We value negative states because of the strong sense of self we get from them. This may be very difficult for us to see, but a strong light will show us the freeing facts.
No one wants to believe that he or she values things like self-pity, anger, and depression. We would insist we don't, and as evidence we point to the fact that we fight against them, but the struggle gives us a false sense of life and importance. It focuses attention on us and makes us feel like the center of a great deal of activity.
The more we struggle, the more valuable these states become, because the more interesting and exciting they make us feel. We never feel our selves so strongly as when we are furious, or hurt, or depressed. Of course, this self is a created self, a false self. But it feels real, and that's why we cling to it. The power in the state is that by giving it our life, it feeds back to us a false sense of life and power. And as a result, we miss out on the real life we could experience if we were not filling ourselves with the false.
Can you see what we've done? We've unmasked the secret power of all negative states. A false part of us derives a sense of reality when it is bombarded by negative feelings. Because it values the sense of self it gets, it focuses attention on the state and feeds it our life energy. It builds up a structure of thoughts around the state that justifies it and keeps it going.
All of this is done at the expense of who we really are. Our understanding of this deception gives us the power to win victory over these states because it shows us that we can do something else with those states that will reveal them to be powerless. Let's see what that something else is...
The next time you feel yourself slipping into a negative state, your new awareness of its dynamics will give you the "power" to unfix yourself from it. For example, perhaps there's something you want to do, but you're afraid that if you do it, something bad will happen. Perhaps it's getting up and giving a talk before an audience. Until now, you always thought there was no other choice but to be afraid -- that somehow your fear protected you from fearful situations. Now, with your new understanding, you begin to see a number of crucial things.
First of all, you're beginning to question your fear and how it could possibly be protecting you, when the only pain you feel is the fear itself. Second, you can now see that the main reason you value the fear is because of the strong sense of self it secretly provides. You know that you've always said you've hated those feelings, but now you see that your vibrating false self is glad to have any life at all, even a painful one!
Now suppose you've been asked to make a presentation to a large group of fellow employees. It's still weeks before your talk, and you see that you're caught up in nervousness over it, which you perpetuate by thinking about it. You see that there is no value in any of this, so you try something new. You refuse to give in to the feeling by sitting in the corner and shaking over it. And you refuse to struggle against it by putting on a false bravado and insisting you're not nervous at all. Instead, you just walk past it.
"Proceed while being afraid," is Vernon Howard's succinct instruction when faced with any scary obstruction. This means just move forward without paying any attention to the state at all. You're aware that the nervousness is there, trying to take you over, but you don't do anything with it. You stop feeding it your life energy. As a result, your experience of giving the talk is not at all as traumatic as your imagination had tried to tell you it would be, and you know that with your newfound understanding, you need never be as nervous again.
This new understanding placed into practice works with any negative state, from loneliness to anger or anything else. Don't stop to argue with it or deny it. Just go past it. You can do this when you understand that the only thing keeping you involved with the state is you. It's really all very simple, but only if we're willing to leave ourselves behind. We have to leave behind the false self that sees the state through its eyes and attributes it with power. We have to see that negative states have no business being in our business, and they won't be if we don't get fixed on them.
We must learn what it means to become unfixed from negative states, and we will when we realize that the sense of self we derive from them is worthless. It's not based on anything real, and it has no permanence because with time all states pass. So when the next negative state comes along, don't struggle with it or give yourself over to it. Instead, just go on with your life as though it doesn't exist, for it doesn't, not in reality.
At night, when we fear the darkness, we flip on the light and everything that frightened us is gone, because the light dispels the frightening images in our own minds. When we flip on the light inwardly, psychologically, we see that dark states have no power outside of our fixation with them. When we struggle with them, we give them our power. When we give in to them, we allow them to dominate us. The only true alternative is to go on with our lives as though the thing were not there, and if we do that, it won't be there.
We've all seen this in little ways. Perhaps you felt depressed one day, and instead of giving in to it you went for a little walk, and sure enough, you felt better afterward. Why did you feel better? It was because feeling bad was a trick, and you just walked past it. Now learn the spiritual lesson from that and see that you can do the same thing inwardly. Walk past all negative states, and they must disappear.
