Negativity – Psychological Obstacles on our Way to Buddhahood

If you want to deal with your own negativity, you need courage. Actually, a spiritual practitioner should not have negativity. If you do, then you have not practiced successfully or not enough. Therefore you have to make more effort. Surely you will not publicise this for fear of a moral condemnation.

I myself have been practicing meditation for over thirty years. After about half the time, I came across a sentence that struck me like lightning. In a manual for the practice of Mahamudra was said that the freedom of thought sought in meditation is mostly thoughtless non-knowledge, behind which lies negativity, without any spiritual value.

In other words, freedom of thought in meditation comes about because perception is blocked and as a result nothing is recognized - not even the negative. This leads to a joyless, lifeless void experience that many consider to be the goal of meditation: just that thoughtless non-knowledge without any spiritual value.

Two questions arise: why do we need that? And: Did the Buddha teach it that way? The first question can be answered simply and clearly: we need it because we want to protect ourselves from the negativity within and around us. We are afraid of being overwhelmed and becoming helpless by negativity. There is just too much of it. In meditation we seek an island of tranquility to recover from being driven. This must be recognized without any judgment.

If then in our mental peace something negative appears, which can not be suppressed, we doubt ourselves: Now I have been practicing for so long and still ... I am unable to ... I am not doing it correctly ... I need another method, another school, another teacher. We lose the joy of the path and the joy of ourselves. We constantly feel threatened. We look for relief in familiar ways, which then reinforces self-doubt.

Suffering through identification with the ideal

This suffering is due to the fact that we have identified with the positive in order to protect ourselves from the negative. If that does not work, we will experience a crisis. It is very important to understand how inevitable the dynamic is: If I identify myself as a positiv being I can`t exist as a negative one. To make this work I have to exclude everything that could remind me of my own negativity. The possibility of self-idealization is based on dissociation. Both are working. It's like someone amputating a part of themselves, just so the other one looks perfect.

The Buddhist world is currently shaken by two cases of abuse. Distinguished personalities such as the Zen priest Genpo Döring and the Buddhist master Sogyal Rinpoche have behaved unethically and hurtfully. They are proven guilty of violence, taking advantage and sexual abuse.

How is that possible? The supreme Buddhist commandment is not to injure life. Didn`t they practice properly? We don`t want to believe what had happened. But it is true and it is the result of practice that idealizes itself blind of it`s own negativity. Accordingly, the accused are completely unable to deal with and accept responsibility for the damage they have done. That's what is shown by their reactions. Self-identification with the spiritual ideal makes you blind, deaf, and stupid. Buddha called this delusion.

What does that mean for us? What are our consequences? Can we use the shock to review our own practice and what can we learn from it?
When it is clear that self-identification with the ideal leads to suffering, because we can not handle the non-ideal, we have to learn just that.

The Buddha has given clear instructions concerning the root causes of negativity.
Every kind of ego-construction and self-identification, even those with the "good" are based on negativity. In doing this we don`t want to know the whole truth. We embrace the good and we exclude the opposite. Three mental poisons are working: greed, hatred and delusion, which the Buddha described as the roots of suffering. Greed is our wish to reach what we want. Hatred is to deny what we don`t want. Delusion is to deny what we could know.

Any self-assertion constructed by the idea of who I am and who I am not is based on aversion. This aversive activity is not only once but continuously working, as long as we need to believe in our separated ego, no matter defined positively or negatively.

What is aversion - how do we practice with aversion?

Aversion is not a feeling but a negative mental attitude. Our awareness is restricted and our thoughts and feelings are poisoned. Aversion is mental hate. Activities of ignoring the wellbeing of others, denying and pursuing selfish goals are motivated by hate.
Mental hatred is usually subconscious. But we can physically feel it from headaches, muscle tension, cold, high blood pressure and shallow breathing. Emotionally we feel annoyed, impatient and joyless. Feeling and perception are limited. We move hectically, are forgetful and at risk of accidents. We are in danger of hurting ourselves and others. Subconsciously, we suffer. If we notice that, we usually get annoyed. We are looking for explanations and for someone to blame. The anger can be directed against ourselves and against others. Its goal is always elimination. Either the problem, the other or, if necessary, ourselves. Subconsciously, we respond to aversion with aversion. This can increase until suicide.

In order to end this suffering it is neccessary to free oneself from the prison of his ego attachment. Therefore you need a strong determination.The first step is to at least be ready to notice the symptoms. Otherwise the practice can not start. In the Satipatthana Sutra, the Buddha teaches the awareness of the poisons of the mind.

As soon as we notice the symptoms, we stop looking for rational explanations. Instead, we start to become aware of our energy. We experience our tension directly without judging and without asking for justification. We feel it, we penetrate the aversive state with awareness. We do not look from the outside, but we go into the middle of this negative sensation. We ask ourselves: can I look at myself with loving acceptance and we try it.
We use our breath to energize the sensation and to relax while exhaling. This allows the life energy to flow again. The tension will dissolve. The wisdom of the heart gets a chance to speak to us.

Fear of feelings

Since aversion shall protect us from the supposedly unbearable, we are afraid of its dissolution. We shouldn`t judge that, because this reaction is a survival reflex that we have to take seriously. In fact, without the barrier of our ego separation, all perceptions will flow into our consciousness from inside and from outside. To be able to let that happen, we need to know in advance how we can handle it. Again, the Satipatthana Sutra gives specific instructions and help. The Buddha teaches us the awareness of feeling

If we want to practice this seriously, resistance will most likely set in. We all already have a story with feelings. It is shaped by what we experienced in our childhood and how our parents dealt with our emotional expressions. If we had learned to feel all emotions, there would be no need for aversion. It's not like that. We have to fight back because we feel threatened, for example, by fear, anger, powerlessness or pain. For some people, however, even happiness and joy are difficult feelings if they do not fit into their ego construction.

The resistance against the awareness of feelings could be expressed in the following thoughts. Why should it be good to get involved in feelings? This will only make it harder; There is no help and understanding anyway. I will certainly be rejected.
Nobody will like me that way. And in the end I have to adapt anyway.

Overcome the defense

How can we overcome this defense? We have to convince ourselves of the sense of feeling. We need loving perception instead of rejection. We do need support.

What is the sense of feeling? Feelings are wisdom energy, they are our spontaneous emotional response to life. The possibility of feeling is innate and belongs to the human basic equipment. Feelings help us to survive.

Since our early childhood we have known joy, fear, sadness, anger, disgust and shame. They are natural emotional responses - „basic affects“ - stimulated by particular experiences. They happen spontaneously there is no need to learn them. But to be aware of those feelings must be learned. Therefore we need support from our parents or another compassionate person. Their task is to contain the emotional energy of the child, to symbolize it and to reflect it back to the child. In that way the child can understand its feelings an can learn how to live with them. The spontaneous affective reactions will lose their overwhelming threatening character.

Even when we are adults the basic affects can be spontaneously triggered in critical situations. They retain their archaic character throughout our lives. In our everyday life, we are not usually aware of them except when they are strong. They remain subliminal. But on the surface of our mind they determine reactions which we experience as pleasant and unpleasant feelings. So we need to distinguish two levels: the level of primary affective responses to events and the level of secondary emotional evaluation of our experience. An experience can either feel comfortable or unpleasant for us. The emotional rating is not the feeling itself. It is a mental activity that helps us to decide what we want to allow and what we want to deny. That process usually goes on subconciously . By emotional judgement we constantly sort our thoughts, perceptions and even the primary feelings according to whether they are good for us or not.

If we want to experience our primary feelings we have to stop the filtering activity of our mind. Therefore decisiveness and a strong will is needed. How can that work?

Guide to feeling

The first step is to perceive and to relax the aversion otherwise we will not get to the feelings. For the next step the following question may help: How do I feel with myself: pleasant or unpleasant? The answer must be experienced and not conceived. In this way we avoid rationalization. Then deeper dimensions of feelings become accessible.
The primary emotions can be experienced and understood in their conditionality. It is not about legitimate or unjustified reasons it is about the living experience of our entire emotional state. In many sutras, the Buddha has clearly answered the question of what must be done with feelings. A pleasant feeling must be felt as pleasant, a painful feeling must be felt as painful. These are not linguistic phrases. Feelings must be felt as what they are. They need to be expressed in our own consciousness, then they will change. Because we are compassionate with ourselves, our hearts will open. Then the wisdom energy will flow and tell us what to do next.

To become aware of feelings requires practice. It is one step on the path of Buddhist mental training. Little by little, we can integrate threatening feelings, we no longer need to obsessively project them out and keep them in check by aversion.