You know what? I love video posts. These are a lot of fun and I’m feeling called to develop my speaking and presentation skills and so I’d like to do more videos now instead of writing.
So here’s a video where we talk about those times when we get taken over by negative emotions. What to do then?
Today’s post isn’t about something I know, but about something I’m still learning about and would like to have your input on. It has to do with the topic of emotional interdependence in relationships. The question itself is at the end. The majority of the post is just contextual setup and lead-in.
Dependence
When we’re little kids, we’re very dependent upon our families for food, shelter, love, and so on. Without those things, we’d shrivel up and die.
Independence
As we grow up, we begin to develop a sense of independence. We often start to rebel against our parents in our teenage years, go through a time of trying to “find our identities” and develop an independent sense of self, and then eventually move out of our parent’s place and start a life of our own. We develop our independence.
In this independent stage, we can recognize that our happiness is in our own hands. No one else makes us happy. All our emotions are available within, and our mind can act as a sort of gatekeeper or trigger for our emotional states. Realizing this, we recognize that we can simply give ourselves whatever it is we want. For example, the sense of happiness, peace, abundance, well-being, joy, success, or whatever else. Our emotional state of being is completely independent of our external experiences.
Seeing this, we could then say that we could sit around all day visualizing the life we want, injecting ourselves with the emotional stimulation and visualized experiences that we prefer, but you know what? Life is meant to be lived! Visualization and giving yourself what you need yourself is not meant to be a replacement for life, but an addition to it.
Interdependence
Eventually we may come to see that no man is an island. Although much of the journey within is an internal journey that must be walked alone, there’s more to life than the just internal journey. Other people are very important in our lives as well. We can accomplish much more together than we ever could alone. In fact, there are many things in life that you quite simply can’t do yourself. Other people are not only important, but flat out necessary.
Seeing this, we can begin allowing ourselves to become more interdependence and this is where my questions for you guys lies.
We are responsible for our own emotions, yes. No one else is responsible for our happiness and it’s a recipe for suffering to give someone else the responsibility for our emotional well-being. That said, when we enter into a relationship with another, it can be wonderful to have someone there to cheer you up when you’re feeling down, to encourage you and inspire you when you’re feeling discouraged, and to celebrate with you when you’re feeling great.
Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.
-Swedish Proverb
Nevertheless, the person shouldn’t feel obligated to help you, like it’s their duty or their requirement as part of the job. There’s a balance between standing in your own strength and leaning on another for support, between not requiring another to help you out and yet fully opening to them and allowing them to help you out anyways. Where is that balance?
What Do You Guys Think?
There may not be one “right answer” to this, but in terms mutually supporting one another emotionally from a place of unconditional love, what would you guys say is a beneficial way for the two people in a relationship to relate to each other?
Maybe sometimes you help them heal. Other times you leave them be. Things change depending upon situation, context, personality, etc. and so there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
Nevertheless, what have you guys done in the past in your relationships and what’s worked for you? What would you say the role of a partner is in terms of emotional intimacy? This applies both to platonic relationships (friends) as well as more intimate relationships, but perhaps moreso the latter.
I have attempted meditation in the past, but for one reason or another was inconsistent in my practice. Recently, I have begun my attempts again with meditation, and the spiritual enlightenment process- but this time I am very serious about it. I am ready to embark on my spiritual journey, and I am in it for the long haul. Strangely enough though, the past week or so I have become even more stressed, which seems to be counter intuitive to what this whole process is about. When I try to meditate I just become frustrated, and when I think about it I feel stressed and fearful. I know that it is directly due to my ego, and the insecurity that initially comes with one stepping outside of their comfort zone. I read your entry about forgetting all truths, and I think that that is one of my biggest problems. I read about “all of this stuff” and subconsciously develop these unrealistic expectations. I am just having so much trouble letting my mind go blank, is it like this for everyone in the beginning? If you could give me some insight, and maybe some advice/tips I would appreciate it so much. I randomly came across your website, but I am very grateful I did. You have really helped me with all of your posts.
Thanks,
J.
My Response:
Hey there J. Awesome questions. What you’re asking about are some super common things that arise so don’t worry, nothing’s gone wrong. You’re on the right track.
Frustration and Stress in Meditation
I am ready to embark on my spiritual journey, and I am in it for the long haul. Strangely enough though, the past week or so I have become even more stressed, which seems to be counter intuitive to what this whole process is about. When I try to meditate I just become frustrated, and when I think about it I feel stressed and fearful. I know that it is directly due to my ego, and the insecurity that initially comes with one stepping outside of their comfort zone.
Yeah, we would hope that when we go into meditation, we’d immediately go into a state of incredible peace and bliss. It turns out though, that there’s a little bit more of a process to it than that, which is exactly what you’re seeing.
It’s very common to begin experiencing emotional roller coasters as you begin meditating. Basically what happens is that when you start looking at that stuff inside that you’ve been avoiding in the past for whatever reason, it comes right up. It’s like the ego knows your buttons and exactly how to push ‘em to get you to quit seeing it for what it is.
As you said, it’s part of stepping outside of your comfort zone. If you can just allow yourself to feel whatever feelings arise in the moment, that’s all that’s necessary. The practice of meditation becomes nothing more than an openness and allowance to experience anything that arises without identification with it.
The more you can surrender to it, the more quickly it will pass.
Expectations
I read about “all of this stuff” and subconsciously develop these unrealistic expectations.
Yeah, even the expectations are products of the mind, ideas that suggest that you should be experiencing something other than what you’re experiencing now. The future should be somehow better or different than what is now. This is just what minds do.
Minds can do amazing things, like even taking spiritual teachings and turning them into more mental gymnastics. Lots of things arise, like these subconscious expectations, that can be consciously let go of once they are recognized for what they are: just more mind stuff.
We continue to go deeper and deeper, layer by layer.
This is sooooo not what I thought it would be or what I was expecting it to be, this whole awakening thing.
It feels like I’m being wiped out, deleted, cleansed away, the little “me” anyways. I’m not completely done by any stretch of the imagination, but rather right in the midst of the process.
How do you deal with your personal wants and desires? Do you go out and seek to accomplish them? Do you feel that you can’t do it or are unworthy and give up? Do you try to get someone else to do things for you? Do you expect God to do it make things happen for you? Do you try and deny your wants? Do you pray? Do you mainly use the Law of Attraction? There are many, many effective strategies for handling our numerous desires. Pause for a moment and reflect on which methods have you used in your own life and which ones have been most effective in the end.
Let’s take a look at wants and desires themselves and explore yet another way to respond to them.
Why does getting what we want feel good?
Now, we all want things in life and when we finally get the shiny new things, we feel great.
We believe that we feel so good because we’ve satisfied the want and fulfilled an inner need. However, this is actually a mistaken understanding.
The reason we feel good after getting something we wanted is that we are now no longer wanting!
Have you noticed that? For a period of time after we get what we want, we rest in the state of being totally okay, of being fulfilled and not wanting anything.
It is this state of not wanting anything (which is our natural state) that is ACTUALLY what feels really good. Our true nature is amazing!
In a sense, the ego is like our emotional gatekeeper. The feelings that we get upon satisfying our wants become consciously present within our awareness. In the same way that the silence does not exist only in the space between two thoughts and that silence always present, the good feelings that we experience by getting what we want are also always available. They already exist within us. In fact, they only lie within us.
Happiness can never truly come from outside of us and the universe does a great job of teaching us this.
Think back to a time when you really really wanted something and eventually got it. Hooray!! Yippee!! How long did the good feelings last? A few minutes? A few hours? Days? Perhaps a whole week even? How long did they last in your personal experience?
If that thing is really what made you happy, then as long as you always hold onto that thing, you should always be happy, right? After all, it’s what makes you happy! You should be set for life! Read More …
Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher who emphasizes practices such as being Present in the Now moment teaches about an energetic ‘parasite’ within us called the painbody.
The painbody is essentially a very active ego running in full force, seemingly overtaking us with emotion, pain, and resistance. The painbody basically feeds off of ego juice like misery, sadness, anger, superiority, inferiority, and so on.
Typically the active painbody needs to run its course and play itself out before it goes back into dormant mode.
One of the wonderful things about painbody attacks is that they bring right to the surface many of the issues we’ve been repressing, giving us the opportunity to deal with them on the spot.
It’s certainly easier to talk about dealing with them when we’re calm and relaxed than it is in the “heat of the moment” but it’s really when all hell is breaking loose within us that the wisdom to know how to handle the emotional storms are of the most value.
Let’s take a look at some effective techniques for handling painbody attacks.
Awareness
First and foremost, it’s critical to understand that the painbody IS NOT YOU. It is simply an energetic flow, an uprising of conditioned beliefs, patterned behaviors, and particular expectations that are coming to the surface.
Instead of getting caught up in the storm and thinking that you ARE the storm, simply sit back in a state of conscious awareness and watch the storm do its thing. The mere withdrawal of identification with it will lessen its ability to affect you, right away.
Presence
Be totally and completely focused on the Now moment.
Instead of getting the mind all twisted up in thoughts, bring your awareness to this moment. Feel your body. Notice your breathing. Be aware of what’s being perceived by your five senses instead of the thoughts and memories flooding the mind.
See if you can abide on the razor’s edge of Now.
The degree of peace you feel is directly related to your level of presence.
The degree of turbulence you feel is directly related to your identification with the painbody.
Allow It
The painbody is strengthened through resistance, by you pushing against it and trying to “fix” it, lessen it, or get rid of it in any way.
There’s a time and a place for logical discussions and decision-making, but the middle of an emotional storm is not it.
From your place of present awareness, sit back and watch the painbody attack. Notice the feelings in your body and allow them to be, to fully express themselves and be released.
Allow them to be fully.
Love It
This may sound crazy at first, but allow yourself to Love the painbody attacks. They are the energetic and emotional manifestation of fear. It is energetic darkness. Darkness is not defeated by more darkness, but by bringing in the light. Bring in the light of your Presence, of your Love.
Love the painbody and recognize that it’s providing you with an opportunity for tremendous personal growth. By looking directly at the painbody and loving it all the same, you’re both accepting the painbody as well as accepting YOURSELF for being human and having emotions.
It’s COMPLETELY okay to be human, to have emotions, and to express yourself as such. Love the painbody, Love the storm, and Love yourself.
Let It Out
When the emotions are feeling turbulent, feel free to allow them to flow through you and out.
If you need to scream your lungs out into a pillow, do so. If you need to wail on a punching bag, go ahead. If you need to go for a run, grab your running shoes. If you need to cry, allow yourself to blow snot all over the room.
Whatever it is, give yourself permission to open up and allow the emotions to flow through without resistance. The more you can let them be just as they are and exhaust themselves on their own, the quicker you will experience a release from the grip of the painbody.
Release All Resistances
The more you release resistances to what you’re experiencing in the Now moment, the more you’ll experience periods of peace and stillness, both in frequency and duration.
Painbody attacks will become less and less frequent, lasting for progressively shorter periods of time.
Nevertheless, they will still happen, until they do not. In the end they’re actually a wonderful gift because they’re providing you with yet another opportunity to become aware of any insecurities and choose to transcend them altogether.
For more in depth information about the painbody and the power of presence, pick up a copy of both The Power of Now and A New Earth.
Our minds can be a noisy chatterbox from hell. It can keep yapping away and driving us nuts. Is it possible to experience a state of mental silence, the same type of silence we can experience when sitting back in awestruck wonder of a beautiful sunrise? Can we experience the mental stillness of a cool winter morning?
When we’re feeling really stressed out and want to change it, we’re often suggested to sit down and calm our minds and think good thoughts to replace the bad ones. Have a positive outlook. Be an optimist. Look on the bright side.
This can certainly help us replace bad feeling thoughts with good feeling thoughts and change the direction of our life. Absolutely.
However, there are even higher levels of being in the world.
It is possible to experience a lasting sense of inner peace and quietness without having to escape the incessant mind by going to sleep or engaging in various distracting activities.
Is there an effective technique to experience extended periods of mental tranquility?
What does it take to experience a sense of continuous peacefulness within, regardless of what’s happening without?
In order for your mind to quiet, all you have to do, all you ever have to do is to abide, to accept without resistance.
It means to simply allow things to be as they already are.
Completely and totally.
Next time you’re feeling like an emotional wreck, instead of trying to change it or hate the fact that you’re feeling like a miserable wreck, allow yourself to completely and totally experience the experience even though that sounds like the last thing you’d want to do.
What you’ll find is that when you allow your current emotional state to be just as it is, that underneath the emotional turbulence you’ll experience a profound sense of peace, a liberating sense of freedom, and a wide spaciousness around this moment.
Any time you’re not feeling peace, it’s a sign that you’re struggling and not allowing everything be as it is.
This sounds counter-intuitive to the mind, but what you resist persists and what you look at disappears.
As soon as you start to allow things to be just as they are, you’ll start to experience the breathing room around the situation, the peace, the freedom.
What’s awesome is that this sense of peace does NOT depend on the negative emotions actually leaving you or on your external situation actually being fixed. The negative emotions and situation can still be there and still be experienced, but by allowing them to be, you’ll experience a yourself abiding in a greater context that totally allows the emotion to be and without insisting that it leaves.
The cool part is that once you let go of pushing against the negative feelings, you’ll be able to see the situation more clearly and open up to receiving and discovering solutions to your problems that you would have otherwise been too mentally clouded over to realize.
As soon as you allow what is to be as it is, whatever that thing is that was so terrible will actually point right towards your own mental and emotional freedom.
What freedom? Well why not explore the lifestyle of letting go and find out for yourself?
Meditation is often considered linked to ideas such as peace, stillness, happiness, freedom, and joy.
People who begin meditating may certainly experience these states during meditation, especially later on down the line, but many times what they experience is the exact opposite, both during meditation as well as in day-to-day life.
It is very common for meditators to begin to experience emotional roller coasters and so understanding what’s going on behind the scenes can really help a person deal with the emotions more easily.
We have lots of repressed emotions (energy in motion that has been pushed down, stuck) which, when they are allowed to be without resistance, they will begin to be let go of. Emotions naturally want to flow, just like all of life, and when you stop putting the brakes on them, they’ll naturally begin to flow through you and out, even if they had been stuck for many many years.
The emotional roller coaster is really nothing more than a release. They have begun to flow again and are now coming back up into your awareness. This is a positive thing, a healthy thing.
The object is to simply allow these emotions to be just as they are and release them through non-resistance. Remember, when you cease struggling with your emotions, your emotions will cease to be a struggle, as explained earlier.
So any time you notice emotions popping up, thank your body and your self for bringing this stuck energy to your awareness and allow it to be let go of. Don’t force the emotions to leave or try and smack them with the door on their way out. Allow them to be released on their own and the emotions will naturally exit your energy field.
This is a healing process. Despite the appearance of emotional turbulence that arises, it’s actually a wonderfully healing experience in the end.
In place of what was stuck energy, you may allow yourself to receive the Love, healing, and help the Universe is always sending you. You may allow yourself to receive it all, now.
You Are Truly Loved features content designed to guide people towards enlightenment, unconditional love, and living a life of joy through Self-realization and proper application of the Law of Attraction.
How do you deal with your personal wants and desires? Do you go out and seek to accomplish them? Do you feel that you can’t do it or are unworthy and give up? Do you try to get someone else to do things for you? Do you expect God to do it make things happen for you? Do you try and deny your wants? Do you pray? Do you mainly use the Law of Attraction? There are many, many effective strategies for handling our numerous desires. Pause for a moment and reflect on which methods have you used in your own life and which ones have been most effective in the end.
Meditation is often considered linked to ideas such as peace, stillness, happiness, freedom, and joy.