Archives for August 2011

“Be still and know yourself as the Truth you have been searching for. Be still and let the inherent joy of that Truth capture your drama and destroy it in the bliss of consummation. Be still and let your life be lived by the purpose you were made for. Be still and receive the inherent truth of your heart.”

~Ganagji

Note: This is the third in a series on difficult emotions. You can find the first two posts by clicking these links: The Art of Navigating Difficult Emotions, The Highly Intelligent Approach to Difficult Feelings.

Picture this: In the course of your daily life, something happens that triggers a feeling in you. You notice that something has shifted, so you stop and relax. Ahhhh. Your awareness is so spacious that any experience that appears is received and welcomed.

You aren’t put off by the strong emotion. You don’t avoid it out of fear or discomfort. You stay calm and present and feel the sensations and energy in your body. You pay attention to this experience with acceptance and openness as long as it feels right, then you go about your day.

This is the possibility for all of us when it comes to difficult emotions. Think of them as weather. They arrive, then pass through. So simple, so effortless.

Now another scenario: Something happens that really pisses you off. Your mind revs up with stories of self-righteousness and revenge. How dare he…I’ll show him. You feel enraged, indignant, and fired-up – your jaw tense and throat constricted. What to do? Have a drink, blow off some steam, yell at the dog, anything to get the stress to stop eating away at you.

How to Be With Emotions

Every moment of this precious life presents an opportunity. We can stay asleep or wake up. We can ignore, defend, strategize, analyze, negotiate, or give up when difficult emotions appear. Or we can relax, receive, honor, and allow.

The experiences that arise in you are life – the way that life happens to be flowing through you at any given moment. They are a sacred offering. If a strong feeling comes, don’t make it into a problem. Because it isn’t. Let it be a friend and not an enemy. Stay uninvolved and let it run its natural course. It is not you.

Abandon the story in your mind, and you will notice sensations in your body. Let them be – every vibration, tension, and tightness. These are remnants of a time long ago when you learned that feelings weren’t safe. They went underground and lodged in your body. Now is the time for their liberation.

Stop the effort of resisting and simply be. Relax. Be still. Let the integrity of your felt experience show you the way. Give it a chance and you will see that it is OK. You are OK.

Nothing to Get Rid Of

Remember that the point is not to get rid of any experience, including your feelings. Let me say this again. You do not have the power to force feelings to disappear or compel desirable experiences to last. The only thing you have any control over is where you place your attention.

Do you want to know true happiness that is undisturbed by anything? Do you want to be free of the cyclones that emotions bring to you? Here is the secret: Don’t try. Simply, effortlessly allow what arises to be. Whether it intensifies or goes away entirely is not your business. Your only job is to relax and receive.

Let go of preferences for or against, and you will see problems melt away. Feelings come? No problem. Strong sensations? No problem. Bliss overflowing? No problem. Everything welcome just as it is.

Everyday Examples – Just Like You

A friend of mine who often has trouble sleeping took a new approach one night. Instead of getting lost in the mental noise about her to-do list and frustration about not being able to sleep, she relaxed her focus. She discovered strong energy running through all parts of her body. She stayed with it, let it be, felt it completely, and the suffering released. Not long after, dreamland.

In the course of a conversation, another friend remembered some very difficult times from his childhood. He told me that later that night, he felt a strong burning sensation in his chest that he never noticed before. And he let it be present. So soothing.

And members of our community here at A Flourishing Life have offered more examples in the comments from the first post in this series.

Northstar offers: “I have been getting acquainted with sadness lately and the more that I just “sit” with it – the more compassion I seem to be developing towards myself. I’m also getting a bit more adept at watching the “story” that sometimes goes with it and allowing it to float by. When I do that then the sensations of sadness can still be there but there is no actual ‘pain’ – if I get into my head and hooked into a story about it – that’s when I experience pain.”

Galen writes: “I finally wore myself out from all the effort and energy it took to keep the “bad” feelings at bay. Once they were “loose” I found that they weren’t so scary after all.”

And from Joy: “For most of my life, I used to ignore/deny/bury any feelings that were “less than”. I know this emotional pain resulted in physical pain. When I chose to heal past wounds, I began to acknowledge feelings as they surfaced, hold space for them until they pass..there is a natural flow that is peace filled when I honor this process. Fear of a feeling gives it power to direct my steps, faith in a feeling allows me to fold it in and create with it. And the depth and heart opening that comes with Feeling All leaves me in wonder and gratitude:)”

See the possibility? No endpoint, ever. Just the continuous flow of experience and the living as harmony itself.

Let yourself return home. Melt into being. Receive emotions but don’t get involved with them, and live as the love that you are.

How’s it going? Please feel free to share your insights, questions, or confusions. I’d love to hear…

“This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.’
~Thich Nhat Hanh

As we established in the last post, avoiding, ignoring, or hiding from difficult emotions simply doesn’t work. Here is the truth: the more we run from our feelings, the more they run us.

Take a look at your own life to see if this is true:

• Are you limiting yourself when you know you are capable of more? Fear is driving you.
• Do you drink or eat too much? Some feeling is eating away at you.
• Do you complain? You are likely to be irritated or disappointed.
• Are you emotionally triggered by certain people? Do you continually make self-defeating choices? You haven’t yet discovered the feeling that is the root cause.

We dance around our feelings for good reason – we are programmed to avoid pain and seek pleasure. The highly intelligent approach to difficult emotions invites us to rise above this programming. It asks us to courageously shine the light on our experience and receive it fully as it is.

When we can relax with all experiences that appear, miracles happen. We know that what we resist persists. Likewise, the end of resistance to feelings is the end of being ruled by them. As feelings are seen for what they actually are, conditioned tendencies fall away, revealing the natural state – clear, open, aware. The possibility for all of us is to live as this fullness.

School Is in Session: What Is a Feeling?

Before we can learn how to be with feelings, we must understand precisely what they are. What is a feeling? To answer this question, get out the explorer’s headlamp. Be unflinching in your desire to know the truth in your own direct experience, for this is where freedom lies. Bring awareness to the actual experience of your feelings, and what do you find? Is there a thing called sadness or fear?

Surprising as it may sound, when you look for a feeling, you can’t find it. What you do find are sensations in the body and a story that you tell yourself in your mind. You feel afraid? What is actually present are thoughts about what may or may not happen in the future along with tension, vibration, and jitteriness in the body. Sad? You will usually find a story running in your mind about lack, insufficiency, or regret along with a heavy or dense sensation in the chest.

The Facts About Feelings

This fact – that feelings are actually thoughts and physical sensations – holds the key to freedom from them. But rather than adopt this point of view, look inside with a laser focus. Where is the feeling? What is actually present?

How surprising it is to learn that when we avoid a feeling, what we are actually avoiding is the experience in the body – the physical sensations. We can spin around in the story forever, but until we are willing to receive these sensations in the space of awareness, to allow them to be fully as they are, the feeling will persist.

School Continues: Know How the Story Works

Giving attention to any thought will take you away from the direct experience of the feeling in your body. Again, check it out in your own experience. When you are captured by a feeling, how often do you repeat in your mind the story of what happened or what you should have done or what you need to do? This can go on for years keeping the feelings – and the suffering – firmly in place.

The function of these energized thoughts is to divert you from directly experiencing the sensations. Why not feel them? Two reasons.

• We imagine that if we allow a feeling in its totality that we won’t survive the pain.  In other words, we are terrified.
• We simply didn’t know that this was the path to freedom.

Maybe you have had the same experience as me. If I’m angry at someone, I will “wake up,” becoming aware that I have been rehearsing over and over in my mind what I would like to say to the person. My hands are clenched and my body is tense and contracted. I’m clearly having a reaction, but I didn’t realize it because I was lost in the thoughts.

Paying attention to thoughts will never release you from the feeling. Resist and ignore the sensations in your body, and you will live in the story forever. Let the stories go, no matter how enticing they may be, bring openness and compassion to the felt experience in your body, and even long-standing patterns, habits, and grudges will begin to release.

Sometimes the Story Needs to Be Told

Despite the wisdom of letting go of the story, sometimes it needs to be told. Not in the same compulsive way you have been telling yourself forever, but to have it be truly heard by someone. Find a trusted friend or professional, and tell the whole story – for the last time.

Be willing to say “goodbye” to it like an old friend who has long outstayed her welcome. Then begin to peek into the feelings in your body that have been driving it.

The Possibility

Put down the fight with your own experience. Then you will be available to the peace, joy, and love that are your natural state. This is what is already here, waiting for you to return home.

The next post will be all about relaxing into the bodily sensations. For now, I invite you to reflect on these questions:

• Can you identify the stories you tell yourself that keep your feelings stuck?
• Can you play with letting them float across your awareness, not giving them attention?
• Do you notice any resistance to not feeding the story?
• Can you find the physical sensations? Can you simply let them be?

As always, all questions, reports, and insights are welcome. I’d love to hear…