We Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought; or, On the Road to Truth

There is so much news to follow these days that I’ve had too little time available to do audiotapes of my articles, but a friend has suggested that this particular article needs to be taped to be best understood.

I’m wrestling with the abstraction, “you can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought,” the title of a book by John-Roger and Peter McWilliams. (1)

The problem I have with it is that there are (almost) always exceptions to (almost) everything. I can’t tell the Special Ops soldiers in a tunnel underneath the American/Mexican border that they cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought. They need to be able to react with lightning speed, not think about it.

The best thing I could do for them is to stay out of their way. Norms of behavior are to them “vulnerabilities.”

So, providing we don’t hook ourselves up to a new norm, without exceptions, and lose our fluidity of response, then I’m coming to appreciate what the authors said.

I was walking home the other day and I was not feeling any waves of negativity. Suddenly I noticed I was feeling irritated and resentful. And I wondered what had me feel that way? At that moment, I saw, at a realizational level (intellectual, experiential, realizational) that it was a negative thought that triggered the negative feeling. I saw the causal link.

I know, I know. Elementary, my dear Watson. But I got it at a much deeper level this time than at any other time. And, interestingly, this “get” happened after, for a full day, I watched myself in interaction with another, having one negative thought after another and not attaching myself to any of them. They came and went as if they were news broadcasts on a TV.

And I maintained my equilibrium. Wow. First time. I didn’t dull myself out with a litany of negative thoughts. If I had a complaint, I saw whether I could do something myself that took care of it – without complaining.

This ability to remain detached is a direct result of dropping my character armor. (2) Or rather succeeding in imploring my guides to take that unwanted shield away from me. I wanted to be free of it. (3)

Attaching to any one of those negative thoughts could have led to a fight. In that moment, I saw that.

And I also saw that what I was doing in simply watching these negative thoughts that arise and not attaching to them was itself a practise, a discipline that would eventually shape my character. (4)

Provided my partners in enlightenment on the other side don’t extend to me another “snap” or “ignition,” which will cement the practise and its result in me. (5) As the Factory Reset did. (6)

I now see a result of this realization on an experiential level. Where I used to enjoy the thought of, say, instant karma or sweet revenge, I now find the thought mildly repulsive. I just flashed on a monk in the Thirteenth Century, one of my few lives on Earth. The attitude I find myself in as a result of this realization is a step closer to the one I associate with the monk. I’m becoming monklike.

Interesting. All of it is interesting.

Spiritual unfoldment is interesting and unexpected. When I was actively playing the awareness game in the late seventies, I was thrilled with each new discovery.

Because each new discovery had an actual impact on the way I felt or the way my body felt. “The truth will set you free” is (almost) totally true and the freer we feel, the more we know we’re on the road to the truth. And ultimately THE Truth.

Footnotes

(1) Available from Amazon.

(2) See Factory Reset; or, Dropping Our Character Armor at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Factory-Reset-or-Dropping-Our-Character-Armor-R6.pdf

(3) I asked Michael for a bigger brain and heart to do the work I’m doing. What I got was a sudden dropping of the mass of resentments, strategies, poses, etc., that Wilhelm Reich called “character armoring.” That released my brain and heart from being wedded to negativity.

Notice how asking does bring results: Ask and ye shall receive. Knock and the door shall be opened. For me, the “knocking,” which, Michael confirmed, resulted in the door of the heart being opened on March 13, 2015, was drawing love up from my heart on the inbreath, enjoying it on the pause, and sending it out to the world on the outbreath.

(4) The spiritual practise is renunciation and it leads to detachment from the unreal. Recall that the basic spiritual movement is to discriminate between the Real and the unreal, detach from the unreal, and attach ourselves to the Real.

(5) On our enlightenment partnership with them, see: