By Cathy Eck

Positive Thinking Often Leads to Denial

Imagine that you have a spare room that is filled with junk.  There is stuff piled everywhere.  Cleaning this room is going to be quite a job.  You stand at the doorway looking at the room, and suddenly you notice one small space that is clean.  You realize that it feels good to look at that tiny space, and so you focus your attention on it.  In fact, every time you look in the room, you ignore the mess and stare at that one tiny, clean space.  Avoiding the dirt causes you to feel good, but you never notice what needs cleaning.  If you don’t see the junk, you will never have a clean room.

The positive thinking movement has given birth to many who like to look at the one clean space while the rest of the room stays cluttered.  It has produced people who are blind to their own dirt.  Such a perspective is very appealing to our false self.  The false self doesn’t want to be exposed.  It is composed of worthless junk, beliefs that keep us from being our True Self.

The True Self Wants to Feel Good All the Time

Our true Self doesn’t just want to feel good only when it looks at the few places in our lives that work.  It wants to feel good all the time, no matter what we are doing.

So if we are going to have a room or mind that is completely clean, we must look at what is dirty.  That doesn’t mean that we should wallow in the negative.  We would not jump in the dirt in the room and sit in it all day — that would not be very productive.  Likewise, worry, wallowing in our feelings, self-pity, or fear are just not effective.

In our very dirty room, we have to momentarily give our attention to each piece of junk, notice that it doesn’t belong in the room, and then remove it.  It isn’t that painful if we know that it can be removed.  And the job is achievable if we remove one item at a time.  Eventually, we are finished with the job.

On the other hand, if we look at the room, notice the dirt, and believe that it can never be removed, we will become very depressed.  We will feel hopeless and want to run away from our problem.  All the willpower in the world won’t get us to clean that room if we are depressed and convinced we can’t do it.  The same is true of our minds.  When our beliefs have cluttered our mind with lies, we can’t see the truth; in fact, we see clearing our mind as unachievable.  We are just not motivated to tackle the job.

Humans are Naturally Positive

We are naturally positive.  Just like our room is clean once we remove all the dirt, our mind is positive when we remove the beliefs that block our True Self.  The way to accomplish what appears like a very big job is to remove one belief at  a time.  Each time we notice a belief, realize that it does not serve us or anyone else, and let it go, our mental room becomes a bit cleaner until one day all that is left is our True Self.

Want to read more on this subject…Read Positive Thinking Versus Letting Go