Why Do We Ever Feel Bad?

The Answer Is Surprisingly Metaphysical...

Releasing is effective whether you understand how it works or not. If you can let a negative emotion up and be totally non-resistant to it, it’ll dissipate. Some feelings might take longer than others to run their course, but eventually, every feeling will do just that — given you don’t resist.

Still, though, the releasing process raises an interesting question: If negative thoughts and feelings can be released so easily once you know how to do it, why does negativity arise in the first place? Things would be a whole lot easier if from birth we didn’t feel compelled to resist our negative emotions and just remained non-resistant so they’d release. But alas, this isn’t the way of things — so we might as well figure out the root of negativity in an attempt to speed up our releasing process.

Though we tend not to think of it this way, negativity is a consequence of insecurity; thus, insecurity always spawns “negative” thoughts and emotions. Note that when I use the term “insecure” here, I don’t mean it in a colloquial sense; I’m not talking about insecurity as pertains to self-confidence or general self-esteem (though to lack either of those qualities is also a product of the insecurity about which we’re going to speak). In this case, I’m talking about existential insecurity — about one’s ability to continue existing as an entity in the world. To survive as an independent person.

Personhood, by its very nature, demands the continued pursuit of security. This is obvious in the context of physical survival. If you don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t maintain the proper body temperature, don’t avoid toxins/poisons, don’t avoid accidents, etc., you as a person will die — you’ll cease to exist in a physical capacity. There’s a social element to it too. In pre-historic times if you were outcast by your tribe, you’d be exiled and you’d die. Even if you weren’t an outcast — if you were simply disliked — you’d be unable to find a partner and thus unable to reproduce (and to have children is the only means available by which to maintain some semblance of one’s physical personhood after death through the passage of DNA).

Our drive toward security goes even deeper than this though. If you were to exist totally non-physically — if you were a roaming soul or some kind of astral person — you’d still need to seek out security. All over the world people live in fear of dying and going to Hell (or whatever their cultural equivalent to Hell is). We have a deep intuition that our drive toward security isn’t strictly a physical one. That even were we to move to another plane of existence, we’d still need to avoid negative experiences and seek out positive ones. Even our “souls,” then, must be inherently insecure to some degree. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have the intuitions that we do.

But if insecurity breeds negative thoughts and emotions, why can taking on a state of non-resistance to those negative thoughts and emotions make them go away? If Personhood demands our continued pursuit of security (whether it be physical or spiritual), how does releasing lessen this demand?

Insecurity is a consequence of your identification as an independent entity. All negative thoughts and emotions stem from your taking yourself to be a person, separate from everything else. But, when you release — when you enter into a state of complete non-resistance — you cease to be an independent person. You actually cease to be any “thing” at all; you become nothing. That doesn’t mean you stop existing — it just means you enter into a state of “no-thingness.” All things, after all, have definitive boundaries; things are distinct from other things, they have distinct characteristics, they take distinct actions, etc.

In a state of total non-resistance, though, no distinctions exist. Non-resistance is a state without any characteristics. It can only be defined in relation to other states really — it’s the state where any forms of resistance are absent. But it has no positive qualities. You can’t say anything about it. In non-resistance, you don’t take any actions or “do” anything. And what would we call a “thing” that has no definable characteristics and takes no definitive actions? Yeah — we’d call it nothing (again, not non-existent-nothingness, but “no-thing” in the sense that this state doesn’t possess any of the qualities of “thingness.”

I want to take a moment now to wrap back around to the very first sentence of this essay and remind you that releasing works whether or not you understand how it works. So if everything I’ve said sounds like metaphysical mumbo jumbo to you, that’s fine — it won’t hamper your ability to let go of negative thoughts and feelings.

But I do think it’s interesting to look at the mechanisms that allow the release process to function. A person cannot release. A person is just a collection of thoughts and feelings bundled together in the conscious and subconscious minds. All these thoughts and feelings accumulate in an attempt to guard against the inherent insecurity and instability that comes from identifying as a separate entity in the first place.

We’re born, we’re given a name, we develop a personality, etc., etc., then one day, we make a joke that nobody laughs at. For the first time, we’re faced with a feeling of disapproval: “I” am this body, this name, this personality; “I” just said something that others didn’t approve of; “I” am in danger — physical or social — if others don’t approve of me; '“I” can’t make jokes anymore; “I” have to become shy, and quiet.

Whatever you don’t like about yourself is a consequence of this mechanism. All your repressed fear, anger, and sadness stems back to a primary misidentification; it stems back to your identification with a body, a mind, a personality, and a bunch of thoughts and feelings.

When you enter into a state of non-resistance, what you’re releasing is all your cumulatively acquired person-ness. You’re undoing your false identification with the independent, personal self, and you’re re-identifying with the indistinct, infinite, eternal Self that is pure no-thingness — you’re reidentifying with your true self, Beingness/Awareness/Consciousness.

Your Beingness is not a thing, and thus it cannot be insecure. Insecurity is a property of thingness. Beingness does not need to seek stability, peace, or happiness. It’s totally still, totally fulfilled, and totally loving. Most simply put, it is “is-ness.” It accepts all things that arise in it but is never marked or marred by the arising of those things. No matter what happens, Beingness persists as it is now, as it has always been, and as it’ll forever be.

Every time you release you’re getting in touch with your Beingness, whether you realize it or not. So go get non-resistant and start releasing.

As always, good luck.