Have you ever seen rage in yourself? Generally, we don’t want to see certain states within us because we’ve been conditioned to think of them as being morally “wrong” for us. We don’t understand that these dark states are part of an interior world that can be changed when the light of awareness is shined upon them.

What happens when we see things about ourselves that we don’t want to see?

In order to avoid looking at itself, the mind will seize on the rage it has seen, and it will try to explain it. It will take the initial darkness, the negative energy, and because it seems to be basically out of control, the mind will try to make of it something that it can deal with. When we live from a nature that does not want to see its “self,” then there’s no chance that this level of self, this nature, can ever change. When we hide from ourselves the way we feel, the only thing that we’re accomplishing is the assurance that these feelings will return again… only more of them! It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: we condemn and doom ourselves by being afraid of the darkness in us. We have one thing to do with our own states, and that is to see them as they are, to catch the part of us that’s afraid of being what we’ve just seen, and to stop trying to hide anything anymore… because we’re on this earth to learn.

As with all that exists, negative states are created to be transformed; part of their purpose within us is to be changed into something new and true. Everything that happens within us is all part of this beautiful process: anything that we are willing to bring into the light of ourselves will be changed by the light we bring it into.

So instead of going along with the answers that you give yourself for why you feel the way you do, and instead of making excuses, rationales, or justifications for your state (which are the mind’s way of trying to deflect the state) — don’t hide it. Just simply see it. If you don’t explain yourself to yourself, then all that’s left is yourself and your awareness of it. You’re not talking to yourself anymore about what you see. There’s just seeing. Don’t hide anymore. There is something beautiful that doesn’t have fear in it that wants to touch you. Its touch is what changes us. We cannot change ourselves in a truly whole and meaningful way. Our tired old excuses for these still-in-the-dark parts of us are a part of the darkness itself, which is why they change nothing real. Stop negotiating with negative states. Bring that dark thought or emotion into the light of your awareness, and allow higher awareness to do what it is intended to do, which is to change it, the moment, and you.