We've been taught that we have to tolerate negativity. We tiptoe around others when they're in the throes of a negative state, and we accept our own torments, hoping only to be able to cope. Parents desperately look for ways to deal with the negativity in their children. We coddle these wrong, self-harming states for two reasons. The first involves self-love and self-protection: because we don't know better, we embrace the negativity as our own and therefore feel it should be defended. The second reason is secret fear: we're afraid of negativity, which means we resist it, and that resistance gives it our life-force. The solution is to understand the essence of negativity and then to learn how it operates in the dark.
Our new understanding begins by volunteering to get a lot tougher on ourselves -- and on what's been so hard on us. Meekly submitting to any negative emotion in the hopes it will run its course and leave us alone just invites it to subjugate us again . . . and again. We can learn to do much better than to just automatically become angry or depressed every time events run counter to our expectations, and we can begin by gathering a few freeing facts:
Fact 1: Negativity is opposition.
When we're negative, we're opposed to life as it presents itself. We've labeled a particular outcome as bad, but in reality, life is not divided up into good and bad any more than the ocean is for or against its own waves.
Fact 2: Life is whole and it's all good.
The events of life are reflections of broader patterns that are beyond our ability to see. All of them are in the interest of growth and development, and all of them, perceived correctly, serve to help us realize just how much the universe really is on our side. When bad things seem to happen, it is not that the event is bad of itself. It is that we do not see the wholeness, and instead judge the event from our own limited and divided point of view. The negativity produced by our own judgment hurts us and keeps us from experiencing the good.
Fact 3: Every time we accept a negative state we compromise ourselves and increase the level of conflict for ourselves and everyone we meet.
Strangely, we accept the negativity because it gives us a powerful sense of who we are. We feel falsely energized by our sense of a separate self, apart from the wholeness. We even value our negativity because it makes the boundaries of our selves seem so strong and real. "I may be unhappy," we think, "but at least I know who I am and I know what my life is all about." But what we "know" is a false self-image, and what we think our lives are about is only an endless battle to protect something that was never real in the first place.
The evidence is all around us! Almost everywhere you see unhappy faces reflecting anger, self-pity, defeat, and other dark states. How much effort do we go to in order to make ourselves look good to others? Do we ever think about what the expression on our face says about us? Or how any negative spirit within us can undo all the good effects of everything we do to make ourselves physically healthy? See negativity for the monster it is, and you'll want to be free of it forever. And you will be!
-- Guy Finley
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