The Winding Path

Like many people, at my current, less than ideal level of personal development, a fair percentage of my thoughts are negative. I get stuck in negative thought patterns and have some difficulty shifting them toward positive ones. This weekend a spate of jealousy fired off a nasty spiral of frustration, self-condemnation and self-justification. Positive thoughts finally started to overtake the negative when I first thought, “I’m better than this!” It was an enlightening moment; I actually felt a strong change in emotion. Unfortunately the positive change was quickly followed by thoughts doubting whether such emotion was good because it seemed to be too prideful.

I’ve noticed that a lot of my negative thoughts are ones of justification; of imagined conversations with strangers who accost me because of some slight I fear I might have inadvertently caused. For example if I glance at an attractive girl walking next to an aggressive-looking guy, I might imagine him challenging me, and me justifying my glance in some way. “Look man, your girlfriend is attractive, of course guys will look, but that’s all it was, a brief look. If either of you mind that you shouldn’t be out in the open where people can see you.”

These thoughts are irrational and defensive. I’ve been searching for a way of defining my habit of justification, and defensive pride seems appropriate. The justification stems from an irrational belief that I might have to prove that I have a right to do whatever it is that I imagine someone might challenge me over. According to David R. Hawkins’ levels of consciousness, pride is just below courage, which is the first level of true strength. This is a good thing because it is above anger, desire and fear. While it’s not positive, it’s a step in the right direction.

A prideful level of consciousness is also clearly evident in my reactions toward an ex-girlfriend. When we broke up I didn’t deal with the situation very well. Most of the time I was simply distant, but sometimes I acted as if she owed me something, and reacted negatively toward any slight that she made, perceived or real. I possibly even started the dissolution of our friendship because I made spiteful (anger, just below pride) remarks immediately following our breakup. Remarks which were ultimately fueled by desire and fear, and which fed her own negative reactions. I’ve only recently realised the chain of reactions, thoughts and feelings which have led to the current state of our friendship and have since put a lot of effort into repairing the breach.

I believe my current outwardly projected level of consciousness is neutrality, just above courage. People perceive that nothing much fazes me, and this is an opinion I encourage. Calm, relaxed, flexible. Courage requires putting yourself on the line, taking a chance where there’s a possibility of failure. Neutrality means being unconcerned about results. Perhaps courage is lower than neutrality because if you attempt something courageously you usually have some attachment to the result, so a poor result may affect you negatively, whereas an attitude of neutrality would mean that a poor result would have no adverse affect.

Even though I have a significant number of negative thoughts running through my head daily, I think that many of my thoughts and actions reside at the higher levels of consciousness of courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, and reason. Fewer at the highest levels of love, joy, and peace. I can’t claim to have had any thoughts of my own at the level of enlightenment. I believe that if I continue to be aware of my thoughts and feelings, I can continue to transform the negative ones, gradually moving them up the scale.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.