Negativity. We Can Dissolve it at the Core

In these days and times, it can sometimes feel as though we are surrounded by negativity. There is our own negativity; that which
other people convey and also the negativity that we see going on around us in the environment.

Yet, it is said that 'all of our moods and emotions arise from the mind,' which basically means that, to find any peace and happiness in this world, it is essential to understand what the true nature of the mind really is.

To embark upon this huge undertaking, however, requires a high degree of weariness with the trappings and ways of our usual habitual reactions to life and what we perceive to be happening to us and around us. Most people have not quite reached that stage in their dissatisfaction levels, as yet. To bring about the kind of focused enquiry needed for this sort of investigation, it can require nothing short of a massive crisis to rip apart our preconceptions.


Continue reading in Return to Forever

Looking Beyond our Thoughts

3 am Wake Up, Leunig

Did you ever wake up in the early hours of the morning and feel that the whole world was resting upon your shoulders. That, no matter which way you turned, everything looked dark and miserable. In those wee hours our minds can be so troubled and full of foreboding thoughts that no matter how we might try to look at it, all seems dark and there is a sense that nothing can ever turn out right.

We fall back into an uneasy slumber and when we waken again later that morning there is a lingering sensation that something awful 'happened' or is about to 'happen', but it is also mixed with a dawning sense of relief. As the sun begins to rise and we pull ourselves together for the coming days work, the premonitions and our previous sense of futility from the night before begin to fade into insignificance and before long these disappear like morning mist, swallowed up by the distractions and concerns of life.

For me, Leunig's wonderful cartoon encapsulates this little scenario most pithily. It is one instance of how we can take our thoughts very seriously in one moment and yet in another  feel very differently. What does this tell us about our minds and the nature of our thoughts?

If we can accustom ourselves to being mindful of our thoughts at least some of the time, we can soon begin to see just how illusory and baseless they actually are. Upon first observation this may not seem very significant but in fact realising this as a fact can completely change the way we react to thoughts and subsequently the way we live our lives...

Read more in Never Not Ever Here Now
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