What positive thinking has to do with negative feelings? Can I change a negative feeling by thinking positively? Well, it is a little like trying to refurbish a room by working on its snapshot on computer. The effect will be great in the virtual world-published on social media, but it will have no effect on the
reality-the look of the real room. Have you ever lost weight by reading books about perfect diet? Have you learned how to ride bicycle by watching Tour de France on TV? It takes more than just involving the intelligent, thinking mind to do it; it takes involvement of your body and an act of doing it. Thinking is always placed in an imaginary past or future, doing is always happening in the present in the here and now. Doing is performed by the body and we have to involve it to achieve, to manifest what our clever mind has so beautifully planned. Feelings don’t occur in the mind, they happen in the body, they can be described and explained by the mind, but they still are experienced in the body. So to have any contact with your feelings you have to redirect your attention from the mind to the sensations in the body. How does anger feel in the body? How does frustration feel in the body? What is jealousy doing to the body? The mind calls these feelings negative, because they scare and threaten its concept of safety, comfort and pleasure. But they are in reality just some important information about you and your reality, information that should be attended to, considered and understood, not changed, suppressed, avoided or ridiculed. Yes they scare us (because we don’t know how to handle them) but there is a safe place where they can be approached, listened to and allowed. It is a space of meditation. And they will resolve after fulfilling their task, but not until then.