One of my favorite readers asked me this question lately “How do you push bad thoughts out of your head so you don’t become a prisoner of them, especially at night when you are trying to sleep?”  That is a tough question but here goes, first off be careful of what you consume throughout the day.  In Buddhism this is called mindful consumption and not only does it include what we eat but also what we listen to, watch on tv and even what we think.  I used to perform hypnosis for therapeutic reason and while going through school to be able to do so I realized something very important we are being hypnotized every second of every day and a lot of what we are taking in is bad.  We hear all this negative stuff and it becomes a program, when your brain has nothing else to do it keeps running this program.  When I started to change my life for the positive simple things had a large impact especially the type of music I was listening to.  Listening to some uplifting music on my way to work in the morning helped me through the entire day.  So being aware of what I consume today is very important no matter where it is coming from.  I have to stalk how I am feeling and what is causing those feelings without judgment of myself or the situation then I can work to change what caused them.

I also had to start living right make sure I was doing good and not causing other people harm, make sure I was trying on a regular basis to improve the way I treated myself and others.  I had to look at the negative stuff I did and make it right.  As negative situations came up in my life I had to take what action I could for that day and put it to rest, once all you can do is done its done.  I had to stop living in fear of stuff some stuff that was never going to happen and I was living through it anyway in my mind.

The thing that helped most with all this was prayer and meditation.  Prayer for me is talking to a higher power and meditation is listening to that same power or at least being in its presence.  As these two practices helped to ground me and allowed me the singleness of mind to see things how the were in reality not what I was doing to distorted them the action I was taking in life had better results or at least I didn’t care or was attached to them.  I could make better decisions and act in life not just react from my ego.  As I came more established in this way of life I found something magical had happened when my head hit the pillow at the end of the day I was at peace and went right to sleep.  As I shined the light of mindfulness through prayer, meditation and right living the shadows that were keeping me up were instantly destroyed.

I hope I answered the original question or at least that was what you needed to hear.

Peace Love Das