Distancing ourselves from the negative in life does not mean sinking heads in the sand, denying, resisting, ignoring, or otherwise refusing to pay attention to the negative.

Distancing from the negative includes acknowledging the inevitable negative conditions in life, and then turning to the positive. Turning to the positive is how we distance ourselves from the negative. The positive realm is the only effective realm in which we can get to work relieving the negative.

We cannot create the positive, i.e. the solution, by continuing to focus negatively on the negative. And, we cannot create the positive if we ignore the negative.

Don’t wallow in the negative. We can go there, we can acknowledge the negative, we must acknowledge the negative, for that acknowledgment is crucial in creating and strengthening the desire for the positive opposite.

LA

                                                                               Photo LA

Joy.

Joy is not happiness, necessarily.

Joy can be found in every emotion.

Joy is the fullness of life.

Even in death joy can be present.

When love, heart, and hands ease a passing, joy rejoices.

LA

Photo LA

Some lessons are learned best through pain, some lessons are learned only through pain.

There is nothing like pain that can slap us to attention.

Physical, emotional, spiritual, psychic; you name it, pain can course through the pathways of human experience and instantly stop our lives.

Then what? Many of us, much of the time, want only to alleviate the pain, nothing more.

“Just make it stop.”

We can run from it, we can muffle it, we can avoid it, we can cover it, we can deny it, we can make it “go away”, we can think it went away.

Until we learn what there is to learn from our pain, it is only in hiding, and will come again.

Half a life can go by; a whole life can pass. Our pain will not stop until it has imparted its lesson. Rather, the pain will continue until the lesson is accepted.

And then we learn.

LA

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