“The expansion of the Universe and the evolution of all species is dependent on contrast. How could you ever decide what you do want, without living some of what you don’t want? And so, be easy on yourself! Do not try to hold yourself to the impossible standard of only being in a place where everything is exactly as you want it to be. If you could do that you would cease to exist.”
– Abraham
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A lot of times, it happens that people who have been doing inner work for quite some time and therefore, have got better at maintaining their inner balance give themselves a hard time when they find themselves feeling negative emotion. It’s like they chide themselves by saying to themselves – “you should know better. You can choose positive emotions. You know the value of positive emotions. Why didn’t you make a better choice in this situation? How can you feel negative emotion when now you know and understand so much better? How can you do this?” The more they judge themselves, the more uncomfortable they feel…the more they scold themselves, the further they get from feeling what they want to feel i.e. feel good till the time they become aware of what they are doing to themselves and stop the negative feeling by distracting themselves to something easy to appreciate. Since they have been doing inner work for quite some time, it’s now easier for them to distract themselves in order to feel relief at this point.
In all of this, it’s important to acknowledge that negative emotion has value and it will always be there. We can reduce feeling pain (as we learn to focus on thoughts in a different way than earlier) but as humans, we will have moments in which we choose to experience negative emotion. Negative emotion helps us create as only when we don’t like something, do we have an awareness of what we like (and hence want to create something beyond where we have been before feeling that negative emotion). So, contrast has value. We are all creators. Yes, some of us may be better at allowing our creation than others but even though one is better, it’s not that one will never feel any negative emotion.
As time goes by and one practices one’s balance everyday throughout the day, it does get easier. Something which may have taken one two years to get over may take two months or two weeks or even two minutes. It’s almost like the edge has been taken off you but it will never be that one will never feel any negative emotion. Why? Because we are all creators and in order to create, we need to see unwanted and therefore, desire the wanted. If we wanted to remain pure positive energy “all the time”, we would not have come in this time space reality as we have.
Yes, we can reduce negative emotion but cannot eliminate it. If we do eliminate it, we would “cease to exist”. Making peace with negative emotion by seeing it’s value plays an important role in being easy on ourselves and enjoying our journey “even more”.
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Photo credit – Burak Kostal via pexels.com
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