Shinning Darkness
If the sun didn't shine on the earth then the other side of the world wouldn't have night. Think how many wonderful things there are in the darkness of night…? There are nocturnal animals and stars, city lights and cool air; stars reflected in still ponds and the nightingale’s song, there is rest and sleep and dreams. Imagine freshly fallen raindrops hanging from the tip of every leaf of a tree and in every drop is the reflection of the dark night and the full moon. Without the dark of night we wouldn't have many wonderful and beautiful things. The night also is full of shadows and lurking fears, of things that can’t be seen; of bats and spider webs, slimy slugs and things obscene.
Life is made up of experiences, some make us feel glad and others make us feel bad. Sometimes, things happens in life that feel so bad, it feels like your heart is going to crack and your body wants to die. But guess what? If you can teach your mind to look at negative experiences in the right way you will not only get over them but they will make you a stronger and better person.
We all have bad experiences in life but we can use them as a catalyst to change life into something brighter. It takes practice, start small: in the midst of a calamity see a tiny thing of beauty, a butterfly or an interesting leaf, a sunny sky and puffy clouds, the sound of rain or someone’s smile. Let it bring you into the moment, each moment is easier to deal with than the stories created in your mind of what might be or what may have happened.
When a light is turned on in a dark room, the darkness is gone, the room is illuminated. If the room wasn’t dark in the first place you would have no need to turn on a light because you would already be able to see. If we didn’t have dark times in our lives, we wouldn’t recognize the bright times.
Search for the positive in the negative experience then the negative experience can have a positive reaction. If you learn a positive lesson from a negative experience then the negative experience isn’t really negative at all, it’s positive because it has taught you a valuable lesson. If you don’t learn from a negative experience, if you can’t find some positive reason for its happening, then it will remain a negative experience, you won’t grow or learn and will probably repeat the same mistake over again till you eventually learn. If you never learn you will stay on the treadmill of negative existence, becoming bitter and blaming the world for your troubles.
Don’t try to deny hurt and pain, pushing it away will only make it stronger.
We naturally gravitate to what makes us feel good and repel what makes us feel bad. Try the opposite, embrace it. It's not a good idea to smack a crying child in an effort to sooth them, you would cuddle them, nurture them and say comforting things. That is what you need to do to feelings that make you feel bad.
Say you are feeling grief because someone you loved has died, you're feeling lost and alone and sad. These emotions don’t make you feel good and it seems that the natural thing to do is to try and push them away or try to block them out because you don’t like feeling bad. Instead of looking at the death and thinking about the loved one, look at how you are feeling, look at your grief. By looking at the emotion objectively it looses its power and fades away.
This is the way with all negative emotions such as sadness, guilt, embarrassment or worry.
It takes practice. Look at the emotion, not the event that has caused the pain.
It is natural to feel negative emotions. Notice the feeling, embrace it, be kind to it, be kind to yourself.
You could try seeing the feeling as an object or a colour or as a bubble with the feeling inside; something that you can look at. Tell yourself that it is OK to feel this way, accept the emotion, don’t try to stifle it, just let it be. Tell the feeling that you acknowledge its existence. Then put it in a container, a bubble, a box, whatever you visualize and put it away till later. Next time the feeling rises, bring it out of its container, look at it, acknowledge that it is there, accept it and put it away again. If you have made the emotion into a colour, change the colour.
Eventually the feeling won't even arise. You can let it go.
You don’t need to hold onto emotions that hurt, you don’t need to push them away; you just need to accept them.
Turn the light on in the darkness of your mind. Turn suffering into happiness, embrace the suffering, look at it, learn from it, and transform it into something positive. Without negative experiences we wouldn't have the catalyst or the opportunity for the growth they offer, they aren't really negative at all, they are positive means for us to grow into happy light-filled life participants. Look at life’s experiences this way and everything you thought was bad in your life turns into something good, negative is transformed into positive.
You can’t be enlightened if you haven’t been endarkened.
Namaste Sarah Hope :)
Life is made up of experiences, some make us feel glad and others make us feel bad. Sometimes, things happens in life that feel so bad, it feels like your heart is going to crack and your body wants to die. But guess what? If you can teach your mind to look at negative experiences in the right way you will not only get over them but they will make you a stronger and better person.
We all have bad experiences in life but we can use them as a catalyst to change life into something brighter. It takes practice, start small: in the midst of a calamity see a tiny thing of beauty, a butterfly or an interesting leaf, a sunny sky and puffy clouds, the sound of rain or someone’s smile. Let it bring you into the moment, each moment is easier to deal with than the stories created in your mind of what might be or what may have happened.
When a light is turned on in a dark room, the darkness is gone, the room is illuminated. If the room wasn’t dark in the first place you would have no need to turn on a light because you would already be able to see. If we didn’t have dark times in our lives, we wouldn’t recognize the bright times.
Search for the positive in the negative experience then the negative experience can have a positive reaction. If you learn a positive lesson from a negative experience then the negative experience isn’t really negative at all, it’s positive because it has taught you a valuable lesson. If you don’t learn from a negative experience, if you can’t find some positive reason for its happening, then it will remain a negative experience, you won’t grow or learn and will probably repeat the same mistake over again till you eventually learn. If you never learn you will stay on the treadmill of negative existence, becoming bitter and blaming the world for your troubles.
Don’t try to deny hurt and pain, pushing it away will only make it stronger.
We naturally gravitate to what makes us feel good and repel what makes us feel bad. Try the opposite, embrace it. It's not a good idea to smack a crying child in an effort to sooth them, you would cuddle them, nurture them and say comforting things. That is what you need to do to feelings that make you feel bad.
Say you are feeling grief because someone you loved has died, you're feeling lost and alone and sad. These emotions don’t make you feel good and it seems that the natural thing to do is to try and push them away or try to block them out because you don’t like feeling bad. Instead of looking at the death and thinking about the loved one, look at how you are feeling, look at your grief. By looking at the emotion objectively it looses its power and fades away.
This is the way with all negative emotions such as sadness, guilt, embarrassment or worry.
It takes practice. Look at the emotion, not the event that has caused the pain.
It is natural to feel negative emotions. Notice the feeling, embrace it, be kind to it, be kind to yourself.
You could try seeing the feeling as an object or a colour or as a bubble with the feeling inside; something that you can look at. Tell yourself that it is OK to feel this way, accept the emotion, don’t try to stifle it, just let it be. Tell the feeling that you acknowledge its existence. Then put it in a container, a bubble, a box, whatever you visualize and put it away till later. Next time the feeling rises, bring it out of its container, look at it, acknowledge that it is there, accept it and put it away again. If you have made the emotion into a colour, change the colour.
Eventually the feeling won't even arise. You can let it go.
You don’t need to hold onto emotions that hurt, you don’t need to push them away; you just need to accept them.
Turn the light on in the darkness of your mind. Turn suffering into happiness, embrace the suffering, look at it, learn from it, and transform it into something positive. Without negative experiences we wouldn't have the catalyst or the opportunity for the growth they offer, they aren't really negative at all, they are positive means for us to grow into happy light-filled life participants. Look at life’s experiences this way and everything you thought was bad in your life turns into something good, negative is transformed into positive.
You can’t be enlightened if you haven’t been endarkened.
Namaste Sarah Hope :)
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