TUESDAY'S THOUGHT... What do we do with emotions?

Hello all. Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I got caught up with the emergency food parcels.

But today is Tuesday, and this morning we had our first virtual sitting. It was different. Interesting. Not a bad experience, all things considered. And doing things in a way we are not used to is always interesting, opening our mind to something that is perhaps not "as usual" or not "as I know it".

We had a brief discussion before the sitting about using Mindfulness now, at home. This is more or less what we spoke about:

A good definition of Mindfulness is "a knowing or clear awareness of what is happening in our mind at any time, without getting carried away with it." And this is a useful skill to develop because we all know what it feels like to get carried away by anger, fear, anxiety or sadness. It is a very human experience.

It is also very human to believe those things which we call negative emotions are 'a problem'. We treat them as if they are a problem. Usually we push them down. And you don't have to be a Zen monk to know that ignoring problems doesn't make them go away.

But we also do the opposite: we have a tendency to embody those feelings. We take them on. We over-identify with them, start to believe they are us. And then get carried away with them. Sometimes we even take on other people's feelings and make them our own.

Our language reflects it: we say things like "I am" in front of our feelings. I am angry. I am anxious. As if it is me. Or a permanent, solid part of me, in our cells, in our fibre. But when you think about it, where is this problem of ours situated? In our heart? Stomach? In our mouth? In our brain?

Someone mentioned this morning that we do get the sensation of feelings in our body when we experience feelings. I agree. The mind-body link is very strong, and the one influences the other, back and forth.

With our mindfulness practice we learn to recognise that our problem feelings are not us, don't reside inside us permanently, even if we feel them very strongly in our physical body, for instance a stomach clenching sensation when we are scared. Although feelings can manifest a physical sensation inside us, with mindfulness we become aware of our tendency to over-identify with those feelings. When we identify with feelings, we feel those feelings become solid within us.

In meditation we work with the idea that a feeling is something that arises in our mind and moves in and out. In and out of our mind, in and out of our body. It doesn't stay. It is not permanent. So in Mindfulness, whatever thoughts arise during our sitting, our practice is to observe, to be aware of what arises and to remember that feelings are impermanent, not to get carried away by them, not to over-identify with them. We don't have to be worried about feelings which come up.

During our meditation practice we try to remember that:

1.) Feelings are just feelings. They are not you. And they can't be permanent. Even if you tried very hard to hold on to a feeling, you will notice soon your mind slips away from it.

2.) You don't have to follow those feelings - or even respond! The next time you feel angry, before you feel you have to respond, take a deep breath. Maybe you don't need to follow those feelings. That's difficult, because when we are in a situation where someone does something we don't like, we feel we must respond - or else become the world's biggest doormat. But do we always need to? Next time strong feelings arise, take a moment and see what they mean.

3.) You cannot hold two opposing feelings at any one time. You cannot feel worried and happy at the same time. So the next time you feel irritation coming on, take a walk in the garden or remember something that makes you feel happy and you will soon notice that your irritation cannot exist with it at the same time.

Another point made this morning is that it isn't a bad thing to have negative feelings, to be irritated or angry or anxious, because it teaches us. Definitely. Our strongest feelings are our biggest teacher. When we learn to sit with all our feelings, regardless of whether it's something we label good or bad, when we learn to embrace them all, we can learn. We come out stronger, better people at the other end.

To learn to manage our feelings, not get carried away by it is part of the mindfulness practice. We all know taking decisions from a place of 'freaking out' doesn't usually result in good decisions. Taking a breath, examining, investigating our feelings doesn't mean we bury them. It means we can move to a calm space first, and afterwards take action from that place of peace, balance, wisdom and equanimity.

Mindfulness practice is about understanding what is happening in our mind, a knowing or clear awareness of what is happening in our mind at any time, and then accepting what comes up, not judging it good or bad, just observing.

Mindfulness is also about accepting what is happening around us right now as reality. It's about letting go of fighting it in our mind, getting stuck in how we think things "should be". When we accept something as it is, we have a much easier time dealing with it and then making changes. It's a very subtle thing, this fighting of reality that goes on in our mind.

Acceptance, in this sense, in meditation, isn't the same as throwing your hands up and giving up.

Acceptance is recognising that we fight things around us because we want to control things. We do it even when we sit and meditate: we often try to control our breath. We have detailed plans in mind for how we want things to happen around us, and we stress and suffer and struggle only when we fight what is reality, right in front of us now. Once we realise that we can't control what's happening around us, once we can patiently accept what is, it makes our mind calm and easier, more relaxed. So we can take action from a place of calm.

Thanks to everyone for joining us in this first virtual sitting this morning

Have a happy Tuesday.

Metta

_/\_

Mx