mountain and then we are up in a tower with a 10 foot gate and a moat—it’s okay to laugh. We do this.  That is what the human mind does until we let things go. It is what the human mind does to protect itself. It says, “It is me that I was protecting when I moved up here on this mountain. It was necessary,” when really the mind has created a mountain out of its feelings about a dog.

See, it is hard to do things we've never done before, or so it tells us. It sure feels hard when we have to face fears and really sit with ourselves and listen to our mind ramble on about how scary the circumstances surrounding appear to be. Unfortunately, we have wasted precious time thinking this way, and the ego, which parades as “you,” runs with the pattern, scared to be vulnerable because “this is what you have always done, you know, and it works” it will say. “It is hard," it will say," to take a different route home this one yields results. So you go straight day after day. It is not until you ride with someone else or hit a traffic jam, for example, that you start to consider there are alternate routes that might be better.

I have wasted countless hundreds of dollars on gas trying to find the better route, and therefore realize that forcing oneself to let go is not the answer either. There is a way to get before the thought, by acknowledging that you are thinking something that makes you feel “bad,” and then thinking about something else until you feel more inline with who you are. Line up with the things that make you feel ease and then relax your way into lining up with the truth. This is real letting go though some would call it avoidance. But the word avoidance is not what we are doing here at all. The best word is more akin to a good distraction. Here are the steps:

• Acknowledge the thought
• Decide if it is something you want to feel
• Discontinue the thought by thinking about something relaxing if the thought does not feel good (something certain-- like nature or something that smells good to you, find as many things as possible and write lists about them.)
• Feel good by following the good feeling thought to its height (chase your thoughts with other great thoughts)
• Then look again  at the previous situation from here

Without fail, anytime you let go of the worry or any other closed pistachio by thinking about something easier, more open, you connect your senses to the truth. While covered, near or looking at the truth there is more clarity; there is peace and because you are in a state of ease, the answers will flow, circumstances will start to change, the perfect route will appear, the pistachio that you thought you had to open, had to open, had to open will be a second thought until it is not a thought at all. The thoughts that reveal the feelings that remind you you are apart of God will tell you where to go if you will hear. Once you let go and renew a right thought by focusing your attention on something gratitude worthy, you will hear without a doubt.

I believe that God is always revealing. It is hard to see and feel and remember that the source of all is not just the source for some things or people or places, but really of and for ALL. But when we remember on those occasions, when we think about things that feel good and break the pattern of thought that we keep thinking, and we get out of our own way, we connect to God, the source of ALL. At those times, we open ourselves up to all kinds of amazing things! We open ourselves up to the Creator that knows exactly where we should step, or what we should say, or how we can have the pistachio of our dreams. 

Certainly, we must be careful to credit these great new thoughts to God’s grace and loving kindness. We must give thanks for the creation of new thought. Remember if God created all, He created right thought too. He allows what we allow. When  the right thought pulses and reminds us we don’t even need that pistachio nut, or  makes the nut accessible, we stop stomping in the mud of our thoughts over and over and over because we don’t know what else to do. We decide to do otherwise, to dance in mud because it feels good. To dance and make the rain come down because we can!