IT’S A WORRISOME LIFE – Working with Negativity
Our human psychologies are nuanced and complex. One foundational affect, or deeply embedded physio/emotional belief, is that we need to store negative experience in order to learn how to protect ourselves and our species. This gives way to an experiential prejudice toward negativity, commonly referred to as “negativity bias“, or the “negativity effect”. As a protective measure, humans value negative experience above positive. Deep within we believe that positive experience is inessential and negative experience is instructional.
During our ascension up our planet’s fauna-chain humans developed higher cognitive functioning. This came to replace, or become superimposed upon, earlier rudimentary defenses. We traded fangs, claws and venom for memory and reason. This is why, when threatened, many of us get locked into compulsive thinking. This greater RAM space allows us the processing ability to strategize our way out of danger and toward sustenance. We employ memories of past experience toward reasoning solutions in the present. However, while our present reasoning ability is contemporaneous, it is based on older, more ingrained experience. In order to secure our survival, our systems developed negativity awareness which is driven by past painful experience, or handed down genetically from past experience. This creates a cognitive dissonance because while our social mind pretends to search for pleasure or actualization while our deeper tendencies are driven by survival. Remembering Maslow’s pyramid, the foundation of our actualization lies upon supplying our basic needs. Survival is our most foundational need.
Our higher spiritual development seems to be what is needed for us to us to feel fully actualized. In order to realize that potential, we need to incorporate fun, relaxation, meditation, art, exercise, and social interaction into our lives. However, often in life those experiences become hijacked by the urgency of “more important” negative fixations. In some cases, we are so fixated on negativity we fail to see opportunities for enrichment in our life. This is interesting because while negativity is driven by survival, our reduced awareness actually makes us less secure. This “ostrich syndrome” is, in humans, more like an eagle placing its head in the sand. We have the potential for tremendous awareness that is all too often conflated into a survival binary. We have the ability to see the whole picture, but nonetheless focus on the negative in a misguided attempt to secure our survival. In this way, we overvalue the negative, and even exaggerate it. We create a culture around it, competing with each other over whose life is worse. Jon Kabat-Zinn called this “Full Catastrophe Living”.
But, being locked into negativity is not satisfying. There is so much goodness in our lives that we discount or undervalue. At some point we become depressed. There is only so much we can push away in our lives before we start to close down to ourselves. Our negatively oriented life becomes itself fully negative. When this happens a natural – though unhelpful – strategy is to find blame. In order to ease our suffering we find an object on which to pin our pain. This object of blame may be our lover, a co-worker, or an element of society. But it is often driven by older, more deeply ingrained fears. Our mind is like a periscope searching for danger even when no danger is apparent.
If we are interested in living an actualized life, gaining some agency over our thinking is essential. Meditation master Chogyam Trungpa encouraged students to look at their minds with acceptance and accept their thoughts. He felt it important that meditation be devoid of judgement. In his view, all thoughts had equal value. Our mind can be seen as basically good rather than an instrument of torture. In this way we can see our mind as fundamentally workable. By not dismissing thoughts we are offering our mind the room to discover itself. However, by applying the techniques of meditation and returning to the breath, we are accepting but not indulging our thoughts. All thoughts are equal but present moment experience is the point. So we come to be familiar with our thoughts and the games our mind plays. Then we can determine if we want to follow along in action. Rather than reacting to everything our mind tells us, meditation offers us the executive functioning to see our mind and decide how, if and when to act. The process of meditation allows us to “pause before send”, creating a buffer between thought and action. This is also very much true on the micro levels. Even if our action is tightening in the body, we are supporting negativity. We have the choice to notice and release the tension.
This subtle somatic negativity is important to recognize and accept. We may walk down the street nominaly enjoying our day, but internally clenching our stomach in fear of what may happen next. Even when everything is going right, is our body waiting for the other shoe to drop? It is essential to see this subtle negativity and feel the feelings otherwise they provoke unless they build within us and influence our mind in ways we cannot see.
If Trungpa recommended we accept our thoughts without judgement, there is one category of thinking he deemed unacceptable. “Negative negativity” are the judgements we have about ourselves, including those we have toward our own negativity. Negativity is naturally inherited behaviour. Blaming our negativity is counterproductive. It’s essentially blaming ourselves. Whenever we feel the tightness associated with self-affliction, we can come to see that we are punishing ourselves, which is self-flagellation. We can just let any self-judgement go.WE don’t have to pretend we are a buddha, or Mother Theresa or Kendrick Lamar. We can be ourselves and accept negativity as small minded and self-defeating but entirely common and natural. We can allow ourselves to feel our negativity without judgement – but also without action. We can become aware of our underlying behaviors without acting on them. We have every right to feel however we feel, but no right to inflict those feelings upon ourselves or anyone else. If we act out our negativity we are training the mind to continue negativity. On the other hand, as we are socialized not to act out, “acting in” builds internal pressure until we explode, or fall into depression. Both of these actions build the propensity for us to see the world negatively making it easier to act out/in.
Negativity is the cause and condition of psychological trauma. Trauma may refer to a specific wound, but also to its embedded experience. As experiencing trauma is reliving past experience, acting on trauma is living in the past. When we relive the past, we are performing the same experiments which garner the same results. Acting on negativity and seeing the world negatively wounds us deeply. Walking down a street bitching internally at everyone is not an indicator of spiritual actualization. It is programming us to be victims of our own hatred. Victims? Yes. While negativity masquerades as a logical response to the buttheads of the universe, in truth, when we percolate ill feelings inside us, that churning will manifest in ourselves and our world. It’s the I’m rubber you’re glue syndrome in reverse. Whatever we churn inside manifests in the world, which sends back in kind. Instant Karma, it was said. But we can work with karma and make it less instant. We can slow it down with a tool called mindfulness. When you feel negativity, uncouple from fixating on an other, pause and feel inward. Don’t expect answers. When you fondle a lover you dont expect immediate gratification. You’re touching in to let them know you care. Feel in to your body and let yourself know you care.
Whenever we feel that negativity we can use it as a red flag to pause and check in with ourselves. In this way, life becomes lighter and less burdensome. When I find myself bitching I ask: is this real? What am I actually feeling? Am I defending my existence right now? And eventually the inner grip lessens and I begin to see the world around me.
Life need not be continuously worrisome. It can sometimes be enjoyed, appreciated, and valued.
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Do gold rings and bling really satisfy us? Maybe. If we can access our essential goodness then the accoutrements of the world will be, as Chogyam Trungpa said, “ornaments which are pleasant to wear.” But when we forget to remember our basic goodness, acquiring any goodness of the world is, Sakyong Mipham says, “like putting elegant clothes over an unwashed body.” If we don’t recognize our own goodness and believe we are worthy, the goodness of the world will not be sustainable. Many of the things in life that we so desperately seek will only lead us from ourselves if we think these things will complete us. This actually erodes our wellbeing. On the other hand, there are things in life that directly feed our soul. When we are in tune with ourselves, we can feel this in our body. So, there are things we do that close us down and things in life that genuinely light us up. If these are the things that money can help acquire it might do better to focus on that which genuinely excites us and then allow the accumulation of wealth to be a practical means to that end.
For some, the money that drives our social economy is a cruel master that causes us to barter our passion for societal progress. Societal progress is not evil, but it doesn’t light us up. And motivating toward financial security is an obligation at best. But what is important is that we remember the essential cause of our motivation. We are humans, not machines. Caring for humanity is a way of transferring our anxiety into meaningful action. This makes us feel better about ourselves which allows us the confidence to recognize and accept goodness from the world. This reconnection to our basic goodness has to be maintained with the daily effort of coming back. We get lost and we come back. Over and over. There is no other way to progress. We train daily by simply coming back to the breath in our practice. Eventually, we gain the confidence to remember to recognize and return to the present in daily life. Then we can turn our life over to our higher power, which is always at the service of helping others. We can go from anxious self-centeredness, which is self-limiting, to the confidence to allow our life to unfold as it should. When we are selfish, we are walling ourselves away from goodness and so will struggle in fear. When we see this, our daily work, our good work, is to return.
attachment is not our fault. However, it is an opportunity to learn to let go. Learning to let go is a tool we can use often in our life and practice. Whenever we are stuck in a thought or feeling an emotion we can’t be rid of, we actually can just stop. We can pause. Once we’ve allowed a gap we might be able to step back and recognize that this experience is not about the object of our pain. It is about the action of gripping. I am holding on. The all-important next step is acceptance.
away we can release our grp with (self)love. Like Banksy’s image of letting go of a heart balloon. We simply open our heart and our mind and offer our anger, disappointment or insult into space. Our emotions are not
influence our life journey. Yet, as these belief systems stem from reactions to difficulties in life, they are defensive and don’t offer access to a larger world with more options and deeper understanding of each other’s beliefs. We just assume that we are right and write off those who disagree as misguided.
Helping ourselves we are more able to develop the clarity and strength to help others. Should we fall into self aggrandizing self importance we lose balance and fall into the river. THen if we surrender we can allow someone else to help us along. This seems to be the process. When we awaken into compassionate interconnection to life, we naturally care for the life around us. And that connection supports us as well. Of course we falter and sometimes fall. But we can learn that our ego is the part of ourselves that needs more and compares itself to everything else. We can recognize that ego is a defensive state that has been programmed to hide in the darkness. Try to make ourselves strong in order to best someone else feels good for a moment, but it is never enough and will never last. When we manifest strength by caring for others we gain a confidence that nurtures a part of us that lies deeper than our programming. With kindness to ourselves and others we nurture our basic goodness that has been there always. We have always had everything.
Of all the distractions in my life, my mind is the most seductive. I am perpetually engrossed in my thinking to the extent that if I was not a meditator, I likely would reside full-time in my head. While our minds are amazing tools, being lost there keeps us from accessing its power and potential. When I am lost anywhere, I am sucked into a part of my mind that cannot see beyond itself. This is to say I lose awareness. When I am unaware I am missing the beauty of my mind and my life. By cultivating UNawareness, I am putting my head in the sand, making myself vulnerable to danger. When I am not aware, a deep inner part of me becomes frightened. My reveries take on a paranoid hue as I succumb to anxiety about the future and regrets of the past.
This was the worst attack upon the Jewish people since the 2nd world war. It will precipitate an intense retaliation which will rock the foundations of world security. All this is happening in the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine that had shaken the world. AIt is also a time when technology has created more awareness and nuance than ever before. The world is either waking up or falling fast asleep. Or perhaps both. We have the setting sun approach turning toward darkness counterposed with the rising sun view of opening to possibility. We can take either position. We can take the easy approach of blaming a group and wishing for their eradication or we step back and try to see more clearly with eyes of healing and compassion. And just like any of us waking up on a spiritual journey, we will see harsh realities along with positive development. It is important not to latch onto solid propositions. As we develop spiritually, one of the things we are waking up to is the horror we are capable of inflicting.
As we journey up the mountain our view changes. We begin to value possibility. Instead of defensive protectives, we start to see the commonality in all humanity. We see that we are part of a greater whole. We are part of an experiment by the cosmos to develop wisdom and begin to see itself. But in order to do this we have to understand a very simplistic binary: acknowledge the mind that keeps us locked in suffering, but follow the higher mind that leads to clarity and strength. While the shadows of our past are still an influence, we can develop the power to look ahead toward a bigger view. No one looks out from the top of the mountain and says, “this sucks”. Sure, we may see all the refineries and junkyards but the view from above is nonetheless beautiful. In time, we will see more of the war and hatred people still rage upon themselves. But we will also see trees growing and life blooming. All of life needs to defend itself, and all life yearns to grow. This higher mind cares naturally for the world. And even as it hurts deeply for its suffering it rejoices in its liberation. We are evolving.
In the 90’s I lived in a meditation center in the Rocky Mountains. What was then known as The Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, was based on the Shambhala Buddhist Tradition and catered to a variety of communities. Each year a group of college students from Chapman University in California came for a 10 day immersion in the healing arts we called “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Madness.”Or program introduced a variety of ancient traditions from Buddhist teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham to the African tradition of Malidoma Some’. The director of the program was Michele Killoran, who was to become a major influence on my life. She had been leading the “Chapman Program” for a decade, when she picked me to be her successor. I was very new to teaching but my youth gave me entry into the students’ trust and heart. I immediately felt a kinship with them. And this was the first principle in the healing circle: trust born of heart connection.
MIchelle showed me the notion of the self-healing, self balancing community. Buddhists call this a mandala. Many indigenous traditions employ this principle, or their version of it. The mandala denotes a community or an environment that organizes around a primary principle. That principle may be a fire, a mountain, a lineage, a teaching, or an idea. In the Chapman program we used Wisdom as our organizing principle. Whatever tradition we introduced, we were looking to use it to develop wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is the map. Maps are important but they are the not the and they represent. The Buddhists talk about fingers pointing to the moon. The finger is not the Moon. Truly seeing the moon, as we would at the RMDC on high alpine nights, is an experience. It is contact with something we can never own. Wisdom is knowledge married to experience. It is knowledge that happens within us. Wisdom changes us. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we refer to transmission as an instantaneous download of wisdom that affects our body, spirit and mind. A given student might experience transformation in a moment or over time. The ones who were open might experience a transmission from launching a bow in Kudo – a ceremonial Japanese archery, or from a rebirthing ceremony with Meledoma, in the sweat lodge or a fire ceremony. The transmission might occur in meditation, when we come back to the breath. If we are open enough transmission may happen as we notice a falling leaf or hear a bird sing.
Years later, in New York City I met a woman named Jaime. She seemed a younger version of Michelle, with flowing gold-woven hair and piercing bright eyes. She was a student of mine, who quickly became a colleague and finally my teacher. She was a shooting star that illuminated my life and then touched down in darkness, leaving waves of her benign effect on the world. She was our original co-teacher in Dharmajunkies, a group we founded on the idea of the sacred community circle. Jaimie and I taught together weekly on Monday nights and her heart touched everyone who came into that circle. Jaimie instructed us on how to speak with each other in ways that opened hearts and fostered heartfelt communication. Like Michelle, Jaimie was gentle and tough. She ushered our group away from competition and comparison. She taught us to support each other by maintaining an awake, loving space. She taught us deep listening. She gave us the strength to be a community based on individuals who, like her, were entirely, completely, unapologetically themselves.
Jaimie was on vacation in Hawaii when she slipped on rocks overlooking the ocean, fell to her death, and was swept to her grave by Namaka, goddess of the sea. The hole she left in my heart will never be filled. Perhaps another key to the healing circle is that wounds need not be healed. That space need not be filled. That all is blessed just as it is. I suppose it is our work to remember that. Who are we bending ourselves to be? Who are we apologizing to? To whom are we explaining ourselves? And why?
Those of my venerability might remember the Bill Withers song. Withers 
When I was a boy my mother was young, beautiful and insecure. My father was away much of the time and during that time her life was unstable, chaotic, and chronically underfunded. Yet the love she held for her children was nonetheless unshakable. However, along with the strength of her love, her fear was also transmitted to us. Love and fear were her gifts. In the years that came my father’s career developed, and as it did our economic concerns lessened. And yet as he became successful he grew away from her. Insecurities changed but fear remained impactful on our lives. Children love swimming pools but pools don’t care for them. My mother’s love was ever present and yet her frightened loneliness was always there. Over time, her life became truly challenging. As if by some karmic plan she was forced from one insecure situation to another. And yet, it seemed her higher power had guided her to greater strength and independence. To her credit, my mother never became bitter or vindictive. And in time, she gained great power. She was a vessel of her belief and a loving support to her children, but also her world. I was always welcome in any of her humble homes. They always become our home. Even as she had less material comfort than before the divorce, and even as her insecurities had, in many ways, come to fruition, my mother gained a spiritual strength that was an inspiration to all who knew her. She went from being a fire that offered love and pain to becoming to the earth itself, stable, loving and true.
Kindness is accessed by gentleness, so we sometimes view it as inconsequential or miss it all together. Kindness doesn’t have as large a handle as aggression, so when push comes to shout, it’s a challenge to remember it’s simple power. We often regard kindness as something we’re ‘supposed’ to do or we use it as a placeholder for more active feelings that may later come raging to the fore. When kindness is used to deny our feelings we are being unkind to ourselves. We are trying a bit too hard to be civil. But if this is not how we really feel, then the other steel-toed shoe will 
When we are triggered, we are neurologically panicked and do not have easy access to serenity and peace of mind. When pressured, it is far easier to reach for the cudgel than to rest in the space of balance. When we are pressured, we react and want the world to react to us. With all kindness, I must say, this is very weak. The way of warriorship is to practice meditation regularly so that we are trained to respond with the space and balance that is self-kindness. From that high vantage, we can offer the world genuine kindness. This reflexively feels better than the afflictions we place ourselves in to. When we feel better, we are better, and it matters less what anyone did or didn’t do. That’s them. They are not my business. My job is not to figure out anyone else or to blame anyone. I feel as I feel. I can own that. My primary job is to be genuine and kind. From there I can see my world.