Are You A Fan of Positive Thinking? Then Think Again
“If you look at life just the way it is, it is positive and negative in equal terms, always.” —Sadhguru
Sadhguru: Too many people in the world are always talking about “positive thinking.” When you say positive thinking, in a way you are trying to escape reality. You only want to look at one side of life while missing out the other. You may ignore the other, but the other will not ignore you. If you do not think about the negative things in the world, you will live in a fool’s paradise and life will get you for it. Right now, suppose black clouds are hanging in the sky. You can ignore them, but they are not going to ignore you. When it rains, it rains. When you get drenched, you get drenched.
You can ignore it and just think everything is going to be okay – it has some psychological and social relevance but no existential relevance. It will only be solace. You try to solace yourself by moving from reality to unreality because somewhere, you believe that you can’t handle reality. And you probably can’t so you succumb to positive thinking. You want to skip the negative and just think positive. Or in other words, you try to avoid the negative.
Whatever you try to avoid becomes the very basis of your consciousness. What you pursue will not be the strongest point in you. What you try to avoid will always be the strongest point in you. Anyone who tries to eliminate one aspect of life and live with the other will only bring misery upon himself.
Dual Nature
The whole existence is happening between two dualities. What you refer to as positive and negative is: masculine and feminine, light and darkness, day and night. Without this, how will life happen? It is like saying you don’t want death, you want only life – there is no such thing. Only because there is death there is life. Only because there is darkness there is light. It is just that you don’t allow the negative to overwhelm you. Let both of them be there and see how to make both of them productive.
If you look at life just the way it is, it is positive and negative in equal terms, always. If you look at it as it is, neither the negative nor the positive can overwhelm you. Only because they are equal, everything is happening the way it is happening. You have to harness both and produce what you can.
A light turns on because there is positive and negative in electricity. A positive result is happening so we don’t mind the negative. If there is a man and a woman, if joy is coming out of them, we don’t mind the man or the woman. Suppose they started creating a lot of negative result, now we think they are a problem. It is not the positive and negative which is the problem, it is the end result that you produce.
You don’t have to resist the positive or the negative, you just have to make a positive result out of it, which is just a question of your capability. If we are concerned about this life, it is very important that we are truthful about where we really are. Only then can we make a journey. Positive thinking has destroyed many possibilities for people. Positive thinking is like this – there’s a poem written by a positive thinker:
A little bird did fly in the sky.
Shit it did in my eye.
But I can neither worry nor cry,
Because I’m a positive thinker.
I thank God and pray that buffaloes don’t fly.
If you are not willing to see life the way it is, there is no way to take a step about it. You can’t do anything about it. You can only do funny things mentally, which can keep you entertained for a while but will never take you anywhere.
Editor’s Note: Here's a bonus! Read two more articles from Sadhguru on positive thinking.
