It’s amazing how we do not see the patterns in our mind of expectation and disappointment, the high followed by the low, the up and the down, we carry on. Yet if we lived in the present moment, where there is always calm, free from thought, we can live a real-life free from the pain of the mind.
These words from exactly a year ago explain more:
We are almost swamped with positive affirmation advice and always have a positive attitude and so on. We have a glut of positivity memes and posts, we have a fake happy-clappy veil thrown over everything so that when the negative things occur, we seem to melt in despair.
Yet every positive has a negative somewhere. Our moments of pleasure-seeking will come with a negative. There are ups and downs. Yin and Yang
We neither have to fake joyous, cartwheeling happiness on a continual basis or look for the misery in everything. We do not need to feed one or the other.
If we choose to accept what is, whether positive or negative and simply be, then there is always inner peace and joy, even when bad things happen. The more we resist one thing or the other and fight it, the harder it is to accept. We end up constantly seeking pleasure as if to block out anything that might be bad, deny bad things, hide from negativity.
We need to see beyond the mind’s labelling of things as either good or bad, negative or positive. Some of our greatest learning and inspiration often arises from what we label as bad.
Labelling leads to addiction and the greater the addiction to short-term pleasure (AKA happiness) the greater the opposite will be when it occurs.
There are cycles in our lives constantly, with ups and downs, we can not always have up and therefore we can not always be positive, but if we search within and stay away from the mind, we can always have peace which can be permanent if we choose.
Philip Dodson 