Mario’s Second Question

pile up
Originally uploaded by Carolyn Garcia

It went like this:

How come "unwanted thoughts emerge" and we can't wipe them off!!?
Sometimes I am inclined to think that we have an innate ("evil") tendency which we have to learn to know and co-exist with...but how!?

Sincerely, Mario

And I simplified it in my mind to this:
Why do we have negative thoughts?

A couple days ago I said there are many angles from which to answer a question.
I love Eckhart Tolle’s comments regarding negativity so much I’d like to begin there.
Then later, I’ll take it from a more physiological orientation.

But here, from the Power of Now, Chapter Nine are excerpts that go straight to the point:

All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another.
All negativity is resistance… The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants…
The fact is, of course, that negativity does not work.
Instead of attracting a desirable condition, it stops it from arising.
Instead of dissolving an undesirable one, it keeps it in place.
It’s only useful function is that it strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it…

Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness… the ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe…
The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep seated fear and sense of lack…
Most of the so-called bad things that happen in peoples lives are due to unconsciousness… I sometimes refer to those things as “drama…”

When you feel sorry for yourself, that’s drama.
When you feel guilty or anxious, that’s drama…
Most people are in love with their particular life drama…
They have their whole sense of self invested in it. Even their - usually unsuccessful – search for an answer, a solution, or for healing becomes part of it.
What they fear and resist most is the end of their drama.
As long as they are their mind, what they fear most is their own awakening.

That last sentence is pretty damning in its implications and reveals why negativity keeps arising.
Tolle makes this suggestion:

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: “Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present.”

Thanks to Carolyn Garcia for illustration: Pile Up.