There is no such thing as a negative thought or emotion.I will stand by it.
It is not to say that I find every thought or emotion comfortable. Far from it. I just think that we should not regard them as "negative".
Every teaching you receive should be put through the filter of your own experience. Thus far I have found that the teachings that stand up in my experience are simple, which is not necessarily the same as easy. So it is with this statement. There is no such thing as a negative thought or emotion.
Reinforcing the belief that they are negative makes things worse
When I see the self help writings offering ways to "rid yourself of negative thoughts and emotions" I experience sadness. The expectation that you can rid yourself of uncomfortable emotions is so unrealistic. The teachers of these ideas are sincere enough, and they seek to help. Their methods might work for awhile, but in the end those uncomfortable sensations will return.
In fact the perpetration of the idea that they are something you want to be rid of, the idea that they are negative and therefore undesirable, can actually create conditions for them to increase. Any strategy to push them away is bound to be unproductive and even increase the experience of those same emotions and thoughts over time. If they are undesirable, it is logical to push them away.
A radical shift in perspective is called for
As I said before, every teaching you receive should be put through the filter of your experience. To do that you must, of course, first give the teaching a preliminary assessment. If it asks you to do harm, to yourself or others, it is as well to reject it as being false. True teachings are benevolent, not malevolent. Beyond that you can only assess the effectiveness of a teaching by trying it out. I am sharing this teaching with you because I tried it out and found it to be effective, and so I take it to be true.
The radical shift in perspective is to regard everything that arises, including uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, as messengers whose message is a pointer to our essential wholeness. As messengers with such important and useful messages, the only thing to do is to welcome them and to enquire of them what it is they have to reveal.
The moment you turn towards, instead of away, from whatever is here, it ceases to have so much power over you. All the while you are turning away, pushing it away, you are in fact becoming more fused with it. It may seem counter-intuitive, but in the act of turning towards it you are in fact de-fusing with it. You are immediately allowing it to be a movement in awareness, along with all other movements in awareness. Doing so frees up its passage to move on through, and its movement through opens the space for something else to move through and that something else might just be a more comfortable emotion or thought.
Of course, if a comfortable thought or emotion is present, it must be greeted in exactly the same way. It is pointless to try to fuse with it and hang onto it. It has come, as a messenger, allow it to deliver its message and move on through.
The dance of manifestation
This shift of perspective brings us into the position of witnessing what is going on instead of being caught up in it. From this perspective we witness the dance of manifestation. That part of manifestation that is this body is full of sensation, energy, emotion, and thought. These movements are coming and going as a microcosm of the larger manifestation which is the entire universe.
Everything that manifests arises (is born), grows, stabilises and abides awhile, declines, erodes and decays and is reabsorbed. Everything. Can you think of anything that doesn't? Even a mountain. Even a planet. Even a star. Even the whole universe itself. Some things have a short period for this cycle, and some longer. Time itself is a part of the dance.
Compared to the cycle of manifestation of this body, the cycle of manifestation of any emotion or thought is short, sometimes fleeting, sometimes a little lingering, but short nevertheless, especially when it is being welcomed with curiosity.
And this is the message, or at least part of it. It is simple. Everything comes and goes and nothing is permanent. This too shall pass! And in its time bound manifestation there is beauty. There is beauty in the grief, in the shame, in the sadness, in the nervousness, as much as there is in the joy, the friendliness, the compassion, the delight.
Who is doing the witnessing?
The rest of the message is in the answer to this question. Who is doing the witnessing? The emotion or thought, comfortable or uncomfortable, is a messenger. When we welcome it we open to the shift of perspective that reveals that witnessing aspect. This points us back to that which is witnessing.
Different sages, different traditions, have different words for this, but we might call it capital C Consciousness or capital A Awareness. Notice that this is not the thinking mind because it can be aware of thoughts. This is that part of us, the Consciousness in which those thoughts, or emotions, or sensations arise, grow, abide awhile, decay and are reabsorbed.
I encourage you to read some previous posts which may help your explorations.
Dealing with negative thoughts and emotions
Reset your defaults
Follow the senses
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| Carl Sagan |
