Now, let's get to the chat:

ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein, and I'm here with inner life author, Guy Finley. We're going to be talking about letting go of negative states.

Guy, I was thinking about this topic today and I actually had to laugh, because I thought you'd never expect to hear two people talking about letting go of a hot pot handle. There seems to be a wisdom of the body that knows if something is causing you pain, you're going to let it go. Yet, at least with most human beings, that parallel wisdom doesn't seem to be informing our ability to meet negative states properly. We just want to hang on to them.

GF: It's a short circuit in our consciousness, isn't it? Negativity runs so terribly deep, Ellen. Most people would argue, but the truth is that the very foundation of our present nature is based in that dark state where one thinks about himself or herself in negative terms, but doesn't even know that one is doing that. It's so elusive.

Sometimes I think to myself, thank God -- somehow or other in the midst of this dark brew of desires and ways in which people are trying to deal with this darkness by coming up with plans, new paths to happiness -- some light actually got through. One must really wish to have some light get through, and I'm not speaking metaphorically. I'm talking about the light of understanding. Negative thoughts can be so pervasive in our mind that, because they have been there all that time, we don't even recognize them for what they are.

For instance, most people don't recognize that those moments in which you wake up in the morning and wish you didn't have to get out of bed, when the phone rings and irritation comes because someone is interrupting your meal when it's still hot, you're in your car and for some reason five hundred people didn't know you were going out, and they're in your way... that kind of wishing that what was happening wasn't happening is negativity. That negativity becomes a core, but the core of that negative self is a self that is in conflict with the world that it blames for those persistent negative states. It's a vicious circle, because the more we blame the world for the way we feel the more that negativity is justified by having an enemy outside of ourselves. The more we find reasons outside of ourselves for why we feel angry, the more we come up with ways to free ourselves from this negativity. But if we could examine it for a split second and see clearly, we'd recognize that the parts of us that come up with a wish to escape the trouble are born of the trouble. So we seed ourselves with this seed of negativity, believing that somehow the steps we're taking to free ourselves from the condition are actually going to change the consciousness in which this negativity has become rooted.

ED: When really what they do, because they're born in negativity, they lead to another state of negativity.

GF: Yes. But again, it's so persistent that we just don't see it. Let's say you have a bad day. Maybe you're an accountant or a carpenter... you know that there are some days you're just better at doing what you're doing than other days. Some days you can just "nail" it, your mind is sharp, your tools are accurate. Other days are nothing like that.

ED: Some days you're sharp as a tack and other days you're just tacky!

GF: Yes, and when that happens, you tell me, what's the cycle? What happens normally when you don't have the resources that you want? The mind is occupied with what it doesn't want, what it wishes weren't happening, with its concern for what this position, this pain means tomorrow to it. So literally, our eyes are fashioned on a certain kind of negative image, a negative feeling. Our mind is locked onto it, believing that somehow not wanting what we're going through is the same thing as changing the nature that's going through that. In other words, I must be different than what I don't want. "I" who wishes this weren't the way it is must be different than that which I'm blaming for the pain.

What we see, when we look closely, is that the me who is feeling the misery of this condition that it blames the pain on, is part and parcel with that pain. There is no difference between the two. I wasn't "miserable" until a condition came up that I didn't want. The "I" who doesn't want that condition doesn't exist as someone opposed to the condition. The opposition to the condition is a creation of the condition opposed. It's so important to understand that, because until we see it, we just play along. We're just part of that flow of negativity, those negative thoughts and feelings that actually provide us with a very familiar sense of our self.

If we want to be free of negativity, we need to make it simple: it's no fun to be negative. It's no fun to be anxious. It's no fun to be thinking about ourselves, wondering what other people think about us. There is absolutely no fun in that. There's a future in such negative considerations that is born out of the hope of escaping the pain that the negativity has produced. But in the moment itself, having someone that you're thinking about that hurt you, going over what you didn't get because someone didn't give it to you, or you didn't get a fair shake that someone else did... you can make a list of things that the mind is all too eager to embrace. But if the mind that is embracing these negative images could in that moment become conscious of what that relationship was actually producing in the being in whom that was going on, that would be the end of negativity. Not by finding powers to push away the conditions, but by changing the actual consciousness that believes there is value in being negative. We do find value in negativity. Can you see that, Ellen?

ED: Yes!

GF: Well, can you explain to me or anybody else what the value is? If I get depressed, frightened, worried, anxious, there must be a value in it, and I'd love someone to tell me what the value is in being negative.

ED: Obviously it's a false value, but I know a lot about being negative -- when you're in the situation, you don't see the value in it. You're just fully identified with it.

GF: So that's the value in it, isn't it?

ED: The identification. If I can pull myself away enough to watch what's going on -- maybe afterwards -- I realize that when I'm in that state, I feel more real. The emotions surging through me, negative as they are, are kind of thrilling. They make me feel like the center of the universe... and solid.

GF: I'll give you another word for solid: a lump. A lump of darkness. Does anybody here want to be a lump of darkness? "Let's see. Should I be a lump of darkness, or should I be light and happy? I'm going to go for the lump!"

ED: But that's what is so amazing. We do that, thinking it's the light.

GF: Let's examine that, because we're talking about how we free ourselves from negative states. If you examine that idea, something in me sees that I hate what happened to me. I hate what she said. I wish they hadn't have done that. So here is a negative state, considering this condition outside of myself. And it is clearly a darkness, something unenlightened (not something inherently evil), something I am absolutely unconscious to that somehow produces the effect of being conscious. If I was actually conscious, I wouldn't be embracing what puts me in conflict.

ED: Right. I would be dropping the hot pot handle. Somehow in our distorted thinking, we think that what we're doing is trying to resolve the situation and protecting ourselves "If I can understand this, I'll never let this happen again." "I'm not responsible for this. It's that awful person. So I must really be a good person." So with all this thinking, thinking, thinking, we're trying to convince ourselves that we're right and everybody else is wrong.

GF: This is where it is difficult to understand, because if we look at what we've been talking about, is there really a "me" that's doing that thinking? Is there really a "me" that is actually sitting and trying to resolve this negativity by coming up with a plan by which I can perfect another person or condition? Is that "me" really me? The point is that it can't be, because who you are, your true nature -- and this is something so difficult to convey, that it may take a person a lifetime to even begin to understand it -- simply has no relationship with negativity.

We can see things in life, and it's helpful to do it. I like to talk about being able to see the celestial in the common. You don't see butterflies hanging out with spiders unless they're in trouble, because the nature of the butterfly knows to avoid the nature of a spider. It doesn't have to think to itself, "Uh oh. Should I? He's not a bad looking spider, so maybe he's OK." Have you ever done that with another human being? "Well, he's not that bad looking, so what's the worst that can happen?"

That light, goodness, kindness, love, true eternal principles, true character does not lend itself to or embrace that which compromises its essence. This is the secret. People want to know what to do about their anger, how to get over their depression, what they need to change in order to get past their constant fear of being with people. The whole mindset of approaching a negative condition, born out of figuring out a way to resolve or overpower the negative condition, is produced by a mind or a nature that believes in the condition it's trying to overcome, that believes there is reality to what is wrecking them. I'm saying there is something in us that doesn't have to overcome what wrecks us on a daily basis because it just won't associate with it in the first place. So the power is a non-power because it doesn't get involved in trying to find power to overcome that which essentially has no power to start with -- which is a negative state.

You tell me the power that negativity has, and I'll tell you that its sole power is to cause inside of a person a series of searing sensations -- dark, cold sensations, whatever they may be -- that tell us that without us doing something to get rid of these things and reconcile them, we will be lost forever inside of this terrible condition. And like lemmings being led off the edge of a cliff into the sea, we allow those negative states to seep into us, we resist them, the resistance defines us, and as we're defined by them, we find ourselves trying to change them.

We will not try to change a negative state. We will see the fact that the negative state does not belong in our consciousness. The way we know that it doesn't belong in our consciousness isn't by coming up with a series of ideas and beliefs about ourselves, but by being present enough to that condition so that our awareness of the negative state produces the exact same reaction spiritually that physically we have when we hold onto something and the body recognizes that it's harming itself.

ED: You often talk about resistance and a different kind of relationship that we can have with these negative states. The negativity comes up in us. It's natural, and we can't really prevent these energies from coming through us.

GF: The stirring is natural. The suffering born of self-induced imagery and resisting it is not natural.

ED: So that's the order of things. The stirring occurs and then there's a resistance that comes up, and that's what makes the whole thing dark and negative, and hanging onto it keeps it evolving.

GF: Not evolving, but becoming more of a lump really.

ED: Yes. Growing larger. And it's in that moment, instead of just going unconsciously with that resistance, if we could become aware of this energy coursing through us, and have a different kind of relationship with it, an awareness of it, instead of getting involved with it and just being a part of it, then something completely different happens in that moment.

GF: That's right. The cycle of conflict, the cycle of negative states, generates a certain order of ourselves having to do with our conditioned beliefs, our certainty that life must be a certain way. Once those conditions are engaged, then they begin to resist anything that doesn't confirm that imagery, those ideas, that self. And in resisting that, that self becomes identified. That self becomes a "life." It's an un-life really. Then, as it's there, it produces desires based on its own past conditioning in order to deal with the conditions blamed for its existence, and the thing just spirals.

The work to free ourselves from negative states begins with understanding the necessity of paying the price for interrupting that cycle -- daring to catch ourselves falling into darkness -- which is always connected with thinking about ourselves, thinking about others and what they did that makes us feel the way we do. We interrupt the cycle. The moment that we feel that surge, that first stirring inside of us, in that split second we use it as a springboard to come wide awake to the present moment, because the power of the present moment, the awareness and the intelligence that is the basis of that moment, is our advocate. It is our ally. It produces in us the ability to recognize, through that awareness, that this negativity isn't right. The awareness of the negative state is the end of the relationship with it when we stay there and we are willing to pay that price.

ED: And the price is that when we see the memory self coming up, trying to make a connection with that stirring and give it a meaning, we have to voluntarily cut off that identification.

GF: I like those words a lot. You can find any moment in your life to begin with the same principle: stay awake. If I can actually come awake in the moment where I feel that stirring, the stress or the pressure begin, and refuse to go along with giving it meaning, then the real meaning of the moment will be revealed to me, and I will be given in the new meaning that power which allows me to put that negative state where it belongs, which is behind me.

ED: And the energy that was associated with the stirring can actually be used to transform us.

GF: It becomes a positive force for the fulfillment of ourselves as opposed to a draining power because we've allowed darkness to step in and define us.

ED: Yes. Thank you, Guy.

This has been a Fireside Chat with best-selling inner life author, Guy Finley. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein. Thanks for joining us.