People, who subscribe to the power of positive thinking, tend to have extreme resistance to negative emotion and negative thoughts. We resist suffering, but resistance on top of suffering equals more suffering.
When we get in anger, we feel guilty immediately. The standard in the spiritual community has been that when anybody’s feeling strong intense negative emotion, we’ve got to get them out of it as fast as it’s humanly possible. But the only reason somebody would discourage somebody else from feeling negative emotion is if they themselves have suppressed emotion they don’t want to acknowledge.
It’s impossible to focus positively when we have something that we’re trying to avoid. When we’re feeling strong negative emotion, we’re feeling desperate. We always get that desperate feeling when we’re trying to get away from something and go towards something else. And obviously, any time we’re trying to get away from something, we’re resisting it and therefore focusing upon it in a subconscious way. Whatever we resist persists. If we would quit resisting it, it would cease to exist. And so, there’s only one option: to positively embrace the negative emotion.
We can’t throw negative emotions out. To say that positive emotions are contrasted beautifully by negative emotions is a bit of an understatement. If we only had positive emotions, they would cease to have their beauty. Without negative feelings, thoughts and experiences, we would never know what happiness and love and freedom really is. We would not have any awareness.
Suffering is a human created event. Suffering is not what we’re supposed to experience here. We’re supposed to soar through the contrast and soar through the negative emotions for what we would prefer to feel. But all the contrast was supposed to do was to give rise to the preference within us. We weren’t meant to then hold ourselves in opposition to that preference. Which is what we are doing. And that’s what we are doing, especially when we make an enemy out of negative emotions. So if we’re capable of seeing the beauty in negative emotions, capable of seeing the beauty even in sadness, then we would move quickly from sadness into the higher emotional states. Then we would see the value in sadness. We wouldn’t feel like there’s some aspects of life that are out to get us and another aspects which we really want.
Negative emotion is part of our guidance system, which means that negative emotions are valid. We should be encouraging people, when they feel strong negative emotion, to embrace and explore those negative emotions before encouraging them to then focus positively on something that makes them feel better.
When you can feel that you’re resisting negative emotion, stop running away and just be with yourself and the truth of how you feel and what you’re thinking right here and now. Be with what you’re trying to run away from. Take time to sink into the feeling and really let yourself experience it and question it. And express those emotions instead of suppressing them. Embrace them in any way you can.
Let’s all stop being ashamed of our negative emotions and thoughts and experiences. If we can learn to do that, we will no longer be resisting them and thus, they will transform our realities into something better.
Truth Love Unity 