How to Use the Wisdom Gained from the NSE

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is the method of using the NSE (Near Suicide Experience - see previous post) as a root experience to draw from to overcome psychological suffering. In this sense, the NSE is valuable, because it is a reference point to draw from that people who have not undergone the experience will not have. If you use this in combination with any of the releasing methods - the Sedona Method, the Complete Acceptance Process, EFT, Inquiry, ROLCE etc. - you will find a greater willingness of your awareness to become fluid and open, thus releasing and bypassing the pain.

The process then:

1. Pain - When you experience psychological pain, it is up to you to notice. With reference to the NSE, make sure you remember how the pain came before the struggle, and see if you can catch it before serious struggle develops. If you do not, then it will follow the NSE experience development described in the previous post. However, this method can come into play at any point before the Mad Point i.e. before you find peace the hard way!

2. NSE pain perspective (Price Tag of Attachment) - Meditate briefly on how quickly pain can escalate into exposed insecurity, struggle, withdrawal, the suicide point/victimhood and fatigue. If you learn to do this soon and often after the NSE experience, you will gain valuable insight into the impermanent nature of "reality" because it shows you the huge pain of attachment. This is Key Advantage #1 NSE-ers have over non-NSE-ers. They have seen the price.

3. Release/Surrender/Tiredness Point - Before you have to go through all that nonsense leading up to the Mad Point, release. Of course, not all life situations will force you all the way through even the Suicide Point, and most will just result in minor struggle. However, the power of the NSE is that it shows you how far the furthest will go, and if you have survived it, you can draw directly from the power of the Mad Point for every situation. What is the value of this? The minor struggles won't even happen, and for the major ones you will be able to quickly move through the releasing process and thus bypass all the pain and suffering. I call that a good bargain.

Another way of looking at it - you never know how big a struggle is going to become, and you will waste huge amounts of mental resources figuring that out. I advocate the idiot's approach - simply assume the worst for every situation and apply the best technique - this one - directly. It's actually also the most effortless and efficient technique, so why would you even bother with others?

The Tiredness Point is Key Advantage #2 for NSE-ers. Meditate and sit in the energy of how it was to feel so completely tired of mucking about with struggle, retreating, running, the Suicide Point and all that rubbish. If you can find that feeling again and evoke it, it will quickly enable you to let go. This is like learning not to leave your hand on a boiling kettle. Others learn it because they are taught. NSE-ers have burnt their hands. Learn from it, and let go before the kettle boils. So the tiredness is very efficient. It cuts through all the struggle because it says, "I know the pain that is developing. I know what will happen if I fight. So why bother? I give up and let go."

NOTE: This is NOT giving up on life, and NOT about giving way in the physical world in any way. It is giving up the struggle mentally to force things to be one way or another. It is about intentionally losing the battle to protect one's insecurities, and to let them be completely exposed. The NSE teaches you that the apparent pain of exposing one's insecurities is much, much preferable to the pain of going through the struggle. You can be doing a tough negotiation and still be totally detached from the outcome. That is what this is about. It is not about avoiding a stance. It is about taking a stance, but ignoring the outcome. Then you can enjoy the fight!

This also tells us that this technique is not painless. In fact, it may well be painful, especially at first, as you jump into the insecurities and pain. And don't expect all the pain to just fade away. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't. But if you sit in them long enough, they will. Give it time - you develop psychoses over years - they may not exactly go in one day. Learn to enjoy the fear of being totally exposed and mentally defenceless. That is your ultimate defence, for not to fight mentally is to win. The Feeling Exercise of Arnold Patent becomes very particularly effective when you meditate upon this point.

4. Mad Point - Not usually necessary if you did step 3 right. In fact, I add this on as an extra. Meditate on this point of the process to remember the meaninglessness of it all. And through this meaninglessness you find meaning, for you realise that everything is what you make of it, and so you can choose how you make meaning of the world, and thus liberate yourself to true empowerment. This is also where the Turnaround from The Work becomes particularly effective, especially for the ones which normal society would consider madness - for example, "Your son should have died."

Byron Katie promotes The Work, but there is a deeper meaning to her experience that not all get. She understands the point of great emptiness, the ultimate meaninglessness of it all. That is the Mad Point that the NSE-ers experience. This is why people who come close to suicide and survive are transformed. They come in touch with the Mad Point, which is also the divine connection, and are transformed by it, whether they know it or not. Sitting in the Tiredness Point perspective, the cutting aspect of The Work (i.e. the Four Questions - the education part of The Work) on thought becomes effective. Sitting from the Mad Point perspective, the pacifying aspect of pure awareness automatically reveals the falseness of thought, and it becomes irrelevant.

The Turnaround has a re-framing aspect to it, which speeds up the re-organisation process. However, for those who sit in the Mad Point and do nothing else, the change is automatic. It is no coincidence that Master Chunyi Lin says that when you reach emptiness in your meditation, just let the whole thing go and be in it. It takes care of everything else.

Naturally, this point is Key Advantage #3 for NSE-ers.

5. Get on with life. Sitting in the Mad Point forever is boring, and no way to live life. For it to reveal its brilliance, you need to get on with life. Or you could stay in it and vegetate. Your call. The important thing is that it is the end of suffering.

Brief Notes on Touchstones to Emptiness via the NSE

Before you ask - NSE = Near Suicide Experience. And no, I haven't been hanging off any cliffs thinking of jumping lately. The subject came up in conversation recently and for those who are interested these are some of the basic touchstones along that path. I believe the touchstones are basically the same for everyone who treads this path, but I could be wrong. The corresponding Buddhist path is the Hinayana, and it is written from that viewpoint, not the ultimate view.

The basic sequence is:

Pain => Vulnerability/Insecurity Point => Struggle => Retreat/Withdrawal => Suicide Point => Fatigue/Tiredness => Total Loss Point => Mad Point => Boredom Point => Courage/Anger Surge => Pattern Breakdown => Breakthrough

I'm not going to elaborate because if it's not pertinent to a person they aren't going to bother anyway, but if it is they'll be able to figure it out.

Pain = The journeyman feels pain, real or otherwise. It is a reaction to a situation that he believes is coming to him. This is not physical pain, although that may be present, but psychological pain.

Vulnerability/Insecurity Point = The pain, if explored, is an emotional reaction to an insecurity, a fear. Lester Levenson of the Sedona Method would call this wanting approval, wanting survival or wanting to control.

Struggle = Means what it says on the label.

Retreat/Withdrawal = The person consciously or unconsciously gets beaten into a mental corner. Strategies that worked in dealing with life fail. He or she shirks into the mental dungeon, unwilling to give up struggling for mental space, but the pain caused through the struggle is causing the flinching.

Suicide Point = Also known as the Self-Pity Point. If they are going to do it, this is when they will do it.

Fatigue/Tiredness = If they hang about Suicide Point for too long, tiredness or fatigue will overcome them. This is not the fatigue from the struggle. It is the complete collapse of the mind. Danger of suicide is over - they are too tired to hurl themselves off the cliff.

Total Loss Point = Here they give up. Not necessarily willingly. In fact, most will be beaten and hit and kicked in the stomach until they finally let go. It's the mental equivalent to torture camp.

Mad Point = For a very brief moment, everything stops making sense. Very important point. In fact, the key point, but I'm too tired to elaborate on it. We'll call it "A Glimpse of Emptiness". Next.

Boredom Point = When things stop making sense, there is a brief moment of peace. Then it gets boring, at least to the journeyman from a Hinayana viewpoint.

Courage/Anger Surge = So there is a sense of "nothing more to lose", which leads to a sudden outward burst of energy - spiritual, mental and physical.

Pattern Breakdown = Old mental patterns break down as this energy starts afresh and is reborn. Phoenix emerging from fire and all that.

Breakthrough = End of crisis. The ones who didn't pay attention get up, dust themselves off and walk away. The ones who did learn a very valuable lesson about how to initiate the self-destruct sequence before life forces them to, and thus attain liberation from suffering.

Meditations on Meditation - the Purification of Karma

Source: Wikimedia

Meditations in the western sense do sometimes spill into the arena of brainwaves - how and what meditation does is measured by what it does to the brain. Typically, there are the four brainwaves - delta, theta, alpha and beta.

Delta - deep sleep
Theta - deep relaxation
Alpha - daydreaming
Beta - normal waking consciousness

Recently, we also have gamma - the superfast brainwave which penetrates every part of the brain. I have written about the details of the fancy brainwaves elsewhere but here I intend to focus on the basic brainwave sets.

In traditional western training, alpha is the first, and possibly the only goal. It is because at this level, daydreams and mental programming may be controlled and altered, and sparked interest into using it to affect reality (manifestation) in one way or another, from sealing business deals to better sex.

Interestingly enough, the yogis of old, and in fact most of the major traditions, did not emphasise these aspects as much. You will see this spirit in this article on Yoga Nidra. The four levels of consciousness listed correspond to the four brainwave sets. Now, if you were someone who was interested in brainwaves, you would know that we cycle through the brainwaves every 24 hours. The question becomes:

Why should we be interested in being able to consciously accessing these states?

An interesting enough question, and one whose answer, I suspect, has turned the whole western tradition subtly away from karmic purification. That is not necessarily a bad thing - I myself began my training all those years ago in western roots. The western approach is the question:

How can I use this brainwave to improve my life?

The answers to that question have brought about huge leaps in western understanding to the processes of the subconscious mind and how it affect life. However, it is now time to look a little more deeply. Let's examine the eastern version of this question:

How does this state impact life?

The difference is subtle, but the resulting insights profoundly different. The difference lies in the western presumption that "I" know what is best. Do not tell me to change my position - just tell me how to get what I want. Forget why I want it. And that is part of what eastern practitioners sometimes lack - the going for things and holding a position. However, they did also discover something rather interesting - when you go into a meditative state of be-ing (as opposed to the western do-ing), you get an altogether different experience.

What happens is that the meditation changes you. This is the answer of the deeper states of theta and delta. The "I" that we normally associate with ourselves disappears, or is severely muted. Sitting in this silence, the fears and worries of normal every day life also become muted. Not necessarily do they disappear, but they become more quiet. That, I suspect, if what the respected yogi in that article means by "purifying the samskaras". For as the mind becomes accustomed to living at a deeper level of truth, the mad probings of the more form-related states dissipate, leaving room for peace.

But western meditation also includes delta and theta!

Indeed, they do. But again, the difference in attitude is what makes the difference. As long as the mind goes in "wanting" something, trying to achieve something, the purification effect does not kick in, for the ego stubbornly holds onto that which the meditation is seeking to purify. Rather hopeless endeavour, on the whole. On the other hand, if you sit and abide in the deeper levels of awareness, then the sense of emptiness arises. Ultimately, you realise the falsity of all thoughts that plague the outer levels. And because that level is free, you can afford to be compassionate. When you meet the plaguing samsaric thoughts with kindness, yet sitting firmly in pure awareness, they disappear. This is what it means to be kind to yourself.

So, I propose that there are deeper applications of the states, which need to become available if people are to be truly free.

On "Opening" the Chakras

When I was beginning my paths in the spiritual and metaphysical studies 15 years ago, talk of "opening" the chakras, or energy systems in the body was much more common than it is today. Another symptom, quite possibly, of the shift in quality of information available. However, it is just as well that this particular body of information is not expounded anymore, for the way it was usually taught - supercharging the energies of each power center to open it up and grow it, was potentially dangerous.

So why am I bringing it up today? I believe the chakra system can be very useful. And, unlike many who went before me, I will focus on the lower three chakras, rather than the upper four. For those who need a basic run-down on the seven major chakras, Google and Wikipedia are always a good place to start. I will get straight to the point.

The lowest three chakras are important to start at because they are very root level causes of suffering. Their messages, at least in distorted form, mix together and form the Gordian knot of psychoses, which we then attempt to slice using thought (a function of the third, or solar plexus, chakra). Or, the Buddhist version is to develop compassion - relative by "training" in emptiness, using all four lower chakras, and absolute by using the higher three. I have no objection to absolute compassion or even relative compassion. I am presenting an alternative way of dealing with it.

The trick here is to realise the individual madness each chakra contains (when it's running mad).

The root chakra, the lowest, is the chakra governing survival. Unsurprisingly, it produces the spiritual equivalent (and perhaps even the physical one) of fight or flight. It says, "I want security/to survive."

The sacral chakra, the next one up, is about the energy developing a way of relating to people around it, and so it governs emotions and sex. It goes into action saying, "I want approval/acceptance."

In the solar plexus chakra, the energy mutates one more level, becoming intellectual. This is where the Renaissance idea of "I think, therefore I am." comes from. It becomes more cunning, and more intelligent. This is where schemes are elaborate and more manipulative. It says, "I want to control/be in charge."

Now, in any one single psychotic tendency (and if you think you don't have them, you are just defining psychosis differently from me), at least one of the three will be present. These are the chakras in their "closed" form. They are "closed" because they are focussed on the "I" and its preservation. To attempt to deal with all three energy centers at once is tricky, and so we use the method of dividing to conquer.

And to conquer, the most direct route, although perhaps not the easiest one, is through the sacral chakra. We have evolved too far in the solar plexus chakra to defeat our thinking easily, although Byron Katie's Work does it very effectively. However, sticking with the emotions of the sacral is another way to do it. It is very simple - remove all the labels and thoughts in a situation, and just sit with an emotion, no matter how yucky it is. It is the counter-intuitive move - to allow ourselves to feel precisely that which we do not want to feel. Yet, in doing this, the energy collapses, because we make the sacral "realise" that there is no emotional threat. It may happen immediately, or it may take awhile. It depends on the level of psychosis and the level of skill. However, in my experience, if you know what you are doing, it is a quick surgical cut and then it is done.

Once the second/sacral realises that, it "opens". It no longer feels the need to protect you from your emotions, and so it stops struggling. That immediately helps, because in the energy loop, it is in between the root (survival) and the solar plexus (mental). The buildup of energy is released. From there, if it is a minor issue, you may apply The Work to the thought processes, thus showing the loopholes in mistaken thinking generated in the mental chakra.

For major ones, I would go down to the first, the instinct for survival, and again sit with it. Sitting in the fear of fight or flight, it eventually disappears. Leave the thoughts out of it for awhile. Make the root the focus.

It is the same attitude a mother takes when disturbed from soothing her crying baby and the older child tugs at her. "Later!" is the snarl, the same one you give to thoughts that come a-knocking. Then you go back to sitting in fight or flight. When that is resolved, releasing the mistaken thinking is easy. Try to think clearly when the first two chakras are also in the mix is about as effective as whispering in a hailstorm.

This may seem like painwork, but it is the most direct path.

Ego and Identity

E says: What is the distinction between ego and identity?

Kaye says: Largely the same, but with a subtle difference. You can have a sense of identity, in that you think "I am this" or "I am that". The ego is a little more subtle. It is when you become habituated to that identity, when it takes root in your awareness; that is when you develop the notion of "mine".

E says: Ahh so it's clinging on to that identity

Kaye says: Well put. Yes, that's exactly what it is. That's when your survival can be threatened. Before, you had no sense of self, and so you couldn't be destroyed.

E says: So does having an impermanent identity and not clinging to it mean not having an identity?

Kaye says: Once you identity, and identify strongly, then it is an issue. [Note: Issue of sorts. It is an issue if you wish to experience enlightenment, but not if you don't.] You never have a permanent identity anyway. It is always subtly changing. Although for most people the core beliefs are deeply embedded. You have to identify with something. You can't live life otherwise. You'd have the intelligence of a rock.

Killing the ego is not the solution. The trick is to allow yourself to alight through identity, but not grow heavy. Enlightenment is very much related to being able to have fluidity, not to be weighed down. And so you have switches in identity.

It is a process of making even more identity available to yourself, not less.

E says: So it's a realisation that you are all and none?

Kaye says: Who are you anyway? Take away all the concepts, all the ideas, everything to identify yourself with. I am. You stop at that. You put anything after it and you have an identity
That's the pure state of conscious awareness. It swims in the sea of awareness.

E says: So it's the now

Kaye says: It is always the now. The past is a story, the future is yet to come.

E says: The actor separate from the chain of events where he is a part of yet not an active participant?

Kaye says: There is no actor. He is not acting or acted upon. If you meet a raging gorrilla, who is doing the running?

E says: The gorrilla?

Kaye says: Whilst he is headed for you. You are not the gorilla, but you are not you. The legs of the body run. The brain thinks. Those aren't you either. But you can allow yourself to be in the experience. And you can drop the story that you need to survive, and just let the body run. And enjoy that.

E says: Ahh

Kaye says: That is what it means to be enlightened.

Easier said than done, of course.

E says: I think I have some idea now. Thank you.

"I need his love." Is that true?

Source: Wikimedia

"I need his love."

Is that true?

What is the reality of it? You only ever need exactly what is. You need his love. He doesn't love you. That means you cannot possibly need his love. It cannot be. It is a lie, an untruth. How do I know? You are still here. You haven't disintegrated into thin air for want of his love. You still sit, stand, lie and breathe, in the moment, right now.

To breathe - that is what you need. How do I know? You are breathing.
To sit - that is what you need. How do I know? You are sitting. And you will need to sit until you don't. And when you stop sitting, I will know you no longer need to sit, even if you don't.

It is hopeless, but a perfect kind of hopelessness. It is the joyful hopelessness of someone who is mature enough to face reality. And it is not the begrudged, bitter anger with reality. It is not the spiteful obedience of a child who knows he cannot gainsay his parents. It is the full acceptance, from the depths of the heart, that our outer experience is here to stay.

Practice hopelessness.

Read that again: Practice hopelessness.

If Life came with a secret motto, it would be this: "Lose ye all hope who choose happiness, and ye will find joy in every moment."

Why? Because you can hide in hope. You can somehow pretend and say, okay, this is reality, and I accept it. And you don't! You hide and nurse this secret hope that someday it will be different, that someday he will love you. He may or he may not. That is HIS business. Not yours. Nowhere, no how.

So practice saying this: "This is his business. It is not mine. My mind is my business. My peace is my business. Everything is just a story." You want peace? Do it. When you ride a bike, you ride. When you drive, you drive. Talking on the mobile phone while eating pizza and drinking coffee while on the road is not driving. You want to drive? Drive. Full on. You want to live? Live in your business. Getting into someone else's business is about as useful as trying to steer the bus coming at you from the opposite lane. Even if the bus comes into your lane headed for a head-on collision, whose business is the driving of the bus? The bus driver's. YOUR business is to get your car out of the way. If you can get something simple like that, then you can also get that it is the same with the mind. You drive YOUR mind. And keep it out of other business. If you don't, road accidents may occur. Road rage, too.

"I need his love." Can you absolutely know that is true?

No! You don't. Before you knew him, you didn't need him. After you met him, you still didn't need him. I see that. You may or may not see that, based on the story you tell. The tendency is to enter a relationship, and then feel obligated to give up some of your personal power. This is how the world conditions us - tit for tat. When we want something, we pay for it. Love is funny - it is the one area where people actually pay first! We "pay" the story of how we need a person, of how we would do anything for them. That ALONE is fine.

But check the underlying motive. You may find some of the following:

"I love you. I have convinced myself in my mind that I love you. Tag. You're it. Now, I have done something very special for you in my mind, and you must do the same. This is how we will transact our love. I will love you a bit, and you will love me a bit. I will do something for you, but I will remember it! It will go into our running account. And all hell will break loose if I find you aren't paying it back! Oh, and I get to put the values on what you do, of course. You have no say, and you have no clue. Not at first, anyway. But I'll be watching. I'll know when you don't send flowers. I'll know when you forget my birthday. I'll know when you don't take out the garbage. Oh, you won't have a clue, but it will all be going into this little black book, here in my head. In fact, I keep it so efficiently even I may not see it for a long time. But eventually I will. And boy, honey, you are going to get it when I do. Because YOU will not have played by the rules. Who wrote the rules? Oh, I don't know. I just know they're the rules. No, you are not allowed to have different rules. I've convinced myself they are the rules, so we will play by it. Don't you dare question my rules! I won't question them either. So I won't have to expose my thinking, or myself. I won't have to change. Oh no, honey, that's your job. YOU change. Just watch."

What a horrendous way to love! And tiresome. And tiring. You want to love someone? Have the guts to love them full on. That is true love. You love them without condition. You love them without needing them to act in a certain way. You love them without needing love in return. How do you even know they love you anyway? THEY don't even know themselves! That is reality. And it is here to stay. If you want to change anyone, in ANY way, I don't care why, how or who, you are playing in the dream world, the inner world. You are believing a story and acting it out. You want to change the person you love? You don't love him. You love your story of him. If you loved him, you wouldn't want to change him, because that would be him. Changing him is his business. None of yours.

"I need his love." How do you react when you think that thought?

Oh this is a merry one. We become miserable. We go into self-pity. And boy, are we good at this. All of us. We're trained to do it since childhood, actually. No one needs to go to school for this. We figure it all out on our own. And if someone challenges our right to be miserable, we hiss at them. We go out desperately looking for people to join our new religion. Your religion is "I need his love." Find someone else who agrees with you and you've got a cult. And we will expand this cult - we will add to it people who agree with us. And together we will ostracise those who don't. It's a wonderful cult. Until it crumbles. Because it does not bring happiness. Or it may not crumble. And you may be able to keep the story going awhile longer. Ignore the pain a bit more. Maybe even a lot more.

Did you know your thoughts can weigh you down? You think and think and think until they become so heavy that you cannot move. You just want to curl up and die. Until you finally figure it out - you are pushed back because you are arguing with reality somehow. HOW are you arguing with reality? Find it, and repent. And it will fall away. That is my religion - reality.

"I need his love." Who would you be without that thought?

You would be the person you were before you thought that thought, before you met him. You would be the one who went around, oblivious to the fact that he existed. You would be free to live your life, free from the pain. Is that why he is so perfect? Because he causes you pain? Recognise the price you are paying for this thing you call "love". You call it love. I call it manipulation.

So here's the question: You were brave enough to endure all that pain you built into your story. Are you brave enough to be free?

Any idiot can build story upon story filled with misery. We're all experts in it. Nothing special about it. You want to do something special? Drop all the stories. Walk around mentally naked. And you will see the world with new eyes. And you will fall in love with reality, with what is.

"I need his love." Turn it around and give 3 examples of where that might be true.

Byron Katie traditionally says there are 3 turnarounds (to the self, to the other, and to the opposite), and some may struggle to find even one. But, she also says, if you sit with it long enough, other turnarounds will appear. Some will work, some won't. But sit with them all, and you may find that they all work.

To the self: "I need MY love."

Give me 3 examples of where this is true. You need your love.
1. I am withholding my love from myself because in my mind, I am giving him all the power to love me. So when he does something, I allow myself to feel loved. But I could just allow myself to feel loved directly.

2. I need my love in dealing with him. I am so busy telling myself I need his love, that I don't recognise that I need my love. I beat myself up in my mind, and knock myself out. I could definitely use some of my love there.

3. I need my love because it is the only love I can get. I will never know that he loves me, or anyone loves me anyway. I can spin stories around how this or that means they love me. But really, I am building that love into those stories. It's really my love for myself that I am hiding in those stories for myself to discover. It is the only love I have really experienced in my life!

To the opposite: "I don't need his love."

Give me 3 examples of how you don't need his love.
1. I don't need his love to live. I can wake up, I can dress, I can walk, I can run, I can eat, I can drive, I can work, I can read, I can watch television. All without his help! Wow. I really don't need his love. I'm still here. I'm still alive. If I needed his love I would have died a long time ago, because there is no real way to communicate love.

2. I don't need his love in order to love him. Hey, I can still love him. But this is a grander love, an even better one. I can love him, and not need his love in return! I can love him if he is in another part of the world. I can love him when he is here, and when he is not. And it doesn't matter if he doesn't pay me one whit of attention. Because I don't need his love to love him.

3. I don't need his love to find love. Whoa! I don't need his love, because I can find love. There are so many people out there. He is but one. I don't need his love at all, because there are billions of human beings. He is free not to love me, and I am free to find love elsewhere. I can quit bugging him and irritating him and begging him to love me, and making HIS life a misery because I don't need to.

To the other: "He needs my love."

Give me 3 examples of where he needs your love.

1. He needs my love to be himself. Not to manipulate him, not to support him, but to be himself. He needs my love because he is exactly the way he is, and all the arguing, the manipulating I have done has done nothing to him. He doesn't need that. He needs me to love him enough to step away. He needs me to love him enough to let him go and grow up. That is the extent of my love. I love him enough to let go.

2. He needs my love to understand that he needs what he is going through, that he needs to be the way he is. I have to love him enough to let him do what he does, because that is what he does.

3. He needs my love to quit bothering him. He needs me to love him enough to let him have peace in his life, and to take myself out of it. That is the compassionate thing, for both of us. Because only in that is there happiness. How do I know that is true? Because things are the way they are.

NOTE: I do not represent Byron Katie's work. The questions are hers, and the explanations are mine. It is my way of relating to them. I have a deep respect and appreciation for The Work, but I am not affiliated with them.

How can I stop negative thoughts?

Two problems with the question in the title:

1. No such thing as negative except in your mind. (And yes, there is no such thing as positive either. Novel concept, no?)
2. You can't stop thoughts of any kind. You might as well try to stop yourself breathing.

To expand:

Thoughts arise naturally out of the emptiness. You can't stop them. And if you try, you would be better off trying to stop the Niagara Falls. They will go on forever. Reality check: Thoughts are here to stay. We get to live with them.

And what's so bad about thoughts, anyway? They don't cause problems. We do. The thoughts bubble harmlessly through our awareness until we presume to relate to them. When we believe them, then something happens. We create a relationship to the thoughts. And that relationship is what creates our inner experience. (See the Primer on Reality.) For better or for worse, that thought then settles into our mind. Fun, isn't it?

What happens when you start getting into multiple relationships with multiple thoughts is that it sews into a tight inner experience. And the more thoughts you relate to, the more likely they will argue with reality. Yep, that usually means pain. So how do you get out of that relationship?

Hint: it has nothing to do with killing the thought.

You can NOT, if I haven't already made that absolutely clear, kill a thought. The act of aggression against it is yet another way of relating to it. You draw it even closer. You question your relationship to it. Again and again, until you see the truth of it. The way of it is reality. And you will be free of thought. They will bubble harmlessly away. And you can go your own way. Question and Question until they go. Or stay.

Is that true? If you really look at any thought, and honestly consider whether it might be true, you will find that it isn't. But look at your truth. What is it for you? Look at your reality. What is the way of it? "Yes" or "No" is fine. There are only TWO answers to this question. Yes. And No. If you feel compelled to say anything else, that is a story. If you feel you need to justify your answer, that is a story. If you feel that you need to say more to explain your position, that is a story.

Can you absolutely know that that is true? Sit with it and think about it. This work is about meditation. And again, yes or no is fine, but if you come up with a yes, I challenge you to ask yourself this question: "Can you find one example, one instance, where this thought might not be true?" And yes, you can fudge it all and blithely say no. But if you really sit and try, in spite of the fact that your mind is eagerly straining in the opposite direction, you will find it. In my experience, nothing is absolutely true.

How do you react when you think that thought? When we are not at peace, we are out of balance with reality. The only way that can happen is when our thoughts, our stories, the fables we believe in, are out of sync with reality. We are too focussed on the inner tale. When you believe the thought, you will react in all the ways that make you miserable, angry, irritated, frustrated. Yes, if you are completely strict and honest with yourself, every time you are emotionally out of kilter, if you sit with it long enough, and ask yourself, "Why am I feeling this way?" eventually the thought or belief will come out. It takes practice and experience, because many of these beliefs and thoughts have gone unquestioned, invisible for years, and with our sloppy thinking we believe them. This question asks you to see what thinking that thought is causing you to feel.

Who would you be without that thought? This work is about education. We don't shoo the thought out the door. We don't try and kill it. This is a simple question. We have seen what it is like to be with that thought, and now we see how we would be without that thought. This is the education of self. We see what damage we are doing to ourselves by holding on to thoughts. And if you were smart, you would let it go at this point.

If you didn't want to let it go, then let me explain one other point. IF you believe in peace, then there are only 2 kinds of thought: Stressful and stress-free. Can you find a single stress-free reason to keep your thought? If not, let it go. And if you are committed to it, you will never find a stress-free reason. At least no one has found one yet. There are those who have mistaken stressful reasons as stress-free, of course.

And you can go, "But, but..." all you like. In the paradigm of peace, it is that simple. The "buts" come from another paradigm - the paradigm of right and wrong. The paradigm of arguing with reality. That paradigm will give you loads of reasons to keep the thought. Cultural upbringing, childhood memories, parental beliefs, la di da. The whole load of it. If you are into being right or wrong, that is fine too. But recognise that peace is not guaranteed in that paradigm. If you want peace, then this is one paradigm which will show you a useful way to look at it. If you still want that paradigm, it shows you aren't committed to peace above everything else in your life. You find peace when you place it higher than everything else.

You want something else? You want wealth? You want relationships? You want health? You may or may not get those. Hopeless, really. Life will do exactly what life will do. Nothing more and nothing less. And you may or may not be happy. Reality will rule. That's why so many great ones go nearly to death before they figure this out. Life beats them again and again and again because they argue with it. Then, for the lucky ones, they change priorities. They give up hope, because reality is hopeless. They only want what is, and nothing more, because it is wayyy too painful to argue. That is surrender. That is the end of pain. Where is your priority?

NOTE: I do not represent Byron Katie's work. The questions are hers, and the explanations are mine. It is my way of relating to them. I have a deep respect and appreciation for The Work, but I am not affiliated with them.