Use negativity to live in the moment!
Posted by Christopher | Posted in Balanced Life, Learning Off Experience | Posted on 18-09-2008
Tagged Under : artist, being, emotional, emotions, living, living in the moment, negativity, now, positive thinking, power of now, thinking, zen
Each day I wake up and I stare at this computer until my eyeballs want to fall out of my head.
I am a Graphic Designer. I love what I do, I go to work in sweats, messy hair, and eat abundantly. The fridge is only a few feet away. I get paid to draw, paint and create some pretty cool things. We work on globally reaching projects and get to blast the music all day, everyday.
Being an artist has its pitfalls though. We are sometimes over emotional wrecks. It’s that part of me that makes me good at what I do that also drives everyone around me insane at points (including myself). One thing I noticed about myself and the world, is at times we both can be very cynical, pessimistic and even down right negative. You’d be surprised how many forms negativity hides out in. Anger, fear, rage, dread, jealousy, resentment, confrontation, complaining, bickering, arguing, gossip, depression, anxiety, nervousness, war and judgment. All these feelings are something we all feel on different levels in our lives at different points. Some more than others. Each person will gravitate towards a few. They are kind of made up truths we tell ourselves internally that is just completely self deprecating and poisonous to us. It all boils down to 1 word. Resistance.
When we resist or anytime we are negative we do not accept the present.
We go through great suffering when we do not accept what it is happening in the now. We resist most of the times because our egos tell us that if we resist hard enough, through this resistance we can bend reality to what we want. Well its obvious that makes little sense, and definitely does not work. Trust me I tried. Think about this, your ego, the mind that rattles on and on in your head at times. The thinking mind, he / she thinks… it can get what it want’s by wanting it to be another way, If it wants hard enough it has a chance to change it. Did you get that? It’s obvious it believes it works that’s the only logical explanation our minds do this. It’s one of the strange idiosyncrasies of human beings. We have a mind that has an identity. No other animal on the planet thinks the way we do. We are blessed with a great mind, but it also can work against us if we are not careful. Do you know that we are the only species on the entire planet that resists living with the nature and earth that sustains it? We resist everything, from change, to life, to death and mourning, from greenhouse gasses and negligence of the earth to war and abuse of power. If we don’t resist some of us don’t feel alive.
There is hope though.
One of the greatest things about negativity that I recently begun to understand is that it can also be used for good. If you think of negativity in this light it changes its meaning.
it is there to alert us that we aren’t on track.
It’s the little annoying younger brother all wound up on chocolate, acting like sponge bob in your mind. Always around to put you down or any number of ways he plans to wreak havoc on you. You can use it as an internal alarm system. Anytime any form of negativity arises in you, use it to sound your alarm. Breath, take a few breaths focus on what your currently doing. Whatever that may be. Right now it would be reading this blog post. So whenever your little mind or little brother in your head acts up, ring your alarm.
Given this information our duty is to remember every time any spark of negativity comes about, sound an alarm in your brain. Jump up and down. Well maybe not jump up and down you will look like a nut. But in all honesty moving your position, even if its shifting your weight and thinking another thought can have a profound change in your emotional state. Use that alarm to let you know to STOP, and be totally present in the now, without any judgment of any thing around you. Just be. This is how zen masters live, Zen is about living in the now. The past is gone and it no longer exists, the future is forever fleeting and is never coming. The only glimpse of the future we will ever get in this lifetime is right …this….moment. Cherish life, your friends and everything around you. Live in the moment, that is our duty or at least that is mine so I can stop staring at this computer screen until my eyeballs fallout.
