On The Uselessness Of Negativity

There’s nothing more enerving than someone saying “stop worrying, worrying isn’t helpful”… The mind has gone already, the feeling is there, and the pretend reassurance really isn’t helping.

But.

It remains so true and a concept worth remembering.

The main source of suffering in human existence is this: the idea that holding on to negative emotion will somehow create a positive outcome.

No truly positive outcome can arise out of negativity.

Power and positivity arise from acceptance of X (the situation, the person, this moment), and maybe a call to action if action indeed is needed. Resistance and negative emotions only engross us in inertia or push us into action that furthers suffering, in us and/or onto others.

Our great failing or handicap is the mind’s tendency to believe that the opposite is true, that if we feel lonely, angy, shameful, vengeful, greedy, but also feel like it isn’t right, then -and only then- we will act and change things for the better. This is really how it goes: we feel greed in its full force, feel bad about what it highlights (“there is not enough, never enough”), but believe we will be moved in the right direction and will reach a point in the future -never now, of course- where things are good, where there is enough. This just isn’t happening. And of course the whole range of negative emotion could be used for this example.

So, we go about things in such a backwards way. We could accept the situation and feel totally equanimous about it. Or we could have that negative emotion but not engage it, accept it and so strip it of its momentum. Instead we resist what is, feel bad about it, hate that we’re feeling bad, but subconsciously also hold on to the negative emotion thinking that it will show us the way out of it. Of course it never will. Anger cannot show us the way out of anger, only kindness can. Loneliness will never show us the way to engagement and inclusivity, only love can.

I’m writing all those posts for myself, as a public journal in a way, but I just want to remember -and maybe remind you, reader- of this truth.

When we feel negative emotions and so are resisting are suffering, a part of us believes that the negativity itself is the way out of the suffering. And that can never be true. And so we find no way out and feel helpless in the face of our suffering.

On the other hand, if one can recognise the illusion, if one can truly understand the uselessness of negative emotions, one would most probably drop all negative emotions or -at the very least- not even engage in negative emotions but just watch them, as ripples or small waves (temporary!) on the ocean of peace that one is, now.