My own experiences with intense emotions (both personally and professionally) have convinced me that there is purpose and intelligence inside of all emotional material. Over the past several years in particular, I've noticed a correlation between the feeling of sadness and the experience of grounding. Often times, when I attempt to slow down and connect to the immediate ground of my being, I also notice that I must allow an experience of genuine sadness to move through me as well.
I've also noticed a correlation between "not wanting to feel sadness", and an avoidance of grounding practices like meditation or deep relaxation. Yet, I also know that every single time I've allowed this feeling of sadness into my conscious awareness, I wind up with a sense of incredible gratitude for having reconnected to my tender, immediate experience of being. In fact, those moments of working with this emotion in particular have often taught me that sadness an appropriate expression of grief for having abandoned my immediate experience of myself in the first place.
Consequently, the sadness - or grief - turns out to be the emotional expression that allows me to authentically reconnect with my own wholeness. My point? Difficult emotions do not arise to haunt and persecute us, but rather to invite us back into relationship with our whole dynamic selves.
My other point? The emotional experience is already here whether we acknowledge it consciously or unconsciously. I once heard a brilliant man express the following sentiment about working with difficult emotions: "Whatever arises arises. As a result, we only have two real choices about how we might approach things: face forwards or ass backwards". I believe it's precisely this practice of 'facing' ourselves that ultimately reflects our original beauty back to us.
Beautiful and well-timed to my own lifeline.
ReplyDeleteHere's Pema chipping away at the same, or similar, walls:
ReplyDelete"Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion—our ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the barriers we create when we're afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment—love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy—to awaken bodhichitta.
"An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic; sometimes to anger, resentment and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all."