Not long ago, I was inspired to do a seven-day mental fast. This is based on a process I learned about from New Thought teacher and metaphysician, Emmet Fox. In fact, he published a small pamphlet about it back in the early 1960’s called, The 7-Day Mental Diet: How to Change Your Life in a Week. Basically you fast from all negative thoughts and habits of thinking: worrying, complaining, judging, criticizing, blaming and arguing for seven days. The result is that you transform your life, or as Fox writes, “We are transformed by renewing of our minds.”
The fast felt so good, so light and full of innocence. There’s such peace when the mind isn’t focused on negative thoughts. And when such a thought did arise, I caught it and let it go without judging myself.
This was one of the best spiritual practices I’ve ever done. It has had long-reaching effects on my consciousness and well-being because it made it crystal clear how much of a choice thinking is and how often I allow it to run unchecked in whatever direction it wants to go.
What struck me was how many temptations tried to pull me away from feeling peace and love. One of the biggest takeaways was learning that events are simply events. Things are happening. Not to me; they’re just happening. It’s my interpretation (my resistance mostly) and my story that cause me to get caught up in them, to feel slighted or hurt or annoyed. It’s a much simpler way to live to just be with what is without creating a story: worrying about the future, judging the present or regretting the past.
Mental fasting is a practice which ultimately can create a whole new way of being because it’s creating new pathways and starving the old pathways. Our default is to drop into those old grooves because they’re familiar and comfortable. Not dropping in requires awareness and redirecting. It requires practice, but it’s SO worth it!
Why would anyone want to choose negative thinking? It serves no one, and it sends negative energy out into the world. There’s absolutely no benefit to it at all. This is crystal clear.
However, I do recognize that mental fasting might be quite challenging for anyone who hasn’t spent significant amounts of time getting quiet each day, through meditation, prayer, contemplation, walks in nature and so on.
We’re a plugged-in culture. We turn to the external and avoid the internal. So when our lives aren’t working, we look for an external fix rather than going within where the real solution can be found. Unless you’re comfortable with yourself, with getting quiet, and with deep inner listening, making a decision to not follow the mind’s escapades, including all of its commentary and reactions, is going to take some strong discipline.
Many people believe that negative thinking is normal. It’s not. It’s a choice—a moment by moment choice. We’re responsible for our thinking but have become lazy because our parents, schools, employers, religions, friends, culture, media and society have done most of our thinking for us.
This is no way to live!
In fact, it’s not living at all.
It’s giving over one’s will to the external world.
It’s a life of bondage covered over by the false belief that when we comply we’ll be safe.
It’s trading our God-given freedom for perceived outer security.
This is why people are so shocked when things in their lives fall apart. They’ve invested so heavily in the outer that they have no inner resources to help them navigate the change. Cultivating those inner resources is life changing.
Back to the seven-day mental fast. In spite of its challenging moments, I truly enjoyed doing it. Whenever I found myself off track, I chose to gently redirect my mind away from the negative thinking. Kind of like training a puppy. After seven days of this, life felt radically different: calm, peaceful, innocent, benevolent, friendly and really inspiring. I discovered that it was much easier to be present for what was unfolding each moment because my resistance had weakened.
Have I slipped back into my old ways since then? Yes and no. I still get pulled into life’s problems and dramas, here and there, but I now have more awareness about how big of a role my thinking plays in what I’m experiencing. This empowers me to make new choices that allow my consciousness to shift back into alignment with the flow of life rather than working against it, which is something that wasn’t as easy for me before I did the fast.
I intend to do the fast again soon, and I look forward to the insights I’ll gain.
How about you? Are you willing to give it a try?
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Thank you for the wisdom of this post. I have noticed people justifying negative thinking in a few ways. One is that they equate worrying with caring. If I'm not actively worrying--mostly about the news, the state of the world, and other external events--it appears to them that I don't care. This is simply untrue. I can care but make the choice not to focus on negative thinking about it. The other reason is that they think it's practical to think negatively, to avoid "getting your hopes up" and then being disappointed. If you think too positively, if you are optimistic and even idealistic, you are seen as a fool, impractical, and out of touch with reality. And again, the teachings I follow and my own experience demonstrates the contrary to be true. The more we envision a positive outcome, the more we open to it and attract it. I like the idea of a detox because, as you say, it forces you to pay closer attention to your thoughts, and that's the starting point for shifting things.