We live in a society that insists that we should strive for happiness and this is a valid aspiration but what we are not told is that in order to experience happiness we must also experience sadness. To deny half of the rich landscape of human emotions is to deny life.
Until we fully surrender to the duality and polarity of this earth realm we cannot know unity and Oneness. We came here to experience a rich blend of what it is to be human so that we might remember our divinity and yet while we numb, avoid and distract ourselves from the full experience of what it is to be human we remain in limbo.
Much of this is related to having the courage to make the epic journey from our heads back to our hearts where we become acutely attuned to our feelings and emotions.
We were taught that good little girls were nice and that big boys don’t cry. This conditioning is woven deeply into the fabric of our western culture and ironically is the result of massive amounts of suffering in the form of mental and physical dis-ease.
We are all immensely powerful beings and small acts of kindness and service that are repeated consistently result in massive changes.
In her book Active Hope, Joanna Macey talks about how the first step to becoming fully committed to service is ‘feeling the grief of the world.’ When we have the courage to return to our hearts we cannot help but be deeply affected and moved by the suffering of children, women, men and all sentient beings. When we feel this fully we cannot help but be moved to act from a place of love to alleviate the suffering in the world. If the suffering were not so normalised by the media as something that is unavoidable in our modern world we would initially be in a constant state of grief. Injustice and suffering is usually portrayed as something happening in a far away land that we can do nothing about and has little do with us. But this is not true. We are all immensely powerful beings and small acts of kindness and service that are repeated consistently result in massive changes. Every thought, word, and action affects the collective of humanity. This growing awareness, raising of consciousness is what is happening now. There is a quiet revolution of love taking place beneath the radar and largely ignored by the mainstream media.
It’s not that we are supposed to live in a constant state of grief because there is so much beauty and kindness in the world and the miracle of this being human is something to be grateful for and celebrated every day. These senses, this incredible mind, these bodies that are each a microcosm of the infinite universe. It’s so massive and incredible that often it is hidden in plain sight until we begin to see with the eyes of the heart.
So I find myself often feeling a blend, a rope that is woven from two strands. One is sadness at the extent of suffering that we humans perpetuate and the other is sheer joy and gratitude for this unfathomably magical human experience. The key seems to be that we embrace all of it in its beautiful messiness. The more we are able to do this the more alive we become and begin moving toward operating at our true potential as beings of light and power as well as flawed humans. Instead of being engulfed by our emotions, by the inevitable ups and downs of life, we observe them with the innocence of the child of our being.
The more we can be real and honour all of our feelings the more we find peace and the energy that was locked away in denial and numbing and business can be spent on love in action as we go about our lives.
The aspiration to just ‘be positive’ will, in the long term, only cause suffering and is a disguised request to deny the fullness of life and our human experience. We are disempowered in this way and become obsessed with seeking happiness externally through material wealth, false status, external validation, and power. And when we can’t run from the discomfort of our feelings and are engulfed by depression or they manifest as illness we feel shame and guilt for not being positive; we give ourselves a hard time for having a hard time, which only exacerbates our suffering.
It is time to stop worshipping at the altar of positivity and get real. Feel it all, embrace it all, for in so doing we paradoxically transform the intensity of the pain and we realise that this is it. There is no promised land, ascension is here and now living from a balance between head and heart, a union of the divine twin flame masculine and feminine energy within each of us. When we truly embody this a peace descends upon us and we know ‘that all is well and all manner of things shall be well’ and we return to alignment of who we truly are; our present state becomes more infused with love and compassion for ourselves and all our brothers and sisters.
Let’s not be positive, let’s embrace the negative too and watch them both dissolve because both are really just illusions of judgement, let’s have the courage to be real and feel and heal!
Thank you for this thought-provoking article, Miguel.What I now know for certain on my journey is that I must feel all emotions and allow them ALL to flow through my heart and being. Events leave impressions on us. If we don’t flow through past unresolved traumas, hurts, challenges we will walk around shut down or ready to explode. Neither extreme is particularly healthy. Cultivating that inner witness consciousness that watches, experiences life, that can flow through all those experiences with dignity, grace, practice allows me to be present to a deep, enduring love and gratitude at the very core of me. Choosing to bring myself back to this essential core center that loves being alive-all the experiences-continues to be quite a transformation, an awakening, a liberation.
Having been someone who plastered a fake smile on my face while my insides fumed, burned, or broke open was simply exhausting. I could not maintain that pretense. The fake positivity on top of internal toxic shame, grief, fury is not a healthy way to live life. To find healthy, non-destructive ways to process through negative emotions can be such an empowering path because many of us were taught to stuff these-to not cry, to not scream, to not be angry, to not blubber like a baby. The “stop crying” message alone creates havoc in the soul and hearts of people. I believe our greatest shift as human beings would be to give ourselves 100 percent permission to grieve, to rip up recycling, to smash some coconuts, to scream into some pillows because it seems to me some people use their unresolved pains to hurt others or themselves rather than find safe ways to dump out all of this. Just some of my reflections….
Miguel, I love your article! I discovered that the experience of pain, whether emotional or physical, is not a negative experience, but an opportunity to feel completely human. I become the observer of the pain, see the lessons easier, and appreciate the healing process. Experiencing our light and shadow sides enriches my journey. I believe it helps to fuel the passion for my calling.