Keep Your Thoughts Elevated To Reach Your Destiny

'Try to go higher,' my late wife Cushla would say to me when she knew I was indulging in negative thinking or obsessing about some trivia. She meant I needed to elevate my thoughts and think positively. I always considered myself optimistic, but when I was tested, especially when I  felt let down by somebody, I would ruminate about their behaviour for days. Eventually, my thoughts would spiral downward, and my whole world would darken.  

I had no excuse for not raising my thoughts as I saw how Cushla, despite living with a debilitating and mysterious illness for 17 years, still managed to stay positive by keeping her thoughts on a higher, hopeful and noble plane. It wasn't a delusional or a pollyannish optimism, nor did she cling to false hope. Rather, her strong faith and eternal perspective gave her ultimate hope. Even when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she remained cheerful and light-hearted and astonishingly tried to console me after the oncologist told us she had only a year to live, saying to me  more than once: 'I've lived a charmed life.' It was true —she wasn't just trying to console me: knowing her for 27 years, I can confirm that Cushla did indeed live a charmed life —she was by far the happiest person I knew. I learned from her that the quality of our thoughts determines our mental well-being and destiny. Her faith inspired her highest thoughts, and her awe-inspiring spiritual discipline led her to be fearless, positive and full of love.

Though an optimist by nature, Cushla nevertheless was incredibly diligent regarding spiritual discipline, enabling her to raise her consciousness and maintain her thoughts on a  higher plane. I learned from her that, like all the good things in life, we need to work at being hopeful and thinking positively.  Reading about it, talking about it, or making New Year's resolutions won't cut the mustard. But it's worth all the effort —your whole life and destiny depend on it.

Three Ways To Keep Your Thoughts Elevated

1)    Station A Guard At The Entrance Of Your Mind

Before you put positive thinking into practice, look for any negative thoughts running through your mind. You may see yourself as positive, but when you slow down and reflect, you will probably be shocked at the number of destructive thoughts you are entertaining.

Many of us actually like to indulge in negativity. Maybe one of the reasons is that because life can be so hard, we look for distractions from how we feel: gossiping can give us a false lift; sensationalism and bad news, which the media knows will attract audiences, diverts us from looking at ourselves. We all know this but say to ourselves: 'I'll be good later,' so you go ahead and spread the gossip or binge on the latest TV crime series. Later, karma catches up. We may not be aware of why our spirits feel low, but it's often the price we have paid for that 'harmless' indulgence in negativity. Sick and tired of that recurring feeling, hopefully, one day, we will wake up, stop making excuses and say to ourselves: 'If not now, when am I going to change?' It's really only when we walk over to the light to see the good and experience the good that things genuinely start looking up.

 2)     Avoid Thinking  So Much About Yourself

It seems that with much of the Happiness and Wellness industries, self-love is the key to greatness. There's a narcissistic, navel-gazing element offered by the self-help gurus, not to mention a subtle reinforcement of selfishness. The aim is rarely to become a better, selfless and altruistic person but rather to get more for ourselves (love, money, admiration, whatever). The encouragement of this thinking leads to self-absorption, which narrows our world. We become cramped souls, what the medieval philosophers called pusillae animae  (smallness of the soul that results from living within the confines of our own needs and desires and that prevent us from seeing much beyond that).

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On the other hand, the wisdom traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and  Judaism, emphasise a more unusual way of approaching life, i.e. taking the narrow path of sacrifice, humility and surrendering to a higher power. They teach us that if we want to be happy, we need to put others first and that there is no love without sacrifice. Instead of pandering to our ego and promising instant results, this counterintuitive thinking requires determination, spiritual discipline and fortitude. It's when we start living for a cause bigger than ourselves we can transform an 'ordinary life' into an extraordinary one.

3) Feed Your Mind With Positive Thoughts

Instead of trying not to think of wrong thoughts, fill your mind with positive ones. One of the best ways to do this is by meditating daily. Eknath Easwaran, a great spiritual teacher of meditation and founder of the Blue Mountain Meditation Center (BMMC)  in California, where Cushla and I learned to meditate, says on the back cover of his book: Meditation. 

 'The principle of mediation is simple: You are what you think.  By meditating on words that embody your highest ideals, you drive them into your consciousness. There they take root and create wonderful changes in your life.'

Based on this insight, Eknath developed a form of meditation called passage meditation, where you concentrate on the words of an inspirational text or passage from one of the great wisdom traditions. The  BMMC website https://www.bmcm.org/learn/getting-startedoverview expands on Eknath's teaching: 'You start by choosing an inspirational passage and memorising it. The passage for meditation should be positive, practical and uplifting, and there are lots of passages you can choose from. Some are short, others longer, and they're from all different traditions.'