Negative emotions, part 2, In Viskey Veritas

Negative emotions are natural, but this does not mean that we need hold on to them, or that they need influence our general emotional state in the slightest.  I think–and this has happened to me–that negative emotion–say anger– can flow up the way it does, and if you don’t resist it, just keep going into the sky.  You let it roll, and once it arrived, it realized it had nothing to do, and so left again.  There emotions are there to protect us, and if we don’t need protecting–a fact we signify by greeting them as friends–their work is done.

This is the essence of the spiritual insight when it comes to emotions: that you can be free of them by ACCEPTING them.  So often I think people get this picture of some sanctified yogi or Buddha, always serene, always smiling, and think they can get there by simply focusing on positive things.  To some extent this is true, but to some extent it is like arguing you can get healthy by eating good foods and never crapping them out.  For my part, I think there is a cycle there that is best understood and accepted.

Some of the phoniest people you meet will be “sincere” students of spirituality.  What they are trying to do, in many cases, is pretend they don’t feel like strangling people sometimes, and to the extent they repress this tendency they were born with, they actually become less spontaneous, less open, and less genuinely spiritual.

It is my personal belief that when we die all our illusions fall away, and we are forced to see ourselves as we REALLY are, and are utterly unable to look away.  Given this, it is logical to begin that process of truth telling NOW.  In support of this basic idea, I often act as if people can read my mind, and it is my belief that in some future state they will be able to.  That attitude in part informs what I write here.  I hold little to nothing back.

I can’t resist adding, actually, that the “confessional” is also a very old trick, used to great effect by hucksters like Rousseau.  Do not allow your emotions to be bamboozled.  Look at the world through your own eyes, and no one else’s.  Use what you can, and fuck the rest.

When you see this “kill the Buddha” theme, that is what is intended.  Most people recite it by rote, though, since most people are uncomfortable with the solitude and determination that attend actually trying to see things in-dependently.