From Forums of the Virgin Mary [translated]:
How to detect and act against the thoughts and emotions that destabilize us.
There are thoughts that arise in our minds that take away our peace, leave us restless and distress us.
Surely each of us has felt them at some time.
They arise unexpectedly, sometimes they go quickly but come back, and other times they keep us in suspense and distress, perhaps aggravation, for a long time.
What are they, where do they come from, why do they have so much strength and even durability?
Sometimes it even seems as if we are more attracted to negative emotions than positive ones.
But the good news is that Christians have at their disposal an arsenal of weapons to quickly regain their peace and happiness, which others lack.
Here we will talk about how these negative thoughts and emotions are generated, why they have so much power over you, and how you can get rid of them in the acute moments and also on a permanent basis.
Have you ever wondered where the thoughts that take away your peace come from?
Why do you think what you think, why are some things so negative, intrusive, and obsessive?
It is that we experience temptations in the form of thoughts, feelings, and desires that, if not resisted, lead us away from our emotional balance and God’s will.
And where do our temptations flow from? They come from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The world, that is, the people around us, can suggest negative paths.
The flesh, that is our passions and psychological wounds, which can give rise to temptation.
But above all the fallen angels can indicate thoughts and moods within us, in order to lead us into a loop of negative thoughts towards ourselves and others.
And how does they do it? Can they read our minds to know our thoughts and how to distort them?
Perhaps not in a strict sense and they do not need it either.
Because our public words, our gestures, and our actions, reveal what we think, our desires, our ambitions, our open doors.
Therefore, if they can’t read our minds [this is a point of debate], they have access to our minds, hearing us and seeing us.
And from there they can influence our thoughts.
Some psychological studies found that the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day.
Subtracting sleep, that means an average of 3,750 thoughts every hour of the day.
And a remarkable ninety percent of those thoughts are mental loops, repetitions.
So we think about the same things over and over again.
And how many of them do you think are negative?
Seventy percent. Seven out of ten. [Scroll for more]
These negative mental loops can be: thoughts that are relentlessly pessimistic, depressive, anxious, fearful, paranoid, neurotic, lustful, possessive, self-condemning, hypercritical, impatient, irritated, hateful, resentful, vindictive, jealous; they do not forgive
It is a repetitive way of ruminating that implies a waste of time and energy and that can have a negative impact on your life.
Catholic mystics say that this happens in the realm of what they call the inner life.
And they learn to step back to see and hear themselves.
The mistaken repetition of these mental loops can be like water dripping on rock: time will erode it and eventually the imprint will be permanently etched into it.
The bottom line is that many of our thoughts are not really our own. Many come from the enemy.
They are planted by the forces that seek our bewilderment, oppression, and obsession, in a word, the demons.
And if we want peace, they must be expelled.
Often when you constantly think negative instead of positive, when you think poorly of yourself or another person, as a matter of reflex, a demon is twisting things.
He is the cause of the obsessions, of the distortions. He wants your anguish.
When we think of ourselves or others in a negative way, we insert darkness into God’s design, instead of the light He desires for us.
If the negativity is directed at ourselves, we turn our backs on the joy that God planned for us.
And when we think negatively about others, it is about fighting against love.
This is how we get trapped in negative loops instead of going with the strength of the Holy Spirit.
The evil one has a three-stage plan to distort your thoughts and emotions, lead you into negativity, and afflict you.
The first stage is to overwhelm the culture with garbage.
The media bombards it with garbage to the point where it becomes normal.
Satan floods our world with so much filth and perversion that it is almost impossible to escape from it.
For example, you can’t surf the Internet, drive down a highway, or wait in line to pay at a store without images or phrases appearing, trying to lead your mind in the wrong direction.
The second stage of the demon’s plan is to dominate you by desires.
The culture of sin is designed to keep our minds in that place at all times, which is crucial to Satan’s strategy.
He knows that where the mind goes, man follows.
And if we don’t defend ourselves, in a short time we will be consumed with the pleasures of the flesh.
And then the demon goes to the next stage, the third.
He torments you with accusations, a trick meant to frame you permanently.
He fills people’s minds with sin, and then he accumulates and presents it generating such shame and condemnation, that it makes us feel distant from God.
He will tell you that you have soiled yourself too much and are therefore too far from the love of God.
That you have reached a point where it is impossible for you to reach Him, because there is a stark distance between what He asks and the way you feel and think.
And then come the rationalizations that those who preach such a strict God don’t really know Him at all.
And that God is so merciful that he will not punish us for a little pleasure.
Also, if the majority does it, it shouldn’t be so bad and go so against God.
And then how to face the negative loops of our minds manipulated by the evil one?
First of all, when you feel repeated negative thoughts about something or someone, including yourself, take a step back, look inside your mind, and cast out any spirit that may be behind them.
Let God control everything.
And stop thinking that you have to solve everything.
Get away from feeling like you are the center of the universe and put God back in his place.
If God intervened every time you were in danger, and stopped the circumstance that caused you to be afraid, how can you not develop confidence, courage, and faith?
So stop giving wings to fear, no matter how justified it is for you to feel it.
Let it go and allow God to be God.
And second, Saint Paul in Ephesians 6: 11 instructs us on how to have a permanent protection by putting on the armor of God to defend ourselves from the devil’s plans.
And what is that Armor of God made of?
It is the invisible things that allow us protection against the temptations of the evil one and our tendency to sin.
The first is the truth.
No person can survive the onslaught of the devil if our commitments to God are weak and we cannot understand reality as it is.
The second piece of armor is justice in our hearts and towards others.
The third piece is the gospel.
It is about understanding it and sharing it correctly inside and outside our inner circle.
The fourth is faith, which allows us to put out the enemy’s fiery arrows.
This means having confidence in God’s perfect provision for one’s life and the lives of loved ones.
The fifth piece is salvation.
In other words, the security in God’s promise for the end.
The sixth piece of spiritual armor is the Word of God, here and now.
When we proclaim it and make it known to others correctly, it gives us an extra layer of protection, because we extend its power in the world.
And the seventh piece is prayer.
Prayer is what allows us to be in permanent communication with God and to know which is the path that has been traced for us.
Every time you feel without peace around you, start with the prayers, break out the rosary beads, and ask Mary and the Lord to give you peace.
Leave your concerns in the hands of Mary and Jesus and ask for calm, both for yourself and for the other people around you.
Call your guardian angel and ask him to act on the environment.
You can also ask that your angel go to help or communicate with the guardian angel of a person close to you, who is out of balance, without peace.
Request that armies of angels go to pray and sing melodies of peace next to you and the upset person.
And ask for discernment, so that the distortions of your thoughts and emotions do not play tricks on you.
Well, so far we wanted to talk about how the evil one distorts our thoughts and emotions, and how you can defend yourself.
And I’d like to ask you if you’ve ever been caught in a negative thought loop and how did you get out of it?