This is a small article I begun to write but didn't really have much to say on. Feel free to add something to it and criticize it. How do you maintain mental hygiene?
Mental Hygiene
As people who work with their minds in occult ways ('magicians'), it is important to pay a lot of attention to our minds in a same manner as an athletic pays attention to his body, exercising it each day and feeding it with proper nutrition; if the athletic begun to neglect his body, quitting exercising it and feeding it poor foodstuffs, it would begin to wither, turning into a weak and lethargic bodily mass. It is not necessary to say that such a horrendous abuse will lead ultimately to the death of the whole organism. While it is entirely possible to die by mental causes, the lack of use of mind doesn't lead to early death, yet an individual with poor "mental hygiene", as I have termed it, will lead "a half-life"; having enough bodily energy to maintain his physiological functions yet, not having enough mental energy, living in a state of mental stasis, low consciousness and total unsatisfactoriness. This little booklet is meant to help an aspiring magician, esotericist or other "spiritual worker" to maintain a healthy mind so to help him or her to develop her magical and spiritual functions with a clear and open mind. This "opening of the mind" is done with the help of proper mental hygiene.
But what is mental hygiene? Mental hygiene is "the practice of maintaining a healthy state of mind, free of mental disturbances such as forceful thoughts, negativity and all other conditions that cause imbalance in the mind; the practice of maintaining a good mental content that allows the individual to pursue his or her goals without disturbances." If one is to pursue seriously a path of the esotericist, he needs to take serious efforts to keep his head clear, as a disturbed mind makes a lot of shameful mistakes.
While a lot of our mental disturbances are viewed to originate from the deep recess of one's mind, we have to admit that a lot of our paradoxical impulses and mental annoyances originate from someplace out of our being. These outer factors affect our minds both consciously and subconsciously, the former being easier to manage; what outer sources print in our subconscious are more difficult to "weed out" and they can be more fatal for our being if left unnoticed. Many a shameful and mindless act have been done under some subconscious impulse; many find themselves "just doing" things. Most often these "just-doings" have their origin in some outside force.
What outside forces can affect our minds? These include;
>TV, advertising, other media
>The Internet
>Music, cartoons, comics, other entertaiment
>Entities, "alien manipulation"
>Books
What I am interested in is the electronic media (TV, music, the Internet) because these leave the strongest imprints in our minds. What often happens is that when we are under the influence of one of these mediums a thoughtform is born. This thoughtform, being born of "flashing messages", repetitive music and other "rhetorical practices", leeches upon our minds and begins to repeat the content of the medium; in other words, if we watch TV ours minds might keep repeating the pictures and sounds the television screen showed us when we watched it, or some popular music video might keep playing in our ear as "a earworm"; in truth, this earworm is nothing but a parasitic thoughtform.
Most often these thoughtforms die out after a good sleep though some persistent cases might stay for a week or longer. What should be done is to identify the thoughtform and how it affects you (does it want you to do something, for example?) and then stopping paying attention to it. This cuts out the source of its energy, your mental power. It can be difficult but it is not impossible. By identifying it and its purpose, you weaken its influence upon you. In this case, knowledge indeed protects, as Cassiopaeans have adviced.