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 Yoga Living reader, you may not feel that you are really contributing to this problem:  You are faithfully doing Yoga, 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 then 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 humor 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 plan 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 will help here. Cultivating the Niyama of samtosa, 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 Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin, 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.