The Opposites!

The Opposites!
Don’t suppress your emotions, only change their inner polarity.

When the mind is disturbed by wrong thoughts, ponder on the opposites
— Patanjali’s sutra

This is a beautiful method. It will be useful for you. For example, if you are feeling discontented, what to do? Patanjali says ponder on the opposite: if you are feeling discontented, contemplate about contentment, what is contentment.

Bring a balance. If your mind is angry, bring compassion in. Think about compassion; and, immediately, the energy changes, because they are the same; the opposite is the same energy. Once you bring it in, it absorbs. When you sense that
anger is rising with you, contemplate on compassion.

Do one thing: keep a statue of Buddha, because that statue is the gesture of compassion. Whenever you are angry, go into the room, look at Buddha, sit Buddha-like, and feel compassion. Suddenly, you will see a transformation happening within you: the anger is changing, excitement gone...compassion arising. And it is not different energy; it is the same energy — the same energy of anger — changing its quality, going higher. Try it.

It is not suppression, remember. You go on pushing it down and you smile and you act as if you are not angry — and anger is bubbling there, boiling, ready to explode. Then it is suppression. No, we are not suppressing anything, and we are not creating a smile or anything; we are just changing the inner polarity.

The opposite is the pole. When you feel hateful, think of love. When you feel desire, think of desirelessness and the silence that comes in it. Whatsoever the case may be, bring the opposite in and watch what happens within you. Once you
have the knack for it, you become a master. Now you have the key: any moment, anger can be changed into compassion, any moment, hate can be turned into love, any moment, sadness can become ecstasy. Suffering can become bliss, because
suffering has the same energy as bliss; the energy is not different. You just have to know how to channel it.

Whenever there is anger, it can be transformed into compassion, but you have no idea how to do it. And it is not an art which can be taught; it is a knack. You have to do it and learn it through the process of doing it; there is no other way. It is just like swimming: you have to swim, and err, and sometimes get into danger, and sometimes you might feel lost — that life is lost and you are drowning. You have to pass all this, and then the knack comes, then you know what it is.

Next time, when there is anger, or there is sadness, just sit silently and allow the sadness to move towards happiness — just help push it a little. Don’t do too much and don’t be in a hurry. Sadness will be reluctant at first to go towards happiness, because for centuries, for many lives, you have not allowed it to move that way, it will be reluctant — much like a horse you are forcing towards a new path on which it has never been, it will be reluctant, it will try to go back to the old pattern, to the old path, to the old rut. But, by and by, persuade it, seduce it. Tell sadness, “Don’t be afraid. It is really groovy; come this way. You can become happiness, and there is nothing wrong in it, nothing impossible.” Just persuade, talk to your sadness, and one day, you will suddenly find that sadness has moved into a new channel: it has become happiness. That day, a yogi is born, not before it. Before that you are simply preparing.

Om Namah Shivay