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Hello my friends, The crucial question of how to deal with destructive emotions that keep us from acting with wisdom, compassion and loving kindness has been raised in another thread. I take the liberty to quote some of the posts that particularly inspired me to start the current topic, including my own replies to them, as this may serve to highlight some of the complexities that are inevitably involved. Let me start by presenting a simple method from Tibetan Buddhism that I like very much and that I often practise myself. But most of all, I chose this particular method because, in its simplicity and beauty, it is something anybody can use anytime, whether they consider themselves Buddhists or not. And talking about that, by no means do we need to limit this discussion to Buddhist methods. Actually, I would love to hear also from people outside those traditions about what they are doing to deal with negativity they find in themselves and in others. That's why I chose to post this topic in General Discussion rather than in the Buddhist section. That said, I do hope specifically for my new Buddhist friends to chime in. Anyway, may I present now the so-called Tonglen cleansing method. This can be used whenever you encounter a negative emotion either in your environment or in yourself and you feel the urge to do something about it. Once this has been established, you turn your attention to all the other people in the world that are feeling that same emotion. Then you inhale slowly, and while doing so, you take all that negativity into your heart centre, carefully maintaining awareness. There in your heart centre, you visualise some kind of black hole absorbing that dark cloud of negativity (or whatever form you are giving it) completely. Hold your breath for a few seconds. Allow all negativity to be transformed in your heart centre! Now as you exhale, visualise and feel all this cleansed energy emanating from a star-like spot in your heart centre, right where the black hole used to be previously. Allow yourself to bathe in this energy and send it out to your environment and all those people that may benefit from it. If you try this simple exercise, I would love to hear back from you about your experiences. Armando