Emotions are a subjective way of experiencing energy flows in the energy body. Water element is dominant on this layer (kosha), so they flow in and out, like waves on the seashore. Deeper, we experience them like waves in the ocean.
Western culture doesn’t teach good energy hygiene. We often grow up learning to repress some emotions rather than learning healthy forms of expression. “Real men don’t cry,” for example. Or “anger isn’t proper for a woman.” We build a backlog of unresolved experiences, another flavour of karma.
For some, we live in our mind, oblivious to how we feel or our energy state. This just feels safer or more comfortable. Others are more emotionally available. Yet when we’re identified with the ego, we treat this content as part of who we are. We say “I AM sad” rather than “I feel sad.” This leads to misery as we’re tossed about by passing waves.
But if we regularly transcend the mind and emotions (samadhi) through things like an effortless meditation, and learn how to be with emotions in healthy ways, we experience and resolve that backlog. The fog on the water lifts and our quality of life improves. Emotions flow in and out of experience with no lasting impressions.
As that fog lifts, the air element also becomes more clear, although many have a protective crust on the heart and fine feelings. With a stable grounding in being, the heart can break open, and feelings like universal love, compassion, and unfettered gratitude can emerge.
Deeper still, the bliss body can leak through and an inner pleasantness becomes our ongoing backdrop, whatever waves are passing on the surface.
Our former selves would find the new daily experience incomprehensible. I can’t overemphasize the richness this brings. However, I fully appreciate this is a major undertaking that takes a good while. We have to relearn how to be with life and our emotions. We have to work through the backlog. But every step of progress brings us closer to bliss, closer to our true nature, closer to home. Yum!
Davidya
It is quite rich! It seems that the more one is able to hold for their ebb and flow of emotions, True radiant nature can shine forth unimpeded as well, as you mention.
And I find that now, when sadness or anger arises it feels like I’m a channel for sadness itself or anger itself. It isn’t simply personal, it’s universal sadness or anger. Ah to be human!
Hey Sarah-ji
Yes, steady in being, even in the face of storms. Then the light shines through even the clouds. Bright enough, the clouds are hard to even see. 🙂
Right – they’re a flow of energy, touching this physiology. Unbound by apparent edges like “body” they flow in and through if we’re not putting up any resistance. We come to feel their universal, even cosmic nature, and they bring fullness to life. Being human shifts from fear, regret, and sorrow, to happiness, love, and gratitude.
“Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.”
I felt a little shift reading this. It was new to imagine emotions like water, and clarity like air. Loved that.
I bought your book (a year, or two, ago) but I still haven’t read it yet. Hopefully I’ll be conscious enough for it soon. So glad you write “for us”. Big love.
Hi Andrea
It’s not just imagination. This is their nature. It’s why the ancients talked of the world being made of primary elements or qualities. We can experience this directly. This is why you felt a little shift. A little softening when the memory of a deeper truth is stirred.
Thanks. The book is somewhat of a reference guide. Even though not a long book, many people read it a few pages at a time. With all my practice blogging, it’s a little thick with info.
Two more books are written. But the grunt work of editing, formatting, design, etc is yet to come…
Dear David, during Lorn’s retreat this weekend the unstressing was at the level of “ax murderess”. Luckily the witnessing quality, along with knowing that “something good was happening” saved the day. I was like a cartoon character, with smoke coming out my ears and spiral slinkeys for eyes. Deep, deep anger was finding its way up and out. This morning feels like the storm has passed, but one more day of the retreat to go 🙂
Hi Conley
Yep, I know the experience. It illustrates how what arises is what and when we can handle it. The witness helps us dig much deeper and see the heavier stuff without getting caught.
You may find things lighter after the retreat. And sometimes new arenas become accessible after a deep shadow has resolved.
Beautiful David, I love how you included the elements in this blog, because we are that too. As we continue to deepen our awareness of this, nurturing, witnessing alowing things to move from stagnation to flow, we are able to flow into out natural way of being which is bliss. As in Natures natural order and way of being. Part of our journey is also respectiong the unspoken timing and intellegence of natures way of being and unfolding.
Beautifully put, Theresa
Thank you, David. I hope you are doing well and getting better every day. I’ve been doing trauma work with my therapy/counseling clients so they can get out of the mind and back into their bodies. I’ve noticed there’s a readiness in them to be guided and accept the present moment. I feel that this happens naturally and that the words I choose come out instantaneously – with the right action coming at the right time, without the mind getting in the way.
I was wondering – if all the collective trauma our society is currently experiencing on the surface level is making it easier for people to let go (however momentarily) of their repressed emotions and allow moments of transcendence?
I am just surprised because I’m still doing my internship and my current clients are not “spiritual seekers” yet they yearn so much to release repressed emotions. It makes me feel positive about our current situation, though I wish people would be more transcending regularly in meditation.
Hi Jose
Yes, exactly that. As more people awaken, it gets easier for others. As more people purify, it gets easier and clearer for everyone. Both are collective.
As research has shown, it doesn’t take everyone practicing to shift things. Just a significant enough %. The more awake, the fewer needed. In the cycles of time, golden ages are gained and lost by that %, the lighthouses.