06 Sep Reducing Negative Reaction – Shinzen Young
Something happens when negativity floods our minds and hearts. We think that’s all there is. We sink into the ocean and can’t find any other way to live or think or feel.
Coming back to work after a couple weeks away I honed my skills, dove deep into my toolbox as I sat with my clients. I know there is a way through. I’m committed to helping them find a way. Yesterday, deep in a conversation with someone I remembered with the American Buddhist teacher, Shinzen Young said:
Remember ‘Divide and Conquer’—if you can divide a negative reaction into its parts (mental image, mental talk, and emotional body sensation), you can conquer the sense of being overwhelmed. In other words, eliminate the negative parts by loving them to death.
How then to love something negative?
It can come from reasoning with it. It can come from welcoming it, befriending it, caring about it as we would someone we’ve known a long time which whom that we don’t always see eye to eye.
Then there are those times when nothing works.
That’s when we learn to love.
We find, at those times, that what we knew about love was only a tiny fragment. Face to face with what we hate, especially if it’s self hatred, we have to learn about love in a completely different way. We have to open beyond what we thought possible.
It’s kind of like we have to plug into a different electrical current. Perhaps it does come down to faith, trusting that love is the central organizing energy in the entire universe. Opening to the ineffable, this possibility of love that we have all always longed for we can encounter negativity with a softer heart, a quieter mind, and a gentler spirit.
It’s one of the reasons I decided to offer a regular Embodied Practices Virtual Retreats to support you in cultivating this space in your own heart. I hope you join me. To find out more click here.