AWAKENING TO EMOTIONS
Every moment we become aware is a new beginning. Each time we come back to ourselves and the moment we are inhabiting, we have a fresh start. Although, most of the time the “stains” or attachments of our previous moments linger. So we enter our new moment with some baggage. Have you ever awoken in a good mood, only to remember you were in a break up, or had just lost a job and so felt obligated to go back to suffering?
Acknowledging how we are actually feeling is an important step in our fresh start. “I’m still feeling guilty”, “I’m still angry”. Felt senses often remain, like a veil over our next moment. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we sometimes wake in the morning with echoes of our night’s dreaming like a cloak around us. Sometimes we don’t remember the details of the dream, but the feeling remains. Maybe this points to something peculiar in our daily life. The story is often ephemeral, while the feelings are more tangible. This experience is the opposite of our conventional approach where we believe thoughts and ignore our feelings. We attach to our version of events while diminishing or ignoring how we feel. But our version of events relies on thoughts. And thoughts are notoriously unreliable.
Feelings, on the other hand, are happening in real time, in our body.
Trauma is often long past, but residual feelings from that pain may be happening now. So, we believe if we investigate the story, we will find a way of resolving the feeling. And perhaps this is sometimes helpful, but the way we feel right now is the best way to release the turmoil our body is creating in the moment. Feel the feeling. Don’t define it, or judge it. Just feel and sense where your body is reacting. Feelings keep generating and updating the trauma narrative, so the actual events have morphed into entirely new scenarios. Often we take these iterations as fact, and dismiss our feelings as fantasy. And sadly, we often transfer the past scenario onto the present or the future. We are regretful of the past and gunshy of the present as we plan for a catastrophic future.
Understanding emotions begins with a willingness to accept our feelings right here, right now. It develops as that familiarity allows us to become less and less afraid of them At some point we may realize that we can honor our feelings just as they are. That life is enriched by our feelings. In fact, our feelings and emotions might be the most human thing about our lives. The pain in our heart is what characterizes humanity. It is also happening now. If we are willing to accept and look into the felt senses, our discomfort might guide us more deeply into our life. It’s possible that although we re often afraid of our feelings and dismissive of emotions, feelings and emotions are the point of living.
Often emotional being is frequently described as an inner child. And like a child, we can learn to love and care for our broken heart so that our feelings become less crusty and defensive, and more tender. To some this seems a weakness. But it is the unfeeling crust of our defenses that create a calcification of our natural empathy and compassion. Our life becomes warped around our defenses. Our body holds tension in a misguided attempt to outrun our past. Our mind reiterates and projects catastrophe in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves from the future. And so the “bandits of hope and fear” rob us of the present. And the most important part of our life is happening in the present.
As with children, our fear of the responsibility might cause us to push them away or try to control their experiences. We might feel that our anger and anxiety are necessary to protect them. But is that the best way to protect them? The children are the point, not the obstacle. And while we can honor our children and our inner child, we can’t let then lead. Children need leadership and guidance as well as love. In the same way, working with emotions implies work. How can we honor our feelings, but still incorporate our intelligence so that we can protect our heart and ourselves? The answer begins right here. Come back. Release judgement. Allow the experience to unfold. See that the child is its own being and learn to de-fuse our reactive defenses and see them as other. I have fear. I have anger. I have jealousy. But I am not those things. I am the awake being that experiences but doesn’t identify. I am the awake being that allows. I am the awake being that cares. But I am not longer a child. I am the awake being that holds the child and allows it to grow.
And just as children grow, our emotions will change if we are not clinging to them. This is called “holding open space.” Be present but allow the changes to happen. Anger may turn to sadness, sadness to openness, openness to courage. We can protect our heart and still allow it to breath. In fact, we can allow it to sing and to dance and to love.
I love the story about how in modern times we need to describe feelings and proscribe an antidote. When a patient is depressed doctors administer medication which implies treating a disease. We often identify with our diagnosis. “I am bipolar”. “I am neurodivergent.” I have adhd.” And these become defects we try and change. In native cultures when a depressed person came to the healer the healer would ask “when did you stop dancing”. “When did you stop singing?” Maybe there is nothing to fix and everything to love. Loving our sadness, loving our pain, loving our tenderness, loving our joy. These are the doorways to our life.
Notice. Accept. Feel. Release.
This is awakening.
I’m writing on the day set aside to commemorate the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King, which this year falls on his actual birthdate, Jan 15. To many, it marks a time to reflect on our lives and the contribution to peace, equality and understanding we may be making. It is also a day of remembrance of a fellow human who took on the superhuman task of changing the mind of the world in the face of great opposition.
Pema Chodron once said, the Buddha was someone who walked out the door, and just kept walking. HIs life stands as a testament of liberation from economic, spiritual or emotional encumberments. Many people interpret this to mean that attachments are bad, and that we should let go of everything at all cost. But while renunciation is the foot of meditation, once we have loosened our grip on things, the path to liberation continues back to service to our world. What about our families, friends and communities? And what of the Buddha’s own family? Were they actually smiling
But it is important to remember the doctrine of Basic Goodness. If we are able to see the goodness in anything, we can develop the ability to understand it. Attachment is the same energy, in essence, as mindfulness. The word for mindfulness 
We have funny glasses and lipstick stains and a raging headache. Even I, who have been clean and sober for several years, are working off a sugar and carb rush from gorging on bad food. Why? To prove I’m happy. Sometimes my life feels like a series of emotional selfies trying to convince myself of something. And so we begin the new year already buried in the past. We have grand resolutions, so inspiring today that we’ll maybe forget them in a week. In my drinking days, I would crumble the life around me, just to see myself build it back. I had a friend who told me I was simultaneously anal expulsive and anal retentive. Clean it up and tear it down. Clean it up and tear it down. And part of this crazy cycle were the outsized resolutions I would make. Inspirations that became obligations, forgotten soon enough that would be resurrected next year. We all wish for world peace.
these experiences are very ordinary. Maybe we have glimpses of the truth beyond truth all the time. But maybe we fail to recognize these opening into the profound as we scurry from place to place to place. Our earth evolved uniquely to host conscious life, so it is quite rare and precious. It is our home and the incubator that gave birth to a consciousness that can glimpse itself and the possibility beyond itself. Perhaps, it is through human eyes that the universe sees itself. Perhaps by seeing ourselves, we can see the universe.
A slow uncovering of the wounds that bind us, is an apt description of the path of compassion. Understanding and transforming our pain is a common motivator for the path. Many of us came to the path because we were in pain. There is nothing like a broken heart to introduce us to meditation. But once that heart has mended, or once we get tired of that broken song, what is it that prompts us to continue on the path?
So how can we help anyone, when we ourselves are wounded? We talk about “opening the heart”. But what does that mean? Usually, this statement evokes feelings of empathy, communication, and kindness. But doesn’t opening the heart also release the pain that we have been protecting and the suffering we are protecting ourselves against? When we began the path our wounds were the source of antagonism and aggression. In an attempt to protect ourselves from a future projection of past violence we struck out against actual or imagined danger. However, it may be that these wounds are also the source of empathy, communication, and kindness. The “Lion’s Roar” may be that the wounds we guard in embarrassed secrecy may be our gateway to compassion. When we have worked the path of self-discovery, we get what it is to be human. And because of this, we understand what humans need. Opening the heart is simply relaxing the protective tension with which we gird ourselves. As this cocoon is protecting us from real, imagined or remembered pain, we must respect it. Opening the heart is not about aggression at all. Opening the heart is acceptance and release.
Pema Chodron speaks of suffering as having created a wound in our heart. All of us have those wounds. Pema suggests that we cover the wound to protect it, as we would a physical wound. However, with a physical wound we remove the bandaid for it to heal under the sun. But emotional wounds often remain covered, and so healing is compromised. We become embarrassed of the wounds, somehow believing we are the only ones. Because they don’t heal in the shadows, the wound becomes sensitive to touch. We are constantly bumping into the wound, and flincing through life trying to protect ourselves from the pain. This creates more suffering. Yet, the saddest part of this is how we are denying the very thing that makes us unique. No one notices perfect trees in the forest. We notice the trees that are gnarled and curled from lightning, bent by wind or darkened by fire. These trees have character. And our pain gives us character. Lightning struck trees don’t feel embarrassed about themselves. Nor do three legged dogs. Nor do blues musicians, or poets as they express their pain. Is there a form of life on earth that judges itself as much as humans do? There is a song by The Big Moon that goes “trouble doesn’t last forever. The trouble is that memories do.” 
acknowledge and hold our fears, rather than be controlled by them. The cradle of loving kindness is the gentle firmness of the body opening to the experience of fear. Rather than constricting our feelings in a body of tension, we are holding our fear with openness.
On the other hand, should we STOP and FEEL into our present experience rather than be driven by fear, we can acknowledge and hold it with open arms.
deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.
A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.
One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet. The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze. When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond. 
actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present. Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.
If Trungpa recommended we accept our thoughts without judgement, there is one category of thinking he deemed unacceptable. “Negative negativity” are the judgements we have about ourselves, including those we have toward our own negativity. Negativity is naturally inherited behaviour. Blaming our negativity is counterproductive. It’s essentially blaming ourselves. Whenever we feel the tightness associated with self-affliction, we can come to see that we are punishing ourselves, which is self-flagellation. We can just let any self-judgement go.WE don’t have to pretend we are a buddha, or Mother Theresa or Kendrick Lamar. We can be ourselves and accept negativity as small minded and self-defeating but entirely common and natural. We can allow ourselves to feel our negativity without judgement – but also without action. We can become aware of our underlying behaviors without acting on them. We have every right to feel however we feel, but no right to inflict those feelings upon ourselves or anyone else. If we act out our negativity we are training the mind to continue negativity. On the other hand, as we are socialized not to act out, “acting in” builds internal pressure until we explode, or fall into depression. Both of these actions build the propensity for us to see the world negatively making it easier to act out/in.