Our Feelings

      I find it interesting that the lunacy of our invalidation of what we deem negative feelings is widely considered normal and appropriate. This is true even when we are told by mainstream sources to be better at embracing what is negative and unpleasant. For we continue in our polarized and impossibly narrow way of being, one largely driven by the self-alienating dynamic of shoulds and shouldn'ts.  

     Our culture is ungrounded and we do not have a pervasive harmony. We are driven from our feelings, from the truth by the unceasing disquiet of our own inability to care for ourselves: to be sufficient unto our own. We know about this, about our anxiety, about countless ways to resolve it, yet we do not. 

    This is not because we all personally deficient of some necessary quality. It is simply because we are deeply upset and overwhelmed. Our total feeling system (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual) is compromised because of circumstance. 

      We and our society, global at this point, remain stuck on repeat, instead of sensitively responding to our present personal, regional, and global crises. 

     Here, at this point in the essay, I could give you a solution for you to put your hopes on and to quickly lose in the downpour of data flowing into your conscious awareness. I don't have a solution, or I choose to frame my opinion in a way that it is not a solution. I can say this, because I also say that there isn't a problem. 

     So deep in our anxiety and disquiet, we forgot, and continue to forget that we ourselves, and the system, our society, and the greater world--nature it's self are not fundamentally flawed.

     We confuse what we feel and then what we imagine, with what is real. What is happening to us, to our civilization, to our planet is a response of nature. A nature we are wholly a part of. Because we invalidate so much of what we deem negative, we cannot consciously embrace the whole of ourselves and see this. We have rejected and forgotten the deep wholeness of nature, the idea and reality that our nature, One with the greater nature is whole and capable of responding effectively to its circumstance. 

     Alienated from ourselves, by our disturbing circumstances, we can't see that this disturbance is apart of a greater cycle of life doing it's work to respond to circumstances of our times. We don't see the value and purpose of  these so called negative feelings and experiences that have become norms. In our minds we are broken, but is this truly the case? 

  The whole power and purpose of what we call negative feelings is to redirect our attention to a better way, a better response. This may not be the best description. They don't just help us see what is better, they help us define who we are, and what is real both subjectively and objectively. We cannot continue to see them as separate from pleasant positive feelings, because altogether they are simply feelings that all have the same purpose and are equally valid and apart of our self. It is dangerous to make positive and negative feelings analogous with the dualities of comfort and discomfort or pleasure and pain. 

    In American culture we choose the insane ideal of the distorted American dream of materialistic, capitalistic and spiritless security and comfort over the reality of our deeply disturbed and misguided personal and societal state.  We divorce our attention from feeling both because of our conditioning, our addiction, and our inability to personally cope with what has been ignored. 

     But again, it is incorrect to say that even this choice makes us divided from our feeling, because  it is our feeling and deepest nature, the same nature that governs everything outside of us, that makes this conscious choice to not see. It is the feeling and subjective experience of a division that cannot occur in reality. We are not separate from our environment, from our world, from the whole regardless of how we feel. 

     If there is not a problem and not a solution, there may be actions or responses that are wise to undertake. We are not truly divorced from nature or ourselves, while the feeling and deep experience of this reality indicates what we can do next. Why do we feel this way? What are we ignoring, failing to do that creates such unhappiness in our lives? What do we need to connect to to move forward, awakening more deeply?

     What is negative and discarded holds our power after we hold onto it (by not dealing with it) for so long that it acts like an anchor pulling us to the bottom of the sea. The remedy to this unpleasant circumstance lies in the chaos of the storm brewing. The storm itself brings the rain that brings life to the parched soil. The pain and the sorrow both instilled and coming hold the seeds of promise of a life of greater balance to come. 

      Storm or drought, or both, in feeling and in the world are not necessarily demons to excorcise, they are unavoidable patterns in nature and feeling with lessons to teach. We cannot avoid suffering or apocalypse in the great cycle of life. We can attempt to hide, while it is best to meet them directly and sensitively if we are able. If we face annihilation with firm resolve we may beat the grave, even when buried, when the world turns itself upside down to right itself in the end.