How to Change Your Mind and Tell a Healing Story
A contemplative teaching on how to change the mind through affirmation, discernment, and spiritual practice by calling forth truth and telling a healing story.
Changing the trajectory of life begins with learning how to change the mind, call forth what is true, and let the soul power of healing shape a new story.
In times of difficulty, the mind can become crowded with fear, worry, and painful repetition. This reflection explores how to change your mind through affirmation, discernment, and spiritual practice so that a more healing response to life can emerge.
Affirming What Is True in the Midst of Difficulty
Health, healing, and spiritually awakened living are natural for us. They are natural for everyone because these inclinations are innate to the soul.
Life itself has a natural, inherent purpose to bring forth healing and wholeness for all. That movement is always going on in the universe, sustaining life. Our health, our healing, and our spiritual awakening depend on learning how to turn toward that movement, call it forth, and cooperate with it.
There are many ways to do that. Discernment helps us look into the nature of reality and recognize what is true. Prayer opens the heart. Breath helps quiet the mind and foster awareness of the inner light. Another important spiritual tool is affirmation—not as denial, but as a way of changing the mind and, in a sense, changing the trajectory of life by telling a new story.
Thoughts, speech, and words can carry the soul power of healing. Healing can be called forth and aligned with by affirming what is true, even in the midst of difficulty.
This is not about denying the presence of difficulty. More important still, it is about refusing to deny the presence of Truth.
So the question becomes: how do we use affirmation to access the power and presence of Truth, divine truth, divine presence, and divine power?
"When the mind is disturbed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate and dwell on their opposites."
—Yoga Sutra 2.33
No Prayer Is Complete Without Presence
Rumi offers a way into this understanding. In a selection from The Rumi Daybook by Kabir and Camille Helminski, he writes:
Oh God, what a good helper you are.
Hear and respond to the cry of those in difficulty.
He speaks of the many traps and baits of life and of how easily we are caught in them. Again and again we are freed, and then again we fall into another trap. We gather grain into the barn, and then somehow we lose it. Why? Because of the mice. These little mice ruin the barn.
Then comes the essential instruction:
Oh soul, first stop the mischief of the mice, then work to gather the grain.
Hear a saying of the Master of Masters: No prayer is complete without presence.
Connection with divine presence requires a quiet mind. It requires an opening to communion with divine reality, the reality that illumines the mind.
The mistake is to think that we are the mind. But we are not the mind. We are that light of God that illumines the mind. To experience divine presence, we cannot remain caught up in the mischief of the mind. We have to stop the mice.
What are the mice? They are those little thoughts scurrying around all the time, stealing the grain of peace.
Every day, perhaps many times a day, there is an effort to be present and remember the divine truth of our being. Yet worry, fear, self-doubt, frustration, anger, confusion, and distraction invade the mental field. They enter the soul barn, gnaw away at serenity, and refuse to leave. These afflictive thoughts steal away the peace that may have been gathered in prayer or meditation.
Kriya Yoga teachings offer many ways to quiet the mind because the mind reflects the light of the soul. When the mind is not clear, it becomes difficult to access the inner light and inner peace of God that are always present.
Divine support is always here. God is omnipresent. But when the mind is agitated or clouded, it becomes difficult to be fully present to that support.
Living With Purpose and Seeing Yourself There
There are teachings that come not only through formal instruction but also in ordinary moments, changing the mind and strengthening the capacity to live more fully and gracefully.
One such teaching came through travel.
When I first met my teacher, Roy Eugene Davis, I had opportunities to travel with him. At the time, I was terrified of flying. My mind would race off into its own dark dramatics: flying in a metal can through the air at breakneck speed—what part of that seemed like a good idea? I was a wreck.
My teacher traveled often, yet he was serene. I needed help. So I told him about my sweaty palms and mental panic and asked what he did to remain calm in travel.
He said simply, “I see myself there.”
That was his answer.
Wherever he was going, whatever he was doing, he said, “I see myself there.” His mind was not on the plane, not on turbulence, not on delays, not on who was sitting beside him. His mind was focused on purpose, on dharma, on where he was going and, more deeply, why he was going.
All of that was contained in this small but powerful phrase: I see myself there.
It was not merely positive thinking. It was the natural outpicturing of an intentional life.
If there is a desire not to be tossed around by the winds of change, then it is necessary to anchor in purpose, in dharma, in what truly matters. That is what guides us through life’s inevitable turbulence.
As Proverbs says, Without vision, the people perish.
So it is worth asking: what is the vision for your life? What is it for? What is it about? Not later, not after conditions improve, but now.
See yourself there.
Not in the turbulence. Not in the fear. Not in the disruption. See yourself there. Focus on what you are serving.
When life is lived with higher purpose and in service to Life itself, there is a natural ability to lean into divine support. That is because one is working in harmony with life’s inherent healing tendency and contributing to its natural flow.
Focusing on higher purpose gathers peace. It restores perspective.
But even then, as Rumi says, the peace may be gathered and then lost again. Each moment we are freed, and then we fall into another trap. We put grain into the barn and then lose it. Why? Because of the mice.
So the question becomes: what is the practice for dealing with the mice of worry thoughts, anger thoughts, fear thoughts, and all the mental habits that gnaw away at soul peace?
When the Mind Is Disturbed
The answer comes straight from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Sutra 2.33 says:
When the mind is disturbed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate and dwell on their opposites.
This is a clear and practical instruction.
First, notice the troubling thought or emotion disturbing the mind. Then name it: anger, hatred, frustration, worry, sadness, distraction, fear. Once it is noticed and named, consider what its opposite might be: love, friendliness, patience, faith, abiding joy, steady focus, courage.
Then reflect on that opposite quality. Call it forth. Imagine it. Cultivate it. Feel it.
This is not about pretending that anger, hatred, sorrow, or frustration are not present. It is not about denying feelings. Human feeling is real, and all of it belongs. The point is not to say, “I should not feel this.” The point is to become more functional.
Negative thoughts and emotions can serve as prompts to cultivate a peaceful mind. That peaceful mind is needed so that the light of God, the soul light, can shine through it.
This practice does not make difficult conditions disappear. What it changes is the capacity to respond to them.
Rather than reacting through an endless cycle of afflictive thoughts and pain-producing emotions, the invitation is to observe, feel, and name what is present—and then look deeper.
What is the opposite of this?
That question opens a doorway.
Why True Affirmation Is More Than Positive Thinking
This spiritual practice is not merely changing one thought for another. It does not work at that superficial level. Simply trying to paste one thought over another rarely holds.
There is a kind of false affirmation that does not transform anything. It has been compared to being in hell and affirming, “It’s not hot, and I’m not here.” That does not change much.
So what is different here?
What makes this a real spiritual practice rather than self-deception?
The difference is discernment.
First, the negative thought or afflictive emotion is noticed. Its effect on body and mind is contemplated. There is awareness not only of what is being thought or felt, but of what that thought or feeling is doing to the body and mind.
The mice are recognized.
And there is an understanding that, left unattended, they will multiply. One worry becomes many. One resentment becomes a spiral. One fear becomes a flock of fears. Discernment sees what is happening in the soul barn and recognizes the need for change.
Then comes the deeper, esoteric part of the practice.
A reactive thought or emotion is an effect. It arises in response to a condition. And conditions are always changing. Thoughts change. Feelings change. Reactions change. These belong to the realm of change.
The practice is not to live at that level alone. It is to become aware of that level and then, from there, call forth something unchanging.
That is the deeper power of this teaching.
An afflictive response to a changing condition becomes the prompt to cultivate an unchanging divine quality already present within. That is why peace can be called forth. Peace is not manufactured. It is not the effect of changing conditions. It is the peace of God—omnipresent, eternal, always there. Joy is always within. Divine possibility and the potential for healing are always within. Compassion is always within. Even when afflictive emotion is gnawing away at peace, those soul qualities can be called forth to strengthen the capacity to respond rather than react.
This is not merely affirming a different condition. It is changing the story altogether by changing oneself.
Heart Opening
A beautiful example of this came through a friend.
We were walking together on a mountain trail when she began speaking about the deep pain she was feeling in the breakup of her marriage. She felt hurt, angry, fearful—all the feelings that would naturally arise in such a situation.
And this is important to note. Yoga Sutra 2.33 begins not with if the mind is disturbed by negative thoughts, but when the mind is disturbed. It happens to everyone. Then the teaching gives the prescription: when this happens, cultivate the opposite.
My friend knew her feelings were natural. But she also knew that endlessly rehashing the events of the breakup and clinging to the feelings it produced were intensifying her pain and interfering with her ability to make wise decisions at a time when wisdom was deeply needed.
She said, “When feelings arise, I feel a pain in my chest like my heart is breaking. And I had been saying to myself, ‘My heart is breaking.’”
Then she shared the shift she had made.
“Now when I notice that twinge, instead of affirming heart breaking, I say to myself, ‘Heart opening.’ And now I can breathe again.”
Heart opening.
That was her new story.
Not denial. Not pretense. Not refusal to feel.
A healing story.
She did not deny the pain. She changed her relationship to it. She used the experience as a prompt to call forth another truth, one that opened rather than collapsed her life.
This is the power of true affirmation. It is not a spiritual cover-up. It is a way of aligning with what is deeper than the passing condition.
Choosing Awe Over Brooding
Rumi asks the final question with characteristic clarity and beauty:
To brood is to wander through a grove
where one sheep strays and one hundred wolves follow.
Why did I make brooding my vocation
when awe was an option?
Why indeed?
And then comes a final word from the Christian scriptures:
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
That is the invitation.
Not to deny difficulty.
Not to pretend the mice do not exist.
But not to deny Truth either.
To stop the mischief of the mice. To gather and protect the grain of peace. To call forth what is unchanging. To tell a healing story. To let words, thoughts, and consciousness align with soul power.
That is how the mind changes.
That is how life changes.
Listen to a recording of Yogacharya's message below.
How Affirmations Work—A Spiritual Practice for Healing and a Quiet Mind
This episode explores how thoughts shape awareness and how conscious affirmation transforms reactivity into clarity. Discover a deeper approach rooted in discernment—recognizing reactive patterns and cultivating their higher opposites to restore balance and awaken steady inner presence.
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