Experiments with Neutrality

Favoring non-judgement over overtly positive thinking.

Photo by David W. Levin; Estes Park, CO, 2024

In recent weeks, I’ve been unusually successful catching myself at the start of habitual, negative thought patterns.

I’m at the very top of an insanely high waterslide. Hundreds of steps leading to the top, so worn and well-trod I never seem to recall climbing them. But here I am at the top. Again. Jet-powered water funneling in from both sides as I mindlessly assume the seated launch position. At that split-second moment, as the water is about to shoot me into a series of highly familiar, pressure- and gravity-fueled twists and turns downward, I have just enough awareness to throw my arms to the sides and catch/hold the guardrails, preventing my descent. I inch my way backwards and slowly regain my footing. I notice where I am. I recall cautiously what I was thinking about, the path I almost went down. I’m standing at the top. Rushing water trying to pull my feet out from under me and pull me down the chute. It’s still precarious. How do I climb down?

Reliably catching myself “in the act” is still so new and rare I never gained much experience with what comes next. Until only recent days, I would almost never stop myself from going down that water slide of negative thought patterns. To the contrary: it felt absolutely necessary to “war-game” scenarios my conditioned mind felt essential to live out in the imagination. I’d go down the slide until, exhausted, some kind of distraction, craving, or seemingly important task would capture my mind’s focus.

So with this new, precious gift of being able to take just a brief pause before descending into negativity, what do I do next?

My first instinct was to adopt a kind of zero-sum/Newtonian approach to neutralizing or healing the negative thoughts: replacing them with equal-and-opposite positive thoughts. What can I be grateful for right now? What blessings have set the course of my life? What am I most looking forward to? What are all the ways in which I’ve been lucky?

To achieve what the Buddha describes as the “middle path,” my initial instincts told me, is to counter the negative with the equal-and-opposite positive. The character and strength of the thoughts would cancel each other out, I believed, resulting in neutrality. Equanimity. Safe and sound on the middle path.

I gave this a try. And something felt off. Not bad or wrong, per say — clearly there’s nothing awful about considering one’s blessings and focusing on gratitude. It just felt…forced, like I was deliberately conjuring up positive feelings and using them as a tool. Not enjoying them, or feeling positive thoughts for their own sake, but leveraging them, fashioning them into a hammer to counteract or even punish the negative thoughts welling up inside of me.

The best I achieved was replacing those alluring, imagined negative thoughts with frantic, somewhat mechanistic counter-thoughts of what made me feel grateful. Better than the water slide of negativity? Sure. But equanimity? Feeling at ease? Feeling joy? Honestly…no.

I’ve become newly obsessed with photography lately. Please forgive this seeming non-sequitur: the relevance lies in something called “exposure compensation” — a feature on modern cameras that allows users to adjust up/down the overall exposure of an image based on the functions under the camera’s control. On my camera, like most, exposure compensation controlled by a small dial and appears like this on the viewfinder:

“0” represents the ideal exposure based on an industry standard. The small white dot appearing to the left (-) or right (+) indicates the camera’s assessment that the exposure may be too dark or too bright. The principle is simple. If the desired composition in your viewfinder risks being under- or over-exposed (relative to industry standard), the photographer or camera can change settings in order to get the meter back to zero/neutral.

Learning about exposure compensation techniques while also wrestling with this negative/positive thought conundrum yielded a helpful visual and realization:

If the image in your viewfinder is too dark — say “-3” on the meter — you don’t solve that by cranking the settings to “+3.” You simply adjust the settings to zero. To neutral. To “just right.”

When I’m on the precipice of “-3” negative/dark thoughts, perhaps the solution isn’t countering them with “+3” positive thoughts, but rather simply, mindfully coming back to zero. To neutral. To non-judgement.

If my goal is the Buddha’s “middle path” and I’m a few feet off that path to the left, is the solution to leap over the middle and spend an equal amount of time off to the right? …or perhaps just get myself to the middle and stay there? (#rhetorical)

So I’ve been giving this a shot. And it’s helping.

When on the precipice of a negative thought spiral or beginning ye olde “war-gaming” scenarios in my head, I try my best to hit the pause button. I recognize my old habit energies are present and wanting action. I no longer aim to replace negative judgements with positive judgements, but rather take stock of the subject matter — the factual people, situations, and conditions that compose my imagined storylines — and apply non-judgement. These people/things are as they are. Right here, right now it is not necessary for me to play out storylines. They — and I — can just be. Should a time come in which action is necessary, I have what it takes to handle it. But that time is not now.

I hope you find this helpful.