Practice becoming aware of the tonality (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) of every contact through the senses, body, and mind, catching it early to prevent automatic, potentially harmful reactions.
Recognize that pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neutrality is not inherent in an external object or person, but is a conditioned experience arising within oneself based on perception.
Instead of reacting by pushing away or attacking unpleasant feeling tones, observe them without immediate action and explore ways to engage creatively and insightfully.
Use meditation to intimately familiarize yourself with feeling tones by observing the tonality of breath, physical sensations, and sounds, noting their pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality.
View neutral feeling tone not as boring, but as a restful baseline for the organism, a stable and achievable state that offers a path back from unpleasantness.
In daily life, notice shifts in tonality primarily in the body (e.g., heart, belly area) before the mind creates a narrative, and then identify the specific contact that triggered the shift.
Challenge the tendency to treat people unequally based on the feeling tones they evoke or society’s assigned tonality, striving to treat all individuals with equal regard.
Listen to others totally and 100%, without planning your response, to allow for creative, clear, compassionate, and relevant insights to emerge in your interaction.
Use difficult periods, like a pandemic, as an opportunity to consciously see others differently and renew relationships, moving beyond automatic, habitual perceptions.
During challenging times, consciously adopt the motto “Why stress? Take your time” to reduce self-harm and harm to others, promoting stability and clarity.
Practice rejoicing in all the people who help you survive and in what is still working, fostering gratitude for those who endanger themselves for collective well-being.
Increase your awareness of the full range of pleasant feeling tones, including subtle experiences, rather than only seeking intense “plus five” pleasantness.
Understand that unethical actions often stem from either pushing away unpleasant tonality or grasping at pleasant tonality, encouraging mindful engagement with these drives.
Understand love as more than just an intense, pleasant feeling tone; cultivate it as appreciating, sharing, and growing together, accepting that the feeling tone will naturally fluctuate.
Combine deep, focused meditation (depth dimension) with applying mindfulness and ethical principles in daily life and relationships (width dimension) to dissolve limiting habits.
Be aware that social media platforms reinforce pleasant and unpleasant tonality, which can lead to biased perceptions, group-think, and the targeting of negative feelings towards specific groups.
Foster self-love to easily generate a pleasant feeling tone within yourself, which serves as a stable foundation for extending love and positive feelings to others.