Is Positivity Untrue?

QUESTION:

When you say that negativity is not the truth, it is comforting to me. But then my mind says, well... why is negativity not true and the positivity is true? thoughts?

ANSWER:

Negativity comes from illogical fear (not legitimate fear where we are really in physical danger) and anything that comes from fear is not going to be appropriate to our lives. In the same sense that negativity is not true, is not reality, so also positivity is not true, not reality. It is better described as “magical thinking.”

However positivity usually comes not from fear but for love of something—striving to be happy, a mind meditation to get out of negativity. Anything we do out of love is usually appropriate to our lives in some way. So in this way although positivity is not any more reality than negativity, it is still useful.

Since the mind always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought, repetitive, on-purpose thinking about positive things is instructions to the mind to put us in touch with all the positive and cheerful things in our memory banks and can turn us in a more productive direction than suffering with depression or anxiety. We will be more able to make a choice of some task at hand that we can turn our attention to and leave our concentration on how bad we feel.