When people say, one needs to stop focussing on the negative, it takes a while to realize what they actually mean by "focussing."
Sometimes it can take years.
When someone close to me started constantly telling me to be positive, a good 5 years ago, I listened, and thought I understood, but I had NO IDEA what he meant.
Lately, though, I feel like I'm beginning to realize just how transparent we are. Human beings are basically so similar in what they react to the most; or what they can react to the most. For instance, I've just slowly started realizing how I just DON'T listen to music any more. I don't watch videos on TV and I don't seem to be hearing about good music like I naturally used to at one point. [Hence the addition of music blog to my blogroll.] I don't even recognize music on the radio any more. A friend commented in the car just now that she hates the music video of the song that was playing. I asked her how she'd heard it, and she mentioned one of the music channels. Before she dropped me back home, I watched American Idol and Greys Anatomy sitting on her couch, after ages. I was truly glued to the tv. I realized that I was simply enjoying myself, simply letting myself be entertained, after ages.
My point is that it's sometimes so easy to lose track of why we lose faith, or that we've lost faith at all. I'm certainly not saying American Idol is the answer... I'm just saying that if I've let music leave my life, and if I've isolated myself from a medium that's common to the world that I relate to (TV), of course I'm going to be miserable. Sometimes half the battle is just knowing what makes you happy, and recognizing that it's a few basic things that you may have taken for granted.
of course it's not just music or entertainment that i'm talking about. it's books, reading, good food, self-respect, respect for the earth, one's mother, the woman who washes your clothes, carrying one's own weight... a whole plethora of things that keep us from spiritual starvation.
i'm basically talking about sustaining a flow of life within in, and learning to see when we are lacking, and to see that we are lacking.
I find when I accept this, and I when I shift focus to things that lay below the surface, I can literally feel my centre of gravity sort of sit up and take control of the rest of me. We perhaps tend to think emotions are what is underneath the surface, what we really are. I think what may be true is that emotions are simply, after all reactions to what's around us. Our emotional reactions are what we get caught up in. What's beneath that is basic. spiritual. primeval.
Coming back to positive vs. negative: when we lift the whole layer of emotions from our eyes, when we try and quell our insecurities, anxieties and desperate fears and try to be open to the present, the drama of the negative seems less and less appealing.
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i'm not sure what it was about today that made me realize this.
perhaps it was the flower show i went to with my good friend. i simply took pictures for the joy of it, letting the universe take credit for it, instead of any notion of talent or the sensitivity of my exposure-meter. i watched my friend buy herbs for her garden, instead of forcing myself to impinge greedily on that territory as well. in time, i told myself, i will learn more about plants, about that mysterious process of growth that has so eluded me.
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