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Whatever way I am feeling, I can just as easily feel any different way I want.

If I am feeling worried about any situation that I have been paying attention to, I can just as easily give thanks for the situation, exactly as it is.

If I am feeling cheated, I can just as easily feel freed from expectations. 

If I am feeling bored, I can just as easily feel peaceful and calm. Let me take a moment to make these, and other, adjustments.

*

*

You can give thanks for everything, just as it is. Observe the permutations, the constant changes of your world, the same way as you would observe the passage of a train very far off from you.  You may regard it with love and wish it well, but none of it involves you.

*

 

*

Every feeling represents a decision. When you are aware of a bad feeling in you, perhaps anger, jealousy, or fear, first acknowledge its presence in you. Then feel its effects, the racing thoughts, short breaths, hatred. Now that you know what they are, deliberately search for their opposites. They would be a quiet mind, slow breathing, and love.  Take longer to feel these opposites. Do this as often as you have a bad feeling.  All too often you are content to live with it, wrapping it around you like a tattered gray blanket, not knowing, not caring, its provenance.

*

This is unnecessary, brother.  When these gray ghosts, these bad feelings, begin to intrude on your consciousness, take a moment to see them and greet them.

You could say: Jealousy, I see you. You threaten my ego. You make me mistrust others and believe they have something I want. Jealousy, you make me deft and passive aggressive. But there you are; it is jealousy. I see you. You wind me up so easily. You can make me worry and plot and plan for days. You have been ascendant over me.

*

This is going to change now.

Let me inhabit you and find your opposite.  My stomach should be calm and easy; my breathing deep and long. Let me pause now to make these adjustments.

My shoulders should be loose.  Keep the breaths coming extra long. No tension can get a hold  in a fully breathing stomach; there is no place for it; it is whooshed out with the breath.

If I feel a hatred for the usual round of activities, let me replace that with gratitude for the calm and respite I am experiencing right now.

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*

If I feel negativity of any kind, even before my mind has the chance to find a reason for it, let me send it away. Thank you for making me aware of you. You may leave now, forever. You may leave now, fear. You may leave now, regret. You may leave now, irritation. You may leave now, all negative feelings. You have been let go. There is nothing for you to do here. Thank you. You are off the payroll now.

 

*

Instead, we decide to experience eternal calm. This starts with a decision within you; what do you want to experience?

Let me inhabit peace and calm with no opposite. Let me inhabit peace and calm forever. May they inhabit me. Let me be beyond all possibility of upset or fear. Traveled on, leaving them as in a vast desert landscape with no roads. Gone. An eternal peace in their place.

 

Inhabit gratitude