Difficult Emotions

emotions

I struggle with anger and difficult emotions at times. When you come close to the Light, it can be confusing to see such strong negative emotions rising up. It’s natural I have found. These emotions, as temperamental children, demand our attention at uncomfortable times. I have been seeking an answer to how to deal with these emotions.

Love is always there, but we are filled with many other things as well. We gain our knowledge from the world. We must live in and experience the world. We need insight and compassion to change ourselves and indeed the world. We ourselves are not the standard, nor is any other person. We can trust our daily experience guided by insight and mindfulness. We need to learn to be mindful enough to let impulses pass.

The Sufi’s have taught me about loving myself. Jesus taught me to love my brother. From The Four Quartets:

Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.

The Buddhists have been helping me learn compassion as well. I have to be mindful of these difficult feelings. I am challenged to not respond to them, if I do, I quickly stand up and brush myself off.

Mindfulness helps you to become aware of these feelings. We can bear these difficult emotions. To stay present in our anger and difficult emotions is difficult, but awareness of these emotions brings change. If I can see this anger and feelings in myself and let them flow away, I can see it in others and learn to not respond to them as well. I can have compassion. Anger hurts you and your target. I am practicing not reacting to these emotions. It goes slowly.

The Parable of the Three Men

Three men fall into a river after the bridge they were walking on collapsed. You guessed it, a Buddhist, a Zen Practitioner, and a Taoist.

Floating down the river, the Buddhist looks about him and decides through much effort to swim to the shore and leave the river. Ignoring the discomfort of his situation (cold water, burning muscles, etc.) he swims to shore and watches the other two float away, content that he finally made it out of his nasty predicament.

The Zen Practitioner looks about him and decides that he is in the river now, and if he waits, he will eventually drift to shore where he can leave the river. He learns to embrace the cold and ignore the fear of rocks and rapids, and eventually he comes to a stop and climbs out, happy in the knowledge that he has escaped the river and all its peril.

The Taoist looks about him and decides that since the bridge he was walking on collapsed, he is now floating in a river, naturally… So he decides to wait and see what will happen next, confident that whatever happens is part of the natural process of the Tao.

P.S. Did you know you can change the dimension you live in? It is all about the dimensions you let yourself exist in. Truth be told, you are limitless across an infinite number of dimensions. Let yourself flow into that reality.

Image – MD – Seeking Center