Following an experience as cited in my earlier entry Full Frontier, I begun to see that there is indeed no need of a storyline for any feelings to arise but to stay with it. Any storyline that accompanies the feeling usually just intensifies the feelings resulting in either grasping or running away from it. In any case, as soon as we are able to recognise that these feelings are part of nature, then no judgment, holding on, or resistance is needed though it may not be necessarily a choice depending on individuals. Until one starts to see nature at work, it is likely that an emotional healing can take place from those feelings.
Here I share with a piece of article from DailyOm.com which resonates with my recent experience of being with feelings, rather than running away from it. May you too, be blessed with whatever it takes towards your path of rehabilitation. – GG
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When an emotion haunts us, it is often because we are afraid of really feeling it.
Our emotions color our lives with varying palettes. Sometimes we feel a strong emotion in reaction to something that has happened, but emotions also visit us seemingly out of the blue, flooding us unexpectedly with joy or grief or melancholy. Like the weather, they come and go, influencing our mental state with their particular vibration. Sometimes a difficult emotion hangs around longer than we would like, and we begin to wonder when it will release its hold on us. This is often true of grief stemming from loss, for example, or lingering anger over a past event.
Usually, if we allow ourselves to feel our emotions fully when they come up, they recede naturally, giving way to another and another. When an emotion haunts us, it is often because we are afraid of really feeling it. Emotions like despair and rage are powerful, and it is natural to want to hold them at bay. Certainly, we don’t want to let them take us over so that we say or do things we later regret. When we are facing this kind of situation, it can be helpful to ask the spirit, “How long do I need to sit with these emotions, how long do I need to feel these emotions before they can pass?” If you ask sincerely and wait, an answer will come. Setting a time limit on your engagement with that difficult emotion may be just the technique you need to face it fully.
When you have a sense of how much time you need to spend, set a timer. Sit down and make yourself available to the emotion that has been nagging you. All you have to do is feel it. Avoid getting attached to it or rejecting it. Simply let it ebb and flow within you. Emotions are by their nature cyclical, so you can trust that just as one reaches its apex it will pass. Each time you sit with its presence without either repressing or acting out, you will find that that difficult emotion was the catalyst for much needed emotional healing.
I know what you mean that emotional feelings are cyclical and the similar emotions will keep returning until ‘that’ emotional issue is resolved but how does one settle this emotional rollercoaster?
I sometimes find it so hard because whether we like it or not, we are still in this ‘reality’ and matters like financial problems, etc…..needs to be resolved.
We can’t really ‘settle’ the emotional rollercoaster so to speak except to be with it and learn from it, when we haven’t. Paul Ferrini likes to put it as the inner child that needs to be loved and embraced, and it is very much that part of us which needs nurturing too. Sitting with your emotions is like you sitting through a session with a girlfriend who is in distress. The difference is that the person you sit with this time is yourself and there is no other.
You cannot not call it a ‘reality’ when it is still a reality to you. If you attempt to mimic the idea that this reality is an illusion through intellectual understanding, you haven’t gone anywhere. It is as if not acknowledging the current state of mind and running off somewhere to try to be ‘there’ when you are ‘here’.
All you are asked, all the time, is to be present to yourself. That is all. 🙂