Let’s start with another excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book True Love (which I’m loving and highly recommend):
"for Buddhists, we are joy, but we are also pain; we are understanding, but we are also ignorance. Meditating is not transforming oneself into a battlefield where one side is fighting another, where good fights evil.... Buddhist meditation is based on the principle of nonduality. This means that if we are mindfulness, if we are love, we are also ignorance, we are also suffering, and there is no reason to suppress anything at all" (p. 50).Then, and here's the important part, TNH goes on to say: "When the seed of anger manifests on the level of our conscious mind, our immediate awareness, it is because the seed of anger is in the depths of our consciousness, and then we begin to suffer.... The task of the meditator is not to chase away or to suppress the energy of anger that is there but rather to invite another energy that will be able to care for the anger." (pp. 50-51).
You could take what he says here about anger and replace it with any other baser/negative emotion/vice, which I’ve also referred to as qualities of the "lower self' -- i.e. jealousy, worry, defensiveness, selfishness, etc. So the trick, as TNH tells us, seems to be to gradually replace baser emotions with stronger positive emotions/qualities of the higher self. That makes me think of a quote I love from the Baha’i writings: “when a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness.” –Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks
Now back to the original question. Is it not true that even these lower emotions serve their purpose too, e.g., that the purpose of jealousy may be self-preservation? Sure, I certainly agree with that. There is a reason behind all of our reactions. I think this is precisely why we shouldn’t judge ourselves too harshly for having such feelings… not to mention that judging ourselves ends up producing more negative emotions, thus making it harder to move forward into a more positive state of existence. So is that it? Or is there more to it?
1) The first step seems to be to recognize the root of these lower emotions and discover how they’re serving us. We often build them up as defenses and they can work to serve us for years; e.g., I may become defensive, angry and not easily accept people if a number of people have proven un-trustworthy and un-just over the years, say if I’ve been judged for the color of my skin, been abused by a parent or sexually violated by a partner. This defensiveness and anger can serve to keep me safe.
2) The next step is to recognize that, while serving their purpose, these negative emotions, ultimately, do not serve the highest good for our own personal/spiritual growth, nor for that of humanity on the whole. Defensiveness/distrust/anger would keep me from fully expressing my capacity to love, and it is certainly not constructive of peace, harmony, trust and unity.
3) Finally, I believe that at any moment we can choose to trust our own ability to construct a new reality for ourselves. At any moment we can choose to recognize and affirm “I am a loving person”, “I am a trusting person” and imbibe those realities for ourselves. This does require some faith, but I can tell you from my own experience that such affirmations really work. We may need to say them a hundred times before our hearts finally open to their truth, but when we see this genuine deeper truth and recognize that each one of us has these qualities of the higher self in some potential form within us (at least, that's what I believe), we are able to move into using these qualities and to discard our past less constructive patterns.
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