What are Thought Forms? – II
Thought forms are homunculi of awareness: living beings which are no less real than we, their creators. However, thought forms are much simpler entities than humans. They don’t have the rich emotional tonality of humans; in fact, they are limited to one emotion each. They are not stupid, by any means, and in fact can be extremely perceptive and pithy within the narrow scope of their own prejudices and points of view. Precisely because they are so simple – being pure concept – they can see things much more clearly than we humans can. Thought forms don’t have much depth or dimension, but they do have the same passion for life which characterizes all living beings. In other words, thought forms can be considered to be conditioned patterns of behavior or reaction, positions which are being defended, which have a logic, a rationale, and a will to live all their own.
The personalities of individual thought forms – their feelings – mirror different facets of our own personalities (by definition). If we tend to be sassy and flippant, our thought forms will also tend to be sassy and flippant. If we tend to be gloomy and morbid, our thought forms will be gloomy and morbid too. Most of what we mean by, or can point to, or consider “ourselves” is just a random collection of thought forms.
Observe that thought forms serve needs in our psyche; that’s why we create them in the first place – to respond to some need. The problem is that our needs change as we go along in life, but our thought forms don’t. They are capable of modifying themselves to adapt to the vicissitudes of changing circumstances, but they won’t modify their basic purpose, and their basic purpose is to keep themselves alive (important to us).
Banishing thought forms gives us a space, a free moment, in which we can make a sober, reasoned decision about how we’ll react to a given stimulus, instead of being compelled to react out of some stock set of neurotic reactions which may not be appropriate to the present situation.
You can use any banishing ritual you like to banish a thought form; or just make one up. The point is that the ritual should be done with true repugnance for the thought form and a complete determination to stamp it out. You may not feel any immediate difference after banishing a thought form, but within a day or so of you’ll feel more detachment in the area ruled by that thought form. Banishing thought forms gives us a pause in there instead of a blind, thoughtless, headlong rush to react. We can watch ourselves as we react; we become consciously aware of what we’re doing as we do it.
(excerpted from Thought Forms ©2000 by Bob Makransky)
More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac/file