I would say that there is enough suffering in the world, wouldn’t you? You don’t have to look far to see the evidence; just take a look in the mirror. Notice the signs of strain, the furrows of worry, the frown lines…You can see it in yourself and in the people around you.
How do we add to suffering, both ours and everyone else’s? Well, we feed our negativity bias, for one thing. We continue to invest thought energy and emotional energy into our negative beliefs, so that they grow bigger and take up more and more mental space. They grow so large that they spill over, out into our relationships, our health, our behavior, our performance. It’s like feeding healthy cells to a cancerous tumor — the tumor gobbles up the cells and grows larger each day.
And just like a tumor, our overfed negativity blob keeps on growing, until it has sapped our motivation and energy completely. We feel awful about ourselves, and our interactions with others and with our environment are contaminated by negativity.
The ripple effect from our negative energy reaches far and wide, gaining momentum and strength as it gathers up still more negative energy. Like attracts like, so the negative energy draws more of the same unto itself.
The antidote to negativity is to stop looking at it and stop feeding it. Instead, we can turn our eyes toward our strengths, our gifts, our compassion. We can look with love at the animals, people, and things that surround us. Love is a much stronger, high vibration energy than self-loathing, criticism, and shame. Love and compassion will swallow up negativity and transmute it into more love and compassion.
It feels much better, too, to feel love than to feel hatred and shame.
Practice this: when negativity arises, picture it as a gelatinous blob that wants to consume you. Ugh! Then, turn your gaze away, and let it settle upon the image of a beautiful rose, glistening with dew, opening and revealing its velvety-soft petals to drink in the sun and the fresh morning air. Inhale its scent, draw it deep into your lungs, and exhale the old, stale air. Breathe in the rose energy, let it fill your heart. Picture it there, blossoming inside your heart, breathing oxygen and love into your cells. Then breathe out the love, so that it surrounds you and pulses outward, touching everything in its path.
Ahhhh.
Peace,
Leslie
