The first thing you need to do is get in touch with those negative feelings.
If you're not even aware of them,
You're not going to drop them.
Lots of people have negative feelings they're not even aware of.
Lots of people are depressed and they're not aware they're depressed.
It's only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they were.
You're not going to be able to deal with a cancer that you haven't detected.
You're not going to get rid of wolves in your farm if you're not aware of their existence.
So the first thing you need is awareness of your negative feeling.
What kind of negative feeling?
Gloominess,
For instance.
You're feeling gloomy and moody.
You feel self-dislike and self-hate or guilt.
You feel that life is pointless,
Makes no sense.
You've got hurt feelings.
You're feeling nervous.
You're feeling tense.
Get in touch with those feelings first.
Second step,
This is a four step program.
Second step.
Understand that the feeling is in you,
It's not in reality.
Now that's such a self-evident thing.
Do you think people know that?
They don't,
Believe me.
They've got PhDs.
They're presidents of universities.
They haven't understood this.
They didn't teach me how to live at school.
They taught me everything else.
Like the guy who said,
Well,
I got a pretty good education and it took me years to get rid of it,
To get over it.
Yes,
You really need it.
That's what spirituality is all about,
You know,
Unlearning,
Unlearning,
Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.
Now that negative feeling is in you.
It's not in reality.
So stop trying to change reality.
And our bosses and our friends and our enemies and everybody else and everything else.
You don't have to change anything.
The negative feeling is in you.
No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy.
It's very important.
There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or to hurt you.
No event,
No condition,
No situation,
No person.
Only nobody told you this.
They told you the opposite.
That is why you're in the mess that you are in right now.
That is why you're asleep.
They never told you this,
But it's self-evident.
Rain washes out a picnic.
Who's feeling negative?
The rain or you?
What's causing the negative feeling?
The rain or your reaction?
Reality is all right.
Reality is not problematic.
Problems only exist in the human mind.
Reality is not problematic.
Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on and nature would go on in all her loveliness and her violence.
Where would the problem be?
No problem.
You are the problem.
You identified with the me.
This is the problem.
The feeling is in you,
Not in reality.
Third step,
Never ever identify with that feeling.
It has nothing to do with the I.
Don't define your essential self in terms of those feelings.
Don't say,
I am depressed.
You want to say depression is there,
That's fine.
You want to say gloominess is there,
That's fine.
But not I am gloomy.
You're defining yourself in terms of that feeling.
That's your illusion.
That's your mistake.
You watch it.
There is a depression there right now.
There is a hurt feeling there right now.
Let it be.
Leave it alone.
It'll pass.
Everything passes.
With everything.
