Dancing in the Dark 5

5. Putting the dogs out

During a conversation with others, we are often interrupted mentally with obscure and abstract thoughts. The effort required in directing our attention to another person is consuming.

Silent orders and retreats have been effectual in the clearing of unwanted thought, so that proper time can be given to identifying the real from the unreal, the propitious from the unproductive.

If we are moving through a hurried day, or if the input around us is demanding, then we are more given to horrible thoughts, even though we are less aware of them. This is something of a caution, because we can believe that by keeping mentally occupied we shall not have a problem. But equal to the difficulty these thoughts cause when they present consciously, is also what they can do when they are traveling with us unseen.

If you ever speak to a person who has lost their fear or phobia of something, or had an obvious chain of compulsive destructive thoughts finally just leave them, you can feel confident that there can be a very real end to such thoughts, lesser and greater, in a lasting and meaningful way.

There can be a suspicion that living with obscurities is merely 'part of life', and certainly there will be harmless interjections into our thinking, assisting a flexibility and plasticity that is useful to the process. However, those thoughts which are dark, brooding, obsessive and repeating, fearful, intolerant etc., those thoughts can be discarded so permanently that they do not ever come back. 

This is hopeful news to all of us, and if we take time to reflect, we can find instances of this experience we know for ourselves already. Even if it was a childhood fear now vanished, you will find in your own history a parcel of horrible thoughts that do not plague you anymore.