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If you deny thoughts and emotions or try to get rid of them by suppressing them they will just reemerge. When negative thoughts come there are three things you can do. You can ignore them the same way that the blue sky ignores the gray clouds that appear in it. The sky is unaffected by whatever passes through whether it’s gray clouds, a thunderstorm, a flock of birds, and so on.
If you can’t do that, analyze the thoughts or emotions. Ask some questions like, “What kind of thought is this? Why is it here? What will happen if I allow this thought to continue? How does this thought benefit me? What do you want to do with me? This can help you recognize that thoughts and emotions in and of themselves have no power over you unless you allow them to.
The third approach is pratipaksha bhavana. Let your mind dwell on uplifting and positive thoughts and virtues. Bhavana in Sanskrit means to cultivate, contemplate or meditate. In Yoga, it means to cultivate positive and uplifting thoughts. Pratipaksha means to counter. In sutra 2.33, Patanjali says in his Yoga Sutras to apply pratipaksha bhavana in order to counter, negative thoughts replacing them with the opposite positive. The ideal opposite positive for any negative thoughts or emotion is to contemplate your true nature and its qualities like peace, equanimity, love, fullness. This helps you to remember and affirm the nature of your true Self so that you learn to remain unaffected by the fluctuations in the mind and emotions.
It Is the nature of the mind to fluctuate, like waves in the ocean. If a hateful thought comes, remind yourself that your true nature is love. Affirmations like “I love everybody” Will be greatly beneficial. Remember the truth that we are all one. This means that we can still love everyone, even if we dislike their actions. And if you keep on cultivating positive thoughts any negative thought will wait for a little while and then it will get tired and walk out. If you are not strong in thinking positive and if the negative thought is more stubborn, stronger than your new positive thought, then, go back to questioning the thought: What is the problem? Why are you bothering me? What do you want to do with me?” Challenge, question, use your intelligence to analyze it. Analyze but never suppress.
As you think, so you become. If you want to be positive, think positive. If you want to be negative, think negative. What is important to you? If you realize that it is important to you to become a positive and balanced person, then the importance of thinking positive thoughts will get reinforced because you recognize their benefit. Sometimes we even think negative thoughts bringing others as an excuse, “Oh, that person is so terrible. Look how nasty. The more you focus on the nastiness, the more you are developing nasty thoughts within your own mind. What is the point of thinking of it and talking about it? The more you think and more you talk like that, you become that.
So, try any of these three methods: ignore, analyze, or replace the negative with the positive. The more you practice this, the more the beneficial thoughts will become strong and any negative tendencies will become weak. In this way, the mind is gently refined until one can naturally abide in and as their true nature.
