My latest article is on the Three Poisons of Buddhism - anger, greed, and ignorance, and tools for finding and releasing their roots within our own consciousness.

Part of the reason I wanted to write this article is that I feel focusing on the positive gets enough play in our current spiritual culture, because of the popularity of The Secret and related law of attraction teachings. Although these teachings have tremendous value, I feel at times they can lead people to repress negativity, rather than face and deal with it. To truly grow we need to 'face our demons' - recognize and clearly see the roots of negative emotions that arise within us, so that we can release them.

Thoughts and comments?

Love it, love it, love it!!!

I get to the point sometimes where if I hear one more "Suzi Sunshine" glazing over something that should be addressed litterally I want to say something like, "Ya, well you know, I just saw a cochroach comit suicide today and you know what? He looked like he was enjoyin it..."

I've had people meet with me and their spirits are almost ashamed for feeling hurt, mad and fed up. They'll kind of hint and use a round about way of saying something until I finally just fill in the blank with, "it sucks."

It's like a 1000 lb elephant is lifted and they're like "ya, it really does. You mean I can say it?"

"say it? Shout it in the streets or go find an ocean and scream it out there to the Universe 'cause they alread know it does. You're brave for being here, we all are. It's like a spiritual gym. It hurts, but you have to know it does in order to understand what to tackle next. Eventually you'll breeze through it and be able to help others sitting where you are today."

Well said, Elleise.

Thank you connie

I swear, I've had more "writer's block" trying not offend this person or that person to where I'm so far away from what I wanted to say, before I know it I'm like o.k. where was I going with the good ship lolipop?

I so agree!! And often our strength comes from facing our demons, shadows, dark side - whatever you want to call it - and coming out the other side. I think knowing how to work with those cycles is so important. And I understand the value of a 'sunshine' mentality sometimes, and for some people - it is easy in today's jaded culture to become very negative and complain all the time - but I do feel like I see so many people that have developed guilt complexes (as you mention) around certain emotions. I mean I can literally feel them knotted up inside with unexpressed anger, and they are smiling and 'thinking positive'. They are blocking off an entire part of themselves, which at best closes them down, and at worst leads to disease...

I am finding more spiritual teachers talking about this lately, so things seem to be swinging back around to a balance...

Awesome article Lisa. I do something periodically called "complaint free living," and I wear a purple plastic bracelet that looks like many of those other bracelets people wear for a cause. When people ask me about it, I tell them I wear it to remember not complain. They are shocked.

What people don't get is that not complaining doesn't = positive thinking. It means becoming a problem solver rather than someone who goes on and on about stuff - but never does anything about it!

I wholeheartedly believe we benefit from facing our demons, and figuring out what they are telling us I think it helps us to move out of victim mode and into life participation mode

Lisa, this is a wonderful article that should be read by all. Thank you.

I agree Phyllis! I had to post it on my facebook page

Thanks all for your insights and support, I'm glad you liked it. Deanna, I love the no-complain bracelet - Jilly and Lisa Shea were doing something very similar a couple of years ago, and documented some of their experiences in an old thread around here somewhere! It is amazing how easily we can fall into complaining, and although I think there is such a thing as healthy venting, most of the time it is not.

And I so agree with all of you on the value of facing and working with our darker aspects, and coming to own the gifts the process can bring us...

P.S. Great new picture Deanna

That's a wonderful article, Lisa, and it is very true that we need to examine our negative feelings and find ways to resolve them. I loved your "uproot" language, that these things grow in our mind and we need to seek them out, acknowledge that they are there, and then gently pry them out.

I.e. it's not good to ignore them and allow them to fester. But it's also not good to obsess about them and give them time and energy and focus. Life is too short to spend all your time thinking about what's wrong. It's good to SEE what's wrong - and then to take action to make it better.

Yes I wear a bodhi seed bracelet pretty much daily now and it is my "do not complain" bracelet. As Lisa mentioned, it's not about keeping quiet when something is wrong. Rather, it's about being constructive and proactive about finding solutions. If my waiter brings my soup out cold, I do mention it, but in a gentle, supportive way, and I thank him when he brings me a new one, and I let it go.

I'll go find that old thread, it was a good one!

I agree that it's a matter of keeping one's inner and outer equaniminity. I have been working on the extreme couponing thing lately and it could be soooo easy to get frustrated and snarky with some of the cashiers. But it's just a matter of keeping one's inner cool, being friendly and understanding, and having no charge behind such scary words as, "can we talk to your manager?"

I am very proud that I have been able to do this - be nice and accomodating yet firm. It's a matter of being committed to interacting that way - i think being grumpy just comes too readily when one feels resistance.

That is a fantastic example Jill - you hit an issue and you speak up, and you do it in a way that's gentle and understanding!

Hi all, since this article resonated with a lot of people, this week I did an article on Buddhaghosa's three personality types, which correspond to the three 'shadows' or 'poisons' of greed, anger and ignorance. He wrote in the 5th century, and recommended specific meditation techniques for each type of person...very interesting...

Lisa, what a great article!!! I can see that I am the greed/faith type! I was just envying a friend's iPad recently. And then feeling very disappointed that it's not in my budget, and probably won't be for a very long time. So I focused on what I do have, and things I am grateful for. For one, at least I have a computer!!!

But I like that idea of meditating on impermanence. That seems to be a big one for me!! I do get caught up in needing things to make me feel better. Sometimes life is just so stressful, that a new book or purse solves ALL my problems (at least for a little while LOL).

At least I know this about myself now, but I still have difficulty with helping to ease that feeling without making a purchase.

Lisa- that is a great article- thank you for posting that!

Deanna - do you have any substitutes that are not purchase oriented? Like a hot bath or favorite movie?

Glad you liked it Deanna. I love this approach because it emphasizes that different spiritual practices resonate with each of us - that's a very individual process. For a long time, working with anger was my biggest issue, although anyone who knew me casually would probably never have seen this, it was deep-seated. So the teachings on handling that really resonated with me. Now things have shifted, and I'm working on other fronts. I think greed is a tough one for all of us, especially in this consumeristic culture...

I want to thank you all for validating my own beliefs regarding anger. In short, I have buried my anger for over 60 years, and after recent explosive events in my life this year, I have finally released it. Not all, but it's no longer being buried and denied. I have been exploding over the smallest things, but only verbally in my home, and not to hurt anyone. It's finally coming out - getting rid of the poison! All the years that I buried my anger and hurt, and 'turned the other cheek' and lived in emotional denial (always being nice!) I caused this negative energy to bring illness and disease to my body and torment to my mind. I've had psychiatrists telling me how unhealthy it is to bury anger and not let it out in some safe way, but I was so conditioned to hide my feelings that I found this impossible - until this year, when my world fell apart in a different way. It was like a volcano erupting. I can testify that denying anger can really make your body very sick - and your mind and emotions too. Peace!

I absolutely agree!

You can be the most peaceful, nice, polite individual out there, but if it isn't genuine and truthfully, it's kind of hard to feel perfect 100% of the time to be accomodating to everything, it takes a toll.

It can come up, just like that saying "dis-ease." I know it probably sounds like such a cliche, but I've witnessed and experience the effects of emotional "poison."

Once you're free, it shows on the inside and the out, making you even look quite younger than you really are

Thanks Elleise. I must go and look at your Clairvoyance forum. it sounds interesting. Best wishes.

Onealone - thanks so much for sharing, and good luck with your process. I so agree with Elleise that this shift in approach can really change everything for the better, on the level of mind, body and spirit.

Thanks Lisa. You are both so understanding, and I am so happy to be here.

I decided to add my current post onto this thread, because it has been one of the more popular threads this year, and it's worth revisiting as we head into the New Year. I always think of Solstice as a time to go inward and work with my 'shadows' in preparation for the 'rebirth' opportunity of the New Year...

This week I posted a review of Tsultrim Allione's Audio Course The Mandala of the Enlightened Feminine. Despite the name, this course is not a women's spirituality offering. Instead it is of the same tradition that inspired this original post - practices for acknowledging and transmuting the parts of ourselves thayt obstruct our happiness - anger, ignorance, fear, greed, unworthiness, etc.

In the practice she offers here, we work to transform our expression of these energies from their obstructed to their enlightened state...

I'd love to hear anyone's take on the energies they feel they most embody and would like to transform in the New Year!

If I think about negative emotion in my world it seems to be frustration. Maybe frustration that things are slower / more challenging than they "need to be". But then I have to accept that in our imperfect world that they are NORMAL the way they are. I am expecting something unrealistic. That is unfair. I should be grateful for the speed I get.

That's interesting Lisa, because having met you, you seem like a very calm, patient person. But I also get frustrated with things not being as 'efficient' as they could be...if that's the cause of the frustration, in this particular Buddhist psychological system it would probably be classified as a perfectionist tendency, and could be a combination Vajra/Karma type...the enlightened expression of these types is 'clear, insightful, truthful' in the case of the Vajra, and 'compassionate, service-oriented, productive' in the case of the Karma type, and that seems to fit you quite well!

Dear Lisa -

I do strive to be patient but I'm not always successful

I was thinking about this some more, and an analogy I came up with is planning out a drive an expecting all lights to be green along the way. That would be an unrealistic expectation, but I think I do that sometimes. Instead, I should plan out a trip expecting at least half the lights to be red, because that is *normal*. And if it's a critical trip to make in a certain amount of time, I should expect that it *could* be that on this trip all lights happen to be red, and account for that possibility.

That way I can work towards my goals smoothly, even though life has its chaotic moments.