Privacy Is Not Possible

 This article sums up why it's so important to have healthy life-affirming ways of dealing with moods such as depression, and the thoughts that can feed it. Personally, I've tried various tools used by teachers and authors who advocate a positive-only approach, and have found them moderately helpful but incomplete. Grief, sorrow disappointment and loss are part of life. In my job I help people deal with these every day.

While I'd love to believe in the message advocated by books like The Secret, I just don't, and I've stopped lying to myself about it. For myself, I've found that life works better if I complement positive-thinking tactics with soulful ways of acknowledging and dealing with "negative" emotions. Several of Thomas Moore's books, including Dark Night of the Soul, have been very helpful with this. So has an old favorite of mine, Women Who Run With the Wolves and a few of life coach Martha Beck's and artist Julia Cameron's books. All of them suggest ways to create psychological containers, safe places, for working through heavy emotions.

 Very thought provoking and well written article. I believe that "no privacy of thought" will be all the way true at some point in human/spiritual evolution. "I think" :) the ability to read and know another's thoughts and read their corresponding emotions will be the way of the future for the the human spirit. Notwithstanding, at this point and time it is almost a necessary "protection" that we have a space for privacy for many reasons , mainly having  to do with the present "State of the human collective" in general. The one thing I would have liked to see different in the article is wrapped up in this one sentence : "If we spend our days victimized by negative energies, negative thoughts, if we yield to depression, melancholia, bitterness, these energies pollute the atmosphere." Considering the fact that in our modern world so many people, even children, communities, nations are victimized by other's thoughts of greed, lust for power and domination, revenge, superiority, violence and even sexual exploitation of all kinds, and the result being that numerous people often end up struggling from depression, mental illness and melancholia, I don't see this as a helpful statement.  Those struggling with depression for example were often  victimized as children or just early in life. PTSD for example changes the brain chemistry causing things like depression and melancholia. People living in war zones, especially children born into them, often don't have the ability to "just change their thoughts to be more positive. It's a lot more complicated than that.  Try meditating when you are starving or living in constant physical trauma towards self and/or others. What is considered  "positive" or "negative" is also  quiet relative. But if those of us on this planet, aware and able to focus our thoughts and meditation and prayers on improving our thought life with thoughts of empathy, love and integrity - while at the same time challenging every thought of war, violence, self absorption, exploitation of others etc - then we can be of help changing the world. At least that's what "I think". Namaste.

I believe the mind is the result of collective human development over centuries (or maybe millenia).  I believe the mind is not your mind or my mind but a human mind.  However, I don't believe that privacy in personal life is impossible.  My  thoughts are part of collective development or collective unconscious, and my thoughts affect the collective life I am part of, and I can keep them private.  I guess my thoughts are both private and collective.  My inner or psychological life can be kept private and is a social issue.  My cousin committed suicide last week -- I am sad about that -- he kept his thoughts private and his thoughts and action affect all of us.  That thoughts can be kept private doesn't mean that they and the action they result in don't affect all of us.   We develop awareness of how interconnected our minds are by reminding ourselves that we are one, we are expressions of one Source -- how can our minds be anything but interconnected?

 On level, we all  are one. On another level we are different from each other in many different ways. When these differences create distances and disrupt or break or damage connectedness, they become obstacles and result in me against you. My space is your space too. What I think, what I feel and how I cat not only have an impact on me but on many connected with me or even remotely connected or not connected at all.How to to transform the me space into we space is a challenge for me. Gratefully practicing mindfulness and empathy and compassion keeping my mind and heart open has been very helpful to me. It becomes effortless.We are in the being gonne.This happens in many contexts for me. When I walk in natural surroundings, when I meditate and live meditatively and when I serve 

I have learned life lessons  from Mahatma Gandhi, J Krishnamurti, my parents,, my wife and from children.  I am grateful to Nipun for sharing this illuminating real life experiences..

Namaste.

Jagdish P Dave