Working with anger, depression, self-judgement, and not giving away our power to cultural programming

Excerpt:

OJ Harvey at the University of Colorado, went around the world and took samples of literature from different cultures to see how often this verb “to be” was used in judging people’s actions good, bad, right, wrong, etc. And he correlated this with measures of violence - violence toward oneself, violence toward others, and he finds a high correlation the more cultures think in terms of what people are and their actions, the more violence in those cultures.

These four feelings are very helpful because when we feel these feelings, we can use them as an alert, that we’re thinking in a way that’s contributing to violence on the planet. And here is an opportunity for us to transform that thinking.

So what are these four friends that we have?

anger, depression, guilt, and shame.

Whenever we’re feeling those feelings, we are thinking in a way that we have been taught to think for about 10,000 years. A way of thinking designed to make us obedient to authority, but a way of thinking that is not conducive to safety and peace on our planet. So we can use those feelings as a wake up signal. Wake up, we’re thinking in a way that’s not conducive to peace, on the planet. Let’s transform the thinking into one that promotes peace on our planet.

So let me show you what I mean.

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