Umbrella
A million negative thoughts and feelings can come to beat me down but as I “go silent” they pass on by. I don’t have to go where thoughts want to lead me and I don’t have to feel what they want me to feel. Dismissing thoughts is like standing under a see-through umbrella; the negative thoughts rain down like bird droppings; they hit and splatter, but they’re not actually landing on me. I may still flinch when I see one coming, but as long as I stay under the umbrella I’m safe and unsullied.
If I abandon the umbrella and connect with a negative thought then I run the risk of becoming obsessed by it. Thoughts need my focus in order to disturb my peace or drive me toward negative reactions. I’ll end up saying what I shouldn’t say and doing what I shouldn’t do – all because I put a single thought under a microscope and magnified it until it was all I could see. To detach from negative thoughts is to go back under the umbrella. I may always see them and hear them splatter, but I don”t have to be adversely affected by them. In this way I am in the world but not of it.