What I mean by this, is that when bad feelings–sadness, fear, pain–arise, there is a tendency to fight them, to try to push them down. This of course only makes them sneaky and in some ways more powerful. They come out in irrational behavior. That you can rationalize it does not change this fact. Nobody ever does anything without a reason. Ted Bundy and Chairman Mao had their logics.
But if you imagine yourself floating in a cistern, perhaps on a boat, there is no roof. As the tide rises, you keep going up and up and up, then down and down, and as it goes down, you eventually reach dry land again. The key is to contact, be conscious of, and to consciously allow the flow to happen. When you do this, you do not avoid some unpleasant moments, but with faith, they fade, and you learn to deal with them, and over time you lose the fear of negative feelings. Having lost this fear–which prevents much joy–you are then free to allow positive feelings easy access to your daily consciousness.
We spend so much time fearing what we will lose, who we will lose. When you lose this fear, everything becomes interesting, fascinating. Everywhere you look, there is something to make you smile, and there is something to investigate and learn from. The world becomes a much more tender, inviting, and free space.