If 'positive thinking' is not advisable - then what approach is? Meet "Non-duality".
Excerpt: In part one I explained why positive thinking might be harmful for your spiritual growth. Here, in the second and last part, I am detailing the alternative which goes beyond the process of thinking. It's simple but not easy. Can you forfeit the mind chatter all together and allow the true essence of creation, yourself, to come through?
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If you go out of the duality (good vs. bad; light vs. dark) you realize that the world is a harmonious system which works perfectly; that every event and experience, whether “good” or “bad”, happens appropriately. There are no mistakes and whatever happens to us is right and only leads us towards enlightenment.
Of course, this realization requires tremendous trust and a leap of faith. A big leap!
Positive thinking is likened to a flight in an air-balloon. We indeed manage to soar above the earth and to detach ourselves from the sweeping mass-consciousness; we indeed manage to become observers and to develop a perspective about the reality; we indeed can look downward and notice both the ugly and the beautiful sceneries.
While the flight in the balloon can indeed be enriching and emotional, only when we really fly high, way into space, we can see the entire globe. Only from high above we can see the whole picture, the earth in its impeccable creation. Then our soul rejoices.
The primal benefit that harmonious thinking brings is the emotional and mental ability to accept any event even the severest and most grievous. Situations like breaking up from a beloved spouse, loss of a job, car accident, financial difficulties, and even a death of a loved one, are seen suddenly in a new aura and are perceived exactly as they really are. That is, experiences that we have chosen to serve us. When we understand that we can fully accept the “bad” situations we automatically enable ourselves to change our life.
When we give up the positive-negative dichotomy we discover that the thoughts that pass through us are merely thoughts which, if left alone to freely flow, bring feelings of balance, joy, self-esteem and security. We come to this A-ha moment when we see that 90% of the thoughts that we think are not even ours. They come from other people.
When you work with your beliefs pay attention not to fall to the positive thinking attitude. It indeed has served you in the past but no longer. Make sure you do not make the effort to think “only positive”.
There is no such think as “positive thought” just as there is no such thing as “negative thought”. These are false conceptions of our minds. “Warriors of light” are also “dark warriors” . The truest way to deal with the reality is through the piercing observation of everything, without judging it as “good” or “bad” and without trying to fix it to become “positive”.
Can you stop judging? Not just other people or other events. But yourself as well.
You are not good people!
You are not bad people either!
You are who you are.
Both light and dark.
Dark is divine. Light is evil. Light is Divine. Dark is evil.
But beyond the duality both are neither.
They are only an experience.
An approach to life that addresses both sides of the experience brings the inner peace and the balance that prepare the ground for your enlightenment.
I'd rather be in a neutral state, being positive takes you higher and if you fall the impact is devastating, so keep on the ground be a realist and keep moving forward. thanks for this post @nomad-magus . :)
There are 2 tools, that can help people on the path to remember their nondual nature.
The first is, to let go the need to know which duality you are - not defining if your thoughts are positive or negative, but most of all, not trying to find out what you are in dual categories. The need to know and define yourself, is inert in the dualistic mind and this can be a worthwhile exercise to let this need to know go.
The second is, what Tim Freke calls "paralogical thinking" - becoming more and more familiar with the notion, that reality (and what you think about it) is always both - positive and negative - and even if for the logical mind it seems as if it can only be the one way and not the other. This can be done by replacing all "OR" statements with "AND". The word "and" works like an antidote to the dualistic mind.
Besides that, light for me is not the opposite of dark. Dark for me means unconscious and it's opposite is conscious/aware. Light has no opposites, since it is already the transcended state. So unconscious light is called darkness and conscious light means Awareness. Light (as in en-light-enment) for me is a description of nondual realization that is nothing and everything at the same time. Cheers and thank you! 🙏
Interesting, but the words will only hold meaning once a person has had the commensurate experience.
For example, there is a conscious darkness, a conscious sleep - it may sound like an oxymoron but the experience is possible, hence then the words no longer sound paradoxical.
Well said. What I find interesting at the moment are the number of writers who have reached a level of experience and/or philosophy that are in essence close to Buddhism (or even Taoism) but without approaching life through that particular religion.
I am currently reading Buckminster Fuller, who ha much to say about perceiving life clearly, decentralisation and the quest for human life worth living.
If Dante's Hell was signposted with "Abandon all hope" then perhaps Heaven should have had "Abandon all faith" followed by "and see clearly".
Indeed.
We are in the last days of any institutional faith!
Very good news.
A few decades from today and we will not understand how we once followed dogmas.
The trick is finding the balance between being optimistic and being realistic.
Someone rightly said: Stop and smell the roses, but first check for dog poop on the sidewalk beneath your feet.
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Don't you think that accepting the "bad" and "good" things in our life is sort of a positive thinking?
It's semantic.
New age defines positive as good, happy, nice, etc.
If for you "positive" equals acceptance then your approach is not dualistic (in my terms). ☺️
Sometimes the thought of the positive sides of outward appearance, not necessarily in terms of appearance can guess positive or negative
Only positivism can't help, one has to think negative so that he would be prepared for the worst and all of us don't think positive some of us think negative as well so we should think like them so that we will not get overcomed by there negative thinking.
You are not good people!
You are not bad people either!
You are who you are.
Both light and dark.
Dark is divine. Light is evil. Light is Divine. Dark is evil.
But beyond the duality both are neither.
They are only an experience
I loved to read this
I think, every human being is between two sides. bright side (good) and dark side (bad). just a taste that can lead to a bright path.
Good post @nomad-magus. Thanks
It is natural, healthy and honest thinking that people will have thoughts on the mind of the wise However, the problem is only when it is anxiety, when the risk of failure and risk is born - tension, tension, headache, hand-shaking, sweat, stomach molasses, and so on. . . . ! The healthy and good thoughts are good for us, the contrast is equally harmful for our body and mind.
In fact, thinking is such a thing that makes people aware.
Helps people to reach the right conclusions.
Good-looking understanding is helpful.
On the whole, to find the right path,
Helps you to know, understand, understand.
There is so much more behind and beyond thinking.
You will be amazed how your clarity and focus are much better.🙂