Filling the Void

One of the first things I learned when trying to overcome negative feelings was that they don’t go away just by telling them to. When the negative feelings overwhelmed me, I knew I didn’t want them and that they were unnecessary pain. I’d tell myself that I shouldn’t be feeling like that and try to make the feelings go away, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t create a vacant empty space or void. Instead I began to realize that the only way to get rid of bad feelings is to replace them with good feelings. That’s when I began to use Truth Tools.

Over time another thing I have learned is that the most powerful of all feelings is love. When I use the Truth Tools to root out negative feelings, the best positive replace the negative feelings is love. For example, if I have negative feelings toward another person it is usually because I am telling a negative story. So I use the Truth Tool Revision or Rewriting and create a new story about the person. I can always tell a story like, “She didn’t realize what she said,” or “She must be having a bad day,” and that can help. It replaces the negative feelings with kindness. But a replacement story that includes love such as, “She is hurting and needs my love,” or “She is my sister and I can love her even when she says or does things I don’t like,” is much more powerful.

The world around us teaches us this same principle. There is no space in which there is absolutely nothing. Even what appears to our eyes to be nothing is full of air. Likewise, trying to create an emotional void only leaves us numb. Instead we can use the Truth Tools to push away negative feelings and then to keep them from coming back, we need to fill in the “space” they vacated with positive feelings.