THOUGHT POLLUTION

Did you ever walk into a room and immediately pick up a “bad vibe?” Or, quickly go from feeling fine to being really irritated for no apparent reason? If so, you may have crossed paths with a cloud of “thought pollution!”

It’s easy to see the type of pollution that spews from a factory smokestack or to notice a car without a proper exhaust system, but many folks don’t think twice about leaving puddles of negativity in their wake as they indulge their bad moods and angry or disparaging thoughts.

Thinking of thoughts as energy, or a series of electro-magnetic waves, can help us to envision how they affect others. We can summarize the Law of Conservation of Energy as “energy is neither created nor destroyed; only rearranged.” In this, we see the possibility that our thoughts might hang around long after we are done with them!

But, what can we do? Negative and cynical thoughts do manifest – are we supposed to squash them so that they wreak havoc with our own internal organs? Isn’t it better to let them out? Well, of course – but there is a difference between feeling emotions and transforming them through a disciplined yoga or other practice, and just letting them fly around willy-nilly.

As a practitioner of yoga and meditation, you may not feel that you are really contributing to this problem: You are faithfully doing yoga, meditating, cultivating positive experiences and addressing your physical and emotional issues to allow free flow of energy. You try to see the Divine in everyone and leaving your psychic baggage around for some unsuspecting soul to trip over is just not your thing. That’s terrific!! What better time than now, while you are enjoying the benefits of a flowering practice, to really hone in and refine the fluctuations of your mind?!

Let’s take a look at that most insidious thought polluter of all – the sarcastic cynic. You’re familiar with that fellow, right? Whether inspired by political events of recent years or just born with the ability to see humour in any situation, the cynic in us all can be funny and clever, and who doesn’t want to have these characteristics? But underlying it is an admission of dissatisfaction with the state of things, along with a feeling of powerlessness to make positive change. (I would differentiate somewhat between cynical sarcasm and satire, as satire can play an important role in social change by bringing societal ills to public consciousness).

Some psychiatrists have posited that a type of laughter may have originated to relieve the excess energy built up from a fear reaction. You think there is a tiger behind the bush, but it turns out to be a mouse - you laugh, relieved. In the same way, poking fun at government ineptness in handling issues such as homelessness or corporate fraud, may serve as a relief to an underlying fear that we live in a corrupt and uncaring world. The tendency to see everything as absurd displaces meaning and allows less contact with things that scare us. This perpetuates the separation between how we feel the world should be, with how it ends up looking to those of us caught in the cynics mind-view.

But the question remains – what is to be done? First and foremost is to recognize when the sarcastic cynic has taken up residence in your psyche. Luckily, the practice of self-observation you’ve developed as part of Yoga and meditation will help here. Cultivating the Niyama of santosha, or contentment, will aid you to constructively serve others. A discontented person is unable to respond appropriately to a call for action and remains passive.

So, as soon as you feel the next barb ready to roll off your tongue, stop and think of the repercussions. Sure, you may be feeling like one of our television news commentators on NDTV, Aaj Tak, Zee News, etc. but your diatribe against the issue of the day may be causing more harm than can be mitigated by the accompanying laughs. You may find that your negativity somehow justifies inaction against the real problem – for yourself and those who you influence. Stripped of the ability to act, our sense of identity can suffer.

At first, abandoning the utterances of the sarcastic cynic may leave you sputtering mid-sentence as you quickly try to reformulate your thoughts, but soon, you will carve new mental pathways as you search for solutions instead of clever retorts! Your creativity can energetically free you and others to reach for the heady heights and dwell in the realm of possibility.

Environmentalists across the world have been expressing concern over global warming, soil erosion, oil spills, deforestation, holes in the ozone, depleting ground water reserves, endangered species and like. While there have been campaigns to check pollution of air, water and earth, environmentalists have so far completely ignored the pollution of space. Space or ether is contaminated by thoughts.

Just like air, water, earth and fire need space to come into contact and form physical objects, in the same way, the thoughts are the breeding ground for other contaminants to foster and cause pollution. In fact, any phenomenon manifests first in thought and later in deed. The atom bomb was first a thought that later translated into destruction of mankind. In this sense, if we check pollution at the level of thoughts, the need for conservation will never arise.

Our physical body too is the five elements. Thus, the root cause of all bodily ills, too, is just a thought. Every time a thought is born, our eyeballs move. Eye muscles are the most volatile of all muscles in the human body. While the entire body is in a state of rest while sleeping, eye muscles work constantly, that is we are constantly thinking. How then does one master the thought? The Vedic masters had conquered the pollution of thoughts through what Patanjali calls chitta vritti nirodh. Quite simply put, through yoga and Sanatan Kriya. A simple yogic practice called tratak involves focused gazing and is an effective technique to purify and eventually still your thoughts.

For this, sit in vajrasan. Take a lamp lit using desi cow’s ghee (clarified butter) and place it at a distance of 2 feet, exactly at your eye level. Stare at the flame without batting the eyelids for 3-4 minutes. Thereafter, fill your mouth with water and splash cold water in your eyes a couple of times. After sometime the water in the mouth will become warm. Throw away this water.

Mastering thoughts enable you to control thoughts and not let them control you. This facilitates the removal of internal and external pollution. With Samarpan Meditation and with the Guru’s Grace all your thoughts are evaporated and as this happens you find your life being transformed. There is greater tranquility, peace of mind, this results in a positive change in your own aura which then starts attracting people with the same thought frequency as yours. All people or actions which are not for your goodness move away from you automatically as they cannot match your positive thought frequency and your Guru’s energy. All people and acts within your frequency range become close to you resulting in a positive change in your own aura-field. As this field expands and includes more and more people, a multiplier effect will take place, ultimately resulting in “Vasudaiv Kutumbakam”.

Jai Baba Swami

Ref: DNA article and Yoga Living