Tag: the Dark Side

Getting Rid of Dark Side Thinking Patterns

Dark Side Thinking Patterns is the best phrase I can think of to describe unwanted thoughts. These may be thoughts about ourselves or others. They may repeat like a broken record in our heads or come up when we are triggered.

It doesn’t matter what they are about because it will be different for each individual.

I used the phrase “Dark Side” because I relate to the Jedi on a deep soul level. (I will talk about that another time.) As I am not a psychologist, I like to use terms that I identify with and that others can relate to.

If my relative geekiness is too much for you, please bear with me and just call it negative thinking patterns.

Dark Side Thinking Patterns are habitual thought processes that have become ingrained within us. They are usually oriented in the past (as depression) or the future (as worry or anxiety) and have no meaning in the present.

I wrote this post because I still struggle with negative thoughts and I intend to break free from them. Completely.

If you have a lifelong battle with unwanted thoughts in the form of anger, hatred, worry, fear, anxiety, or feelings of low-self worth, I’m talking to you. If you have struggled your entire life in some area that no one around you has a problem with, I have been there also. Many times.

If you have no problem with negative thoughts and you know of someone who may benefit from reading this post, please share it.

Dark Side Thinking Patterns may be deep-seated fears caused by our beliefs that we are not good enough on some level. We may be more critical of ourselves than others. Our thinking patterns may carried-over from previous incarnations. We may not even be consciously aware of the reason.

In order to grow, we must break free of these negative thoughts in whatever way we can.

Here are techniques that I use:

STOP

STOP stands for the 4 parts of this technique.

The following is from the Cognitve Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles blog.

STOP is an acronym that stands for:
  1. S: Stop. Whatever you’re doing, just pause momentarily.
  2. T: Take a breath. Re-connect with your breath. The breath is an anchor to the present moment.
  3. O: Observe. Notice what is happening. What is happening inside you, and outside of you?
  4. P: Proceed. Continue doing what you were doing.

It is all about mindfulness, being in the present moment. Shifting your focus to the here and now. Which leads us to the next technique.

BEING PRESENT

You are not your thoughts. You are the one thinking the thoughts. Thoughts are mental projections created by you. When you are lost in Dark Side Thinking Patterns, you are not in touch with what is happening outside of you.

Being present and looking around wherever you are is a way of bringing you back to where you are. Just observing the present moment, the temperature of the air, the scents, the sounds, the feeling of the ground beneath your feet. Take a moment just to be in the present. This is practicing mindfulness. It is even more helpful when practiced along with the next technique.

GRATITUDE

When we are in a negative emotion, we have lost all sense of everything. Practicing gratitude allows us to see that things are not as bad as they seem. I think about how grateful I am daily. I have a roof over my head, heat, and warm clothing. As I write, the sun is shining and I’m grateful for that as we haven’t had many sunny days lately. I am grateful for the breakfast I just ate. I am grateful that my fingers can type these words. I am grateful for my computer. I am grateful for the chair that I am sitting on. I am grateful for my eyes. I am grateful for my breath.

Just going through a small list uplifts me. I have so much compared to others in the world. When I express gratitude, the focus shifts from me to everything else.

If I stay in the feeling of gratitude, I can feel the shift internally. This brings me to feeling a great sense of compassion for others. Oftentimes when I express gratitude, the Buddhist Metta prayer of loving-kindness comes to my thoughts.

May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings awaken to 
the light of their true nature.
May all beings be free.

Metta Prayer by Ginny Gaura

We are all in this together. When one person helps themselves to break free of negative thinking, everyone benefits. Imagine how uplifting the world would be if we all do.

May you break free.

Always,
Alice Always

P.S. The Metta Prayer is available as prints and on other products. To see more designs, visit my Prayers and Blessings Galley on Fine Art America.

Metta prayer products in two different sun designs by Ginny Gaura. See more on Fine Art America. 

Diary of An Elf – The Dancing Snow Wizards

Before I left Cabin Number 9, I stood before the sign that was posted near the door. It read: Remember, the Christmas Spirit lives within you. Make sure to Shine it brightly.

I had made that sign a long time ago. As one of the resident artists at Santa’s Magical Realm at the North Pole, it was my appointed task to hand-letter signs and other written materials. Making signs was always one of my favorite things to do. Trying to interpret other signs was another.

Taking a breath, I looked in the mirror next to the sign. It also had a sign above it, painted by yours truly. It read:

Be Whoever You Want To Be

Mirrors show only one reality. They reflect the physical image of our body. We may like what we see or not. We may fall in love with our outside image and create a world of egocentricity, believing that we are more important than others because of our vanity.

If we don’t like what appears in the mirror, we may feel ugly, insignificant and may not want to interact with the rest of the world. This can cause a lot of loneliness and despair.

The magic mirror in Cabin Number 9 doesn’t reflect the starkness of reality. It shows the light shining from within through brilliant colored sparkles. When you look at it, you see the dazzling love of your own heart. When I looked in the mirror today, my sparkles were dimmer than usual, looking a little rusty-brown.

I set out to change that.

Outside I tracked through the snow to the nearby forest of pine trees. I walked between them, creating a winding pathway.

With each step, I grew melancholy, remembering times when I danced among the trees. Today, I did not dance as my body hurt, making movement slow. When I got to the midst of the forest, I looked for a convenient rock that I could sit on.

Here in this Winter Wonderland, as in all realms of Wonderland, things may not be as they are perceived with the five senses.

I asked a large grey rock if I could dust off the snow and sit upon it. When I received no reply. I took it as an “OK, no problem,” and sat down.

Closing my eyes, I breathed in the heavy pine scent of the trees. Deep green energy surrounded me and helped me to open up the power from within.

I began to hear the snow wizards talk. You may call them trees but we call them wizards because of the energy and wisdom that they possess. The winter pines are known as snow wizards because here they are always covered with snow.

Alice! Aliiiice! Allllllice! Aaaaalice! Ali-Ali-Alice! Any which way you can say my name, they said it.

“What took you so long?” the nearest pine asked. “Weren’t you supposed to be back here a few years ago? Maybe 4 years ago? Or is it 24?”

“Actually, probably longer than that,” I answered. “It has been a difficult journey back into remembering.”

“Alice,” another said. “You need to watch what you say. Difficult implies that you put too much Dark Side thinking into a particular situation. When you do this and remember the feeling you had of anger, regret, or guilt to describe something in the past, you bring it into the present moment. A suggestion would be saying something like… interesting.”

“Or amusing,” someone else said.

“You a-moooze me,” someone said to its neighbor. Then another said it to a neighbor, and so on, until everyone was amusing themselves. Within a few minutes, the entire pine forest was amused.

After a while, their musings faded.

“What’s wrong, Alice?” said the tallest and eldest tree known as Earl.

“Dark Side thinking,” I said. “I can’t seem to rid myself of it.”

“This is a start, Alice. Being with your old friends. We can talk about happier things.”

“I can’t dance like I used to,” I said. “My body can’t do things that were once easy. I know that many peeps can’t dance. I feel blessed that I once could.”

“Not true,” said Earl. “All peeps can dance. Look at us. Our roots are planted in the ground, yet we dance as the wind flows through our branches. You need to remember that dancing is an expression of feeling. You can dance with your own mind.”

Then the wind picked up and whistled. The cold made me shiver but I focused on it as energy flowing through me, moving in spirals and curves in my body. I was dancing inside myself.

The trees rejoiced in the wind, the snow blowing off their branches.

“Ahhh!” “Ooooo!” “Wow!” “I feel so light!” “Me too!” One after another, each pine voiced their content.

I felt happiness for the trees. I smiled like I hadn’t in a long time. A warmth grew within me, radiating from my center. I felt a golden light sparkling in my heart.

The snow magically melted on the ground.

I sat there on the rock and looked in amazement. Aside from the Elves’ clothing, I had never seen so much green at the North Pole.

“Alice! You did it!” Earl said. “You did the impossible! You restored us to ourselves!”

“Did I?”

“Yes, Alice, you transformed the feeling within from sadness to joy!”

“Imagine that!” I said. “And you know what?”

“What?” the newly named pine wizards replied in unison.

“It’s the first day of Spring!”

Always,
Alice Always the Elf

Diary of An Elf – Feeling Like Frodo from Lord of the Rings

Diary of an Elf is a reoccurring feature here on AliceAlways.com. Alice shares her story as her elf-self.

It was one of those crisp winter mornings when I finally left the closet of Elf Cabin Number 9 at Santa’s Magical Realm at the North Pole.

It seems that the other elves at the cabin had left to go on holiday and taken whatever blocked the closet door. I assume it was luggage, as all the bags that are usually stored under the beds were gone.

My recent rereading the novels of Tolkien filled my head. My life in what we call The Real World had its challenges.

At this moment, I really identify with Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo is the Ring-bearer who must journey to the darkest depths of Mordor and throw the Ring of Sauron into Mount Doom.

As I am writing this, the Led Zeppelin song, Ramble On is playing in my head. The exact lyric I hear is:

‘T was in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair
But Gollum, and the evil one
crept up and slipped away with her

I am dealing with my own burden which is my own thinking process. Sometimes I feel that I am in the darkest place imaginable. Recently I totaled my car in an accident and contemplated suicide.

My life has been a struggle and I am still working on releasing limiting beliefs that plague my conscious and unconscious thoughts.

I am a work in progress. I will get through this and not succumb to the darkness.

In The Lord of the Rings, many are tempted by Sauron’s Ring, especially the Ring-bearers. On one level, the Ring represents the thing we hold onto even if it is causing us undo suffering. It is a tangible object in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, but deep down inside it is a thought, either conscious or unconscious.

For some, letting go is easy. For others, the repetition of unwanted thoughts can play like a broken record in our heads.

But as the elf queen Galadriel said to Frodo, even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

We are not our burdens, we are not our doubts.

We must all rise above what holds us in a dark place by releasing whatever is causing our suffering.

To do that, we must believe that we are able to get through whatever challenge we are going through.

Frodo is the unlikely hero, a small hobbit with an enormous task. He volunteers to take the ring by saying, “I will do it, though I do not know the way.”

He doesn’t follow a map, instead, he is guided by circumstances. He perseveres because he trusts that he will get there.

It is Frodo’s faith that gets him to Mount Doom. He knows what he has to do and he keeps moving in the necessary direction until he accomplishes his goal.

We all can do the impossible.
We just need to have faith that we can do it.

Always,
Alice Always the Elf

The Shadow, Instant Karma and Thoughts of Suicide

We all have a shadow, the dark part of ourselves that we sometimes deny or project on others. It comes out in times when we are triggered, in fear or feel separated from everyone and everything.

But the truth is that we are all in this together. Anyone who tells you differently is living in their own shadow. Anyone who thinks that they are more important than others is merely deluding themselves.

On the flip side, anyone who feels low and insignificant is also living in their personal shadow.

Each one of us matters. Every single one of us.

It has been said that something as seemingly insignificant as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon on the other side of the world. This is because everything is connected.

But then, you know that already. You might even call it the Internet.

My personal shadow has been a lifelong battle with depression. But I made a promise before I was born to get through this and shine as much light as I can. That’s why I started writing this blog.

My journey in this lifetime has taken me to the depths of despair far too many times.

My life has been a struggle for most of it. I live too much in my head trying to find solutions to my problems, many of which are money related. Whenever I put those solutions into action, they never turn out how I expected. In fact, many choices that I made with my head have made the situation worse.

My financial problems had gone from bad to worse. I wasn’t getting enough work at my job to support myself and last month my online sales were the lowest they have been in December. I usually make enough in the holiday season to get me through a few months but despite all my marketing, I lost money.

I was at my lowest point I’ve ever been.

Last Wednesday night, I sat in my car as I contemplated suicide.  I was going to leave the car running in the garage and attempt to kill myself from carbon monoxide poisoning. I didn’t because I thought that maybe the poison could leak into my neighbor’s condo unit.

The next day, I totaled my car.

It was a freak accident that was caused because of my thoughts and actions. The front of my little Ford Focus went underneath the bumper of a giant Hummer. That vehicle was left with a few scratches. My hood bent in two and was pushed into the windshield.

I didn’t die. I walked away from the accident.

I’ll get through this rough patch. I have to. My inner guidance tells me that if I take my life, I will set things back for myself and end up reincarnating in a much more difficult life.

What we don’t overcome, we are forced to repeat.

We need to embrace our shadow and love it. And to do that, we have to live from the heart. We have to be careful what we think and say because like John Lennon sang, Instant Karma‘s gonna get you, gonna knock you right in the head.

It got me. It changed my life. I don’t know what’s going to happen. The only thing I know is that I have to make it through this.

Maybe you are in a dark place also. Maybe something that I write will help in your life. Maybe we all need to get through the darkness together.

I am here to serve humanity. We are all pieces of a puzzle of life.  What if I am a piece of your personal puzzle? What if you and I had decided before we were born that we would connect our puzzle pieces to create a new, wonderful world? Ending my life would never allow that to happen.

Some of the things that I am planning to write in the future have never been written before. I know that I hold an important piece of the cosmic puzzle about imagination. I am not saying this to be elitist. I am merely speaking what I know, from my own heart and soul.

Yesterday, on a walk in nature, my beloved and I saw a young bald eagle. He later asked me to read about what eagle stood for in terms of Animal Spirit Medicine. I read the passage from Ted Andrew‘s Animal-Speak book.

I cried through the entire last paragraph:

To align yourself with eagle medicine is to take on the responsibility and the power of becoming so much more than you now appear to be. From a karmic aspect, it reflects that the events will now fly faster, and the repercussions for everything you think, do or say (or fail to think do or say)–positive and negative–will be both stronger and quicker. To accept the eagle as a totem is to accept a powerful new dimension to life, and a heightened responsibility for your spiritual growth. But only through doing so do you learn how to move between worlds, touch all life with healing, and become the mediator and the bearer of new creative force within the world. 

It reminded me that I have a mission to fulfill and I cannot leave until it’s finished.

So, until then, I’m gonna shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun.

Always,
Alice Always

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