Just be positive

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Grief & Praise
#21

Anytime I feel cornered to feel a certain way, puking comes to mind, as well.

And while I don’t enjoy being asked to feel a certain way, equally, I work on everyday not to ask others to feel a certain way other than to empathize with how I feel, and if I can, I return the favor.

I just finished a short book on of my teacher friends had laying around and it was about a father and son in various concentration camps and mostly about the reactions others had to the camps.

While we may angry towards what happened, many felt Hitler was God’s instrument punishing the Jewish people. Many felt Hilter was a monster to be stopped. Many felt resigned to their fate and found happiness/sadness where they could. One thing the author didn’t do was project his own terror until the very end when he finally lost his father. And he never described how he thought others felt, he merely quoted those around him.

So while it may feel unfair to be pressured to behave a certain way, the pressure also gives an opportunity to see in ourselves how we have pressured others to feel a certain way: attempting to impart a sense of “Urgency” to become uncivilized in the unwilling comes to mind for me, as well as “frustration” with the lack of progress of the progressives of society, and even more damning getting people to “unlike” the benefits of civilization in pursuit of another dream…

Don’t ‘just’ be anything. That cuts you off from all the other experiences.

#22

Ha ha… yeah, I hear you there!

#23

I have personal reasons for hating buddhists. Here is my story: http://pennyscout.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/chicago/

#24

SNNiiiiFFFLe! That was soo sad.

#25

Wow, haven’t posted here in a long time. On to the topic.

I often come here in search of some acceptance as well as advice. To those of you who have expressed their frustration, i feel your “pain”. I don’t know much about buddhists, short of having accepted Zen as my spiritual path. But I would like to make 2 points here, one is, buddha never said to turn away from the world and desires and emotions etc. That would be ascetism, which is one of the reasons behind buddha search for truth (which resulted in him becoming a buddha of course). My culture is full of ascetics. Emotion is natural, anger, love, depression. All of that, the only way to deal with them is to remember that, that they are a part of nature, and should be allowed to run their course. Of course, it is natural to seek comfort in a time of sadness etc, thats all part of it.

Don’t cut yourself off from everything, everything is there for a reason. Simply realise what TRUE happiness entail, (i.e. not to be found in money or material goods etc). The buddha himself actually lived a comfortable life, a very meager normal life (c.f: the original defenition of epicureanism).

The problem is, as an epicurean, its frustrating, the world humans have created requires you to discard rage, and always smile, never let it out, always be agressive etc. We have all experianced how fake people are in the modern world.

Anyways, I’ll wrap this up b4 i ramble on.

-Tj

#26

Ai have started a thead on buddhism, to continue on with critisisms, & etc. - http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=1349.0

#27

Seems to me that, what happens alot in this culture of ours is that people find a thing (like being positive) that helps them deal with shit, and as soon as they see it works (helps) they think it therefore must help in every situation all of the time.

This seems to be true for many things. What follows then with this line of thinking is that because (insert belief) is at all times good, its (insert dualist thinking / opposite) must be at all times bad.

Everything has its place and value, and sometimes being positive helps the overall situation and sometimes it might lead to the false perception of it helping out in the situation and sometimes it doesnt do shit. or worse.

Hell we can be positive and fucking AnGRY can’t we? I can see the black hole that is our situation yet i’m positive in the things im trying to achieve amidst all the sadness and grief.

This positive thinking mantra falls in the same traps as every other dominant culture belief, in that it identifies something as evil and then resolves to become its antitheses and thus to become “good” “righteous” etc.

So uhmm be positive when you are positive, be wicked mad when you are wicked mad. Stop thinking on how you should feel, instead explore how you DO feel. Feel bad? explore that shit, you know it will change right? life aint static. Be angry Be in Love be Negative Be Positive.

Take Care!

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#28

what buddha may have believed and taught thousands of years ago probably sounded immensely different than what buddhists say and teach now. i’m no authority on religion, but i’d guess the same goes for most other major ancient civ religions and beliefs. they’ve been so altered over time (usually in an attempt to control and manipulate people) that they resemble nothing of what they may originally have been.

#29

[quote=“timeLESS, post:27, topic:1217”]Seems to me that, what happens alot in this culture of ours is that people find a thing (like being positive) that helps them deal with shit, and as soon as they see it works (helps) they think it therefore must help in every situation all of the time.

This seems to be true for many things. What follows then with this line of thinking is that because (insert belief) is at all times good, its (insert dualist thinking / opposite) must be at all times bad.

Everything has its place and value, and sometimes being positive helps the overall situation and sometimes it might lead to the false perception of it helping out in the situation and sometimes it doesnt do shit. or worse.

Hell we can be positive and fucking AnGRY can’t we? I can see the black hole that is our situation yet i’m positive in the things im trying to achieve amidst all the sadness and grief.

This positive thinking mantra falls in the same traps as every other dominant culture belief, in that it identifies something as evil and then resolves to become its antitheses and thus to become “good” “righteous” etc.

So uhmm be positive when you are positive, be wicked mad when you are wicked mad. Stop thinking on how you should feel, instead explore how you DO feel. Feel bad? explore that shit, you know it will change right? life aint static. Be angry Be in Love be Negative Be Positive.

Take Care![/quote]
i think it might be that in an effort to control their emotions, people often try to kill them. for instance, i know a lot of guys (myself included) that find it extremely hard, if not impossible, to cry. we’ve been taught that boys don’t cry, that expressing sorrow is a sign of weakness, so we’ve been taught to kill that emotion. similarly we are killing anger when we call it a “disease” (as my brother calls it) instead of calling it a useful friend.
being able to work with our emotions does not mean we need to sit on them and stuff them into a bag.

#30

Yeah, having difficulties with openly grieving draws me to this part of the forum as well. We should really buy some whiskey, sing songs and cry for all the shit, im convinced it could be fun to be sad.

are we in ?

#31

To me staying positive has to do with trying to understand and becoming so at home in the sphere of intention that wants to be a force at work in conjunction with the ever present and forward moving solution to the unhealthy manifestations that working to be a healer is natural and effortless. It does not mean you know the slightest thing about what is unhealthy or how to be part of a solution, it means you want to. It means you love laughter, smiles, sound relationships, gratitude, and developments towards humanity. It means you think about what humanity is. It means you are concerned and taking steps instead of being selfish and looking out for number one at all times.

If you have a deep enough understanding you will see that the person you might be negative towards has a story and is doing something that you might have done had circumstances been different in your life.

If you understand you will see that you belong in the situation you are in and that with love and friends you can overcome and prosper. You will not be born

immortal Superman in a flawless utopia. You will die, you will cry, and you have the potential to love it all and make the majority of your time fun and free.

I can think of things that could happen that I would never be able to forgive and that if they occurred would always be a source of pain for me. It seems

flaky to say, “that pain is part of life and I can cherish the pain and that is still being positive.” I might never fully recover from certain events were they to make an appearance – there are aspects of my life that I consider so sacred that they must be inviolable for me to have any peace of mind and cheer of heart. So far I have not encountered anything that would make me negative the majority of the time.

I have been hateful and I have thought terrible thoughts and I have suffered. I never want to go back to that. I want to love. I want to say life is good and I want to assist in making it good for myself and others. I want to understand. I want to encourage and challenge and guide and protect and bless and edify and dance and sing and create and appreciate and celebrate and play and learn and connect and marry and liberate and share and mend and relieve.

I do not want to cut at the threads of life. I want to strengthen them and aid them in shining with vibrancy.

To me that is being positive.

All that having been written, I do not tell people, “Be positive”. I am not controlling by nature. I think the harm can be taken out of sorrow and anger and

I might make observations and ask questions that might act like steps in disarming a bomb when confronted with harmful sorrow or anger. I might say

something akin to what I have written here, trying to illuminate the nature of being positive as I see it. But I will not try to invalidate someone’s negativity or say how they ought to act instead.

For a lot of people “being positive” might entail just trying to sweep the ugly spirited parts of life under the rug instead of facing them head on. I do not think that is positive. If that is what you are encountering, and I get the idea that some of you (are any of you still here eight years later?) may have and that is why you are so upset. I thought I would try to show you another side of being positive. I hope it was a positive experience for you. :slight_smile: I have another hope: I hope I read this in ten years and see faults in my rhetoric and have more to add.

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