Just being

I want to make today's post about something I have thought a lot about through life. About our relation to the so called "negative" emotions we have.

All from childhood, we learn in this society, that some feelings are "negative". A natural cause from seeing something as negative, is trying to avoid or escape these things. Also we are taught that some feelings are positive - joy, happiness, and comfort. As a consequence, these are the feelings being socially accepted to express. Because of this, a lot of us also try to focus on these feelings - we don't want to be sad, we want to be happy.
Happiness is the ultimate feeling that we all are journeying towards - that we are taught is the ultimate goal. Society teaches it to us and the message is easy to pick up everywhere.
You might think that this is something you have decided yourself, because happiness feels good, and sadness not, but just take a moment here and dig a little deeper. Don't just throw it away with that thought before you have read what I have to say.

So, we are taught to strive for happiness**....and finally, in the western societies, it is what we all are searching for. Think about it....what you want to find in a new job, with money, with travels, with discovering yourself, with a partner, a new place to live, children. We are taught that we need satisfaction, and through satisfaction comes happiness, and "happiness is life".

The search for happiness is also found in different religious or philosophical movements.
What makes us happy and how can we find it?
Or the answers are already given to us through recipes of how to make us happy.
One angle is telling us that love is the only true and pure feeling. Love is what we should all fill ourself with, and love will take away hate and negativity.
Is it really that simple?
Is it really true that all you need is love?
Seeing things trough these glasses of reality, I realize that to me they look tinted on the outside, so I with them I will see the world colored, but not as it is.
Can we really set fixed values on feelings?

Now, I have always been a strong believer in the power of love and especially compassion, but does it really take us forward to surprise parts of our own natural instinct and feelings? I am not saying that if we get angry, we always have to express it. Sometimes I feel that being part of growing and getting emotionally mature is the ability to actually be able to contain your own feelings and feel them internally, without necessarily having to express them externally (but neither surpress them). To have room for your own sentiments inside yourself.

I can look at this strictly from an angle of experience....Let us say that you feel sadness. Is it uncomfortable? If it is, have you asked yourself WHY it is uncomfortable?
Is it the sadness in itself that really is uncomfortable and a "negative" feeling, or is it the frames you have created around it, that is making it so?
Maybe you think that I am taking this too far?
Maybe you think that you could not possibly have such power over feelings, but just take a minute and try to look at it, for real!
When you are sad, what is the focus you have?
Do you allow yourself to be sad?
Do you let it in without judgment?
Or do you fight it or try to find ways to be happy again?
Do you define it as a negative place state of mind, or are you comfortable just letting it exist?

Is it possible that the struggle AGAINST the sadness is what makes it uncomfortable as a feeling and not the sadness in itself?
I can honestly say that I have had times when I felt sad and at the same time perfectly good. Actually, the feeling of sadness was a state of mind I "enjoyed" in that moment.
Is it possible that your reactions and perceptions of this feelings is what is making it "negative" and uncomfortable?
Could the feeling in itself - "sadness", be just an altered state of mind, with no minus or plus labeled to it in reality. Just something different on an emotional scale, that changes.
isn't change a natural cause in nature? How can we just stay in one thing all the time?

If you look at nature - at anything in nature, it seems to have a built in strive for balance.
It can be found everywhere.
Just take your sight. (You can try this out.)
If you take something of a color (chose a strong, vibrant one, just to make the example clearer) and hold it about 30 cm from your face. Then hold your gaze at it for about one minute without blinking. Then, when you take away your stare from it, look directly at something white. What you instantly will see is the natural opposite color to the color you were looking at. Direct oppositions in color neutralizes each other and creates balance. You eye is producing a fake opposite to the color you were looking at. This is your eyes way of creating balance, as the rest of nature also does.
Nature strives for balance, so why should we struggle against it?
Emotions come in us like the tide of the water. If it goes up, it is natural that it must go down later. So why do we fight it?
If everything flows in a natural stream of balance, cant we just go with it?
Maybe we can look at our emotions and not see them as being good or bad...But maybe we can see them for just being.

If anybody disagrees or has a different point of view I would be very interested to hear it, so don't hesitate to make your comment against me.

~ Aasa

**read: happiness for the ego