We sometimes find ourselves in a pool of listless sadness or helplessness or powerlessness. Or it might be a raging storm of anger or a wild wind of frustration or an unexpected downpour of disappointment.
The conditioned mind has a habit of suppressing these emotions, running away from them, denying or dismissing them. But where do they go when that happens? Into your body of course. Into your memory which is held in your body and which eventually gives rise to the multitude of symptoms that we classify into a multitude of diseases.
If you haven’t already noticed it, emotions arise in your body. You feel them in your body. Emotion, which is energy in motion, must therefore be allowed to flow freely or it gets stuck.
Allowing emotions to flow freely is different to acting out our emotions ‘freely’ or acting from our suppression, denial or dismissal of them ‘freely’ which is what most of us are very good at.
We yell or make a snide remark. We slam doors or walk off in a huff. We argue, eat, drink or take drugs. All of these are ways in which we act out our emotions or try to combat the pain and discomfort of our denial, suppression or dismissal of our emotions.
There is nothing ‘free’ about such acting out or expressing in this way. On the contrary, they demonstrate a lack of control, an auto-response or habit which is bedded down in our subconscious. And as Candice Pert, neuroscientist and author, says quite plainly, ‘Your body is your subconscious mind‘.
To allow our emotions to flow freely is to allow their natural arising within the body and the eventual and inevitable dissipation through and from the body.
Your body is your subconscious mind – Candice Pert
This is what we do in Mindfulness Meditation. We allow our emotions, which are felt as body sensations, to arise fully. When they do, they reach a peak, following which they plateau off and finally dissipate.
The practice of Mindfulness is so powerfully healing because it allows for the natural trans-form-ation of any kind of pain, dis-ease or dis-comfort. It does this by simply bringing our attention to what is happening in the body.
This simple attending to the subtle (and not so subtle) sensations in the body gives the emotion the freedom to run its natural course of rising, peaking, plateauing and eventually dissipating through and from the body.
The Buddhist tradition uses the metaphor of clouds in the sky to describe this process. Just as clouds arise and eventually dissipate, so too our emotions which are felt as bodily sensations, arise and eventually dissipate.
Most of us have been conditioned to believe that our emotions must be dealt with intellectually, using our powers of reasoning to control, understand or manage them. We persist with this approach despite its abject lack of success in handling our emotions effectively, both in the short and long term.
Most of us have been conditioned to believe that our emotions must be dealt with intellectually, using our powers of reasoning to control, understand or manage them. We persist with this approach despite its abject lack of success in handling our emotions effectively, both in the short and long term.
The real ‘failure’ that many of us suffer from is the failure to recognize this lack of success when we try to handle our emotions intellectually. That’s because the conditioned mind or Ego is so good at rationalizing all its failures while at the very same time encouraging us to beat ourselves up when we don’t handle our emotions effectively. And so this cycle of
Painful Emotion – Intellectual Intervention – Lack of Success – Painful Emotion
repeats itself.
If we recognize that emotions ARE FELT IN THE BODY, then doesn’t it make sense to allow the body the freedom to process them?
Mindfulness is the moment-to-moment process of attending to the moment-to-moment or ongoing process of your Self, of WHAT IS
Mindfulness Meditation gives the body full permission to do that. The gentle Awareness of whatever is showing up and of all the subtle changes that occur is itself what healing is. Yes, healing is nothing more than the process of returning to our natural state of wholeness which is the natural state of WHAT IS. And WHAT IS is an ongoing process. Mindfulness then, is the process of attending to this ongoing process.
Before I finish, I want to make one thing clear. It is not that the intellect has no part to play in our healing. The faculty of reasoning is extremely useful. It can help us understand, though not always, why we may be feeling the way we do, what the triggers are that set off an emotional turbulence within us and what or who might help us as we learn and cultivate new habits of response.
But reasoning without attentiveness to what is going on is neither sufficient nor satisfying. Let me put it as simply as I can:
Emotion, which is Energy-in-motion, must be allowed to move unhindered through the body where it arises. When allowed to do so, the energy naturally, effortlessly and safely dissipates giving way to the natural and spontaneous flow of joyous, peaceful, loving, living energy. This is in fact what healing is.
This ability for the body to release discomforting emotions thus allowing for the spontaneous flow of natural, loving energy is described as organic or embodied knowing or wisdom.
Our bodies all have this knowing or wisdom. It is always available to us and we must allow it to take priority over the intellect as Richard Moss, former medical doctor and author of several books on radical energetic healing, explains.
Personally, I know this to be true and it reflects a major shift in my understanding and focus on how reality works and how healing happens.
Insight visits when we are least preoccupied with thinking. It is available to us in the process of sheer attending.
You may or may not gain some insight into the origins, the triggers and the more useful ways of responding to painful or discomforting emotions by using your powers of reasoning/intellect although you can try to enhance the chances of this by asking questions, questions of genuine inquiry, with a childlike curiosity. I’ll write about this in another post.
In the meantime, however, I will say this: Insight is at least as readily available to us in the process of sheer attending i.e. Mindfulness. In fact, it is well known that insight visits when we are least preoccupied with thinking, a fact reported by such intellectual, enlightened and creative giants as Einstein, Emerson and the Buddha to name just a few.
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