Free yourself from the dark emotions ruling your life

Last August, I wrote a post called, “The Secret to Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work.”  I won’t repeat my entire argument here (feel free to read it there!) but in a couple of places I wrote,

Here’s something radical. If we can acknowledge our negative thoughts and feelings, be aware of them, let them come up to the surface and POP like a bubble, we WON’T NEED positive affirmations. We won’t need to make declarations of what we want. I have no doubt that, deep down, we want the best for ourselves and that once our limiting thoughts have evaporated, our natural wants and needs and aspirations will come through. Pure thought…will lead to natural manifestation.

You may discover that what you thought you wanted is not what you really wanted at all. And, that may be scary. You may have buried your wants under layers of society’s expectations. But, you know what’s best for you. Trust yourself!

The following excerpt is from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. As you listen more and more to the teachings, contemplate them, and integrate them into your life, your inner voice, your innate wisdom of discernment, what we call in Buddhism “discriminating awareness,” is awakened and strengthened, and you start to begin to distinguish between its guidance and the various clamorous and enthralling voices of ego. The memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you.

You will find, in fact, that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. Your guide can also be a continual, joyful, tender sometimes teasing presence, who knows always what is best for you and will help you find more and more ways out of your obsession with your habitual responses and confused emotions. As the voice of your discriminating awareness grows stronger and clearer, you will start to distinguish between its truth and the various deceptions of the ego, and you will be able to listen to it with discernment and confidence.

The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are. Gradually you will find yourself able to free yourself more and more quickly from the dark emotions that have ruled your life, and this ability to do so in the greatest miracle of all. Tertön Sogyal, the Tibetan mystic, said that he was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.

More and more, then, instead of the harsh and fragmented gossip that ego has been talking to you all your life, you will find yourself hearing in your mind the clear directions of the teachings, which inspire, admonish, guide, and direct you at every turn. The more you listen, the more guidance you will receive. If you follow the voice of your wise guide, the voice of your discriminating awareness, and let ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are.  A new life, utterly different from that when you were masquerading as your ego, begins in you…

When your amnesia over your identity begins to be cured, you will realize finally that dak dzin – grasping at self – is the root cause of all your suffering. You will understand at last how much harm it has done both to yourself and to others, and you will realize that both the noblest and the wisest thing to do is to cherish others instead of cherishing yourself. This will bring healing to your heart, healing to your mind, and healing to your spirit.

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