There are two ways to deal with negative feelings: the external way and the internal way.
The external way is to attempt to move the world around in some manner so that it will be more to our liking. This tends to be difficult because 1) the world doesn't always arrange itself as we think it should, and 2) the people in the world don't always act as we think they should.
Consequently, this first path tends to lead to endless effort and, in the end, to disillusionment.
The second way to deal with negative feelings is the internal way, that is, to see what their source is. This involves a true observation of them, something that's usually the last thing we do when we're involved in a negative emotion.
I remember when I first discovered this, decades ago, around anger. I was yelling at someone (as was my wont in those days) because they were acting in a way that didn't please me. How dare they! So we were arguing loudly and right in the middle of it I woke up suddenly.
It was the strangest feeling, as if I had come out of a dream. I realized that they had their "story" of how things should be and I had my "story" of how things should be, and they simply weren't the same story.
Suddenly, right in the middle of my anger, I simply observed it for a split second. But that was enough; I stopped. Of course I went fast asleep again soon after and over the years had to "wake up" countless times around anger. But a first glimpse had occurred.
Eventually I began to reaize that I wanted to observe these negative emotions, to learn from them rather than blindly (and self-righteously) acting them out.
And what I discovered, like many others before me, is that negative feelings—anger, fear, sadness, boredom and so on—can be observed just like trees or clouds or anything else.
And I discovered that I didn't need to reject these emotions, I didn't need to act them out, and I didn't need to buy in to them either. In fact, I didn't need to do anything at all with them; pure observation was enough.
In the friendly light of pure observation, my relationship to these negative emotions began to change. They no longer needed to be "acted upon" or changed or rejected or anything else. They were not the enemy
In fact, I discovered that sadness, anger or whatever could be appreciated just as one would appreciate a beautiful flower. Ah, look at this beautiful flower of sadness! Look at this beautiful flower of anger! The key thing is that I was no longer identified with the feelings; I could just appreciate their facticity like anything else.
Somewhat later, I discovered that one can go even further upstream and that all negative feelings were originating in some story that I was telling and repeating to myself. Furthermore, that these stories were always about how someone or something (or myself) should be different.
Well, I don't think so. The world and others and myself should be exactly as we all are. Reality itself is the ultimate arbiter of how things should be, and all stories about it are ultimately false. But that's a "story" for another day.
A coda, though: My mind told me that if I let go of my stories about how things had to be or should be that I would become passive and nothing would ever "change" or "improve". And that also turned out not to be true.
—jim sloman, fall 2000 for Aug 9
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