Sunday, Sept. 10: Feeling Bad is Good, for awhile

SOMETIMES IT’S GOOD TO FEEL BAD
Sometimes it’s good
to feel bad
for a little while, anyway

Not for the feeling bad of it
Nor
for the usual Bullshit Reasons
(1. “I deserve to suffer.
2. So and so will feel bad/guilty when I suffer
3. Everyone else is suffering, who am I to break ranks?
4. You have to feel the lows to feel the highs
5. It’s the human condition.
6. It’s what everyone expects in these circumstances.
7. It’s what I’m used to.
8. It’s a good excuse to binge in ….. or ……")

No, none of that nonsense.

Feeling bad is good, for awhile,
First to give us a chance to Notice,
capital, N, Notice
how we want to run away from feeling bad

and How, specifically, we want to run away:

Blame?
Off to the movies, the internet, the television?
Food in the mouth?
Get busy.
Get vigorous.
Read a lot.
Go shopping.
Talk on the phone.
Find people to feel our pain, or agree with us, or at least
Pay Attention to Us
Talk on the phone in order to get the others to do the above

And so on.
Me: I like food and getting vigorous and movies and reading and blame.
You:
Do whatever you do and thus you get to Notice,
capital N, Notice
what your escape from feeling bad is.

Oh, yeah: drinking and drugs. Sugar, the legal drug.

Whatever: that’s a lot of our lives
wrapped up in
our escape from feeling bad programs

learning these programs
these diversions from real living
is one great gift
of feeling bad

And then, once we’ve noticed what these
runnaway predilictions

the other good thing about feeling bad
is that we get to learn
to deal with it

not as in bully
and bulldoze it away
(that's another escape route)
but
by learning...

usually by discovering that it’s not real
that it is from a believing of a story
that others taught us
and it’s a constricting of our breathing
and our whole mind/body self
and it’s a narrowing away from life in the Now
Falling instead into complaining land
Woe is me land
Damn you land
This isn't fair land
I'm so unlucky land

And so on.
We learn to look and learn
and the Work of Ms. Byron Katie
is great here,

Four questions
After we Write it Down
And then maybe we are ready to check out the
Turn around

A revolution, really, revolve the whole Feeling Bad into a tumbler
and turn it around
mix it up
question it
get under it
stand under understand
that’s all a good start

Getting our lives back:
The feeling bad wants to be the boss,

but curiosity
and learning
and really inward honesty
and self humor
ah, with those
we can use the feeling bad

As a springboard
A springboard to inner freedom and
Peace and
Happiness and
Love, even

Hmmm.
That sounds pretty good.