How to be Positive?

How to be Positive?

This is the question I received from one of my friends and was asked to share my view on the same. Though the question was specific to the pandemic, my views are more generalized. 

When I heard the question I was like - how to be positive is not a tough question to answer because we are by default positive. we become negative by choice only.

So why it is such a tough question and one of the most sought after questions. 

The reason is simple, when we are talking about being positive we have a feeling and we think that we are in the right direction. But have we ever asked this question 

Do our efforts to become positive is nothing more but a deception of our mind?

Let me share a story I heard in one of the discourses of Saint which I feel is apt over here -

From heaven descend Goodness and Badness on earth. Goodness was beautiful and Badness was ugly. Everybody was praising Goodness and trying to shy away from Badness. Seeing this Badness witnesses threat to her survival. Badness then came out with a plan. Badness took Goodness to a pond and ask her to take a bath. As Goodness enter the pond to take the bath, Badness took the cloths of Goodness wore them and ran away. Since than Goodness is running after Badness and trying to make people believe that the one with good and beautiful cloths is in realty Badness but no-one is agreeing to the same.

The story was marked with a conclusion that this what Badness does in the real world. Badness has no existence of its own rather it cannot survive if it is naked and transparent. Badness thus requires the covering of Goodness to flourish. For example - We are lying for the good of my friend, I am lying so that I can help someone. 

For every wrong deed we do, we try to cover it or support it by good intention.

let us understand this:

what is a lie - an absence of truth

what is anger - an absence of peace

the definition of every Badness is an absence of Goodness. 

Now let us ponder over it - stealing from one and helping others is it justified. No! it is not

Now coming straight on the point, people are getting negative, losing jobs, financial crunches hunger and whatnot these days.

But has we ever gave a thought that the primary problem is not this. The primary problem is of very survival that is life and death.

But we are worried about the above things which we only need if we survive this pandemic and continue to live. This simply means we are by default positive that we will live and overcome this pandemic. 

But our mind is not allowing us to look so much deep-rooted positivism of our own. The Badness is taking the form of worry and trying to set in deeper and deeper and making us waste our precious energy in this hour of need on those aspects which are secondary first of all and on the top of it cannot be dealt with unless and until the lockdown is lifted.

Just think over this and stop feeding self-created negativity with your positivity. 

Remember - even the darkest cloud has a silver lining in it.