Freedom from Emotions
In the last article we read about emotional maturity, the value that we give to every incident or situation happening in our life. Now let’s go a step further and understand emotions and how to get rid of negative emotions.
Feelings like stress, anxiety, fear and anger have a debilitating effect on health. Researchers have conducted experiments and shown that we need positive feelings like peace, love, and courage in addition to ideal food to keep good health.
What are emotions
The subconscious mind has been designed to automate responses to certain stimuli. Since childhood, we observe and learn certain fixed responses to external stimuli. The subconscious mind is the storehouse of such fixed responses. For example, we don’t need conscious interpretation to pull our hand away from fire. The subconscious mind is automatically programmed to enact this response to the stimulus of fire.
Likewise, there are certain fixed responses that are triggered in various parts of the body from the subconscious mind when it encounters and interprets an input to match a stored response. For example, when we are cornered and threatened, depending on how we have been programmed during childhood, our subconscious mind may either trigger an emotion of fear or the emotion of anger. Various emotions reside in specific parts of our body. For example, Fear resides in the kidneys and urinary bladder, uncontrolled anger resides in the liver etc.
Most people allow destructive emotions like hatred, sorrow, depression, restlessness, lack of faith, bitterness, anger, fear, worry, envy, stress, miserliness, resistance, and revenge to dwell in them. When such emotions are entertained for long period, they adversely affect the health and one becomes victim to fatal diseases. Negative emotions drain all the enthusiasm from the mind and cause depression.
Every emotion seeks attention and release. Every emotion seeks to be understood. Whenever any emotion arises, it is as if the emotion is saying, “Please understand me.” Every emotion arises to seek release, to be set free.
However, the subconscious programming that we have been handed out since childhood causes a feeling of discomfort. One tries to escape from the emotion, instead of witnessing and understanding what the emotion exactly is.
Man either shuts down the emotion by suppressing it, or finds some temporary way of escaping it by diverting focus to topics that provide temporary relief. This does not help in releasing the emotion.
Methods of handling emotions
People know of only a few ways to release emotions and most of these give only temporary relief. The need now is to understand the right methods to achieve freedom from emotions. Only then is it possible to rise to the highest level of health. But before talking about the right methods, let us talk about two wrong methods that people usually employ to get rid of negative emotions.
First method: Expressing the emotion on others
The first method commonly adopted by people to dissolve their emotions is spewing it out on others. Hatred, envy and anger ultimately lead you to burn in the fire of regret. Anger may arise due to any reason, but it always ends in regret and sorrow. The person we dump our negative emotions on, keeps looking for an opportunity to bounce back with a befitting answer.
If you shout an insult at someone, he may or may not be affected by it, but you will certainly affect your own health. If one does injustice to others by expressing emotions of anger or resentment on them, then he may temporarily safeguard his physical health, however at the cost of harmony in his relationships. Others around him become vulnerable to his emotional outbursts.
Second method: Suppressing emotions
The second commonly adopted method is suppression of emotions and feelings. Someone who suppresses his feelings may appear calm on the outside, but actually he is simmering inside. When he can no longer bear his suppressed feelings, he suddenly explodes one day like a volcano that erupts when the earth cannot bear the pressure anymore.
If one suppresses the emotion when it is triggered, it makes matters worse. Sustained suppression leads to proliferation of physiological malfunction in the organ where the emotion resides.
Beware of the two methods given above. To achieve freedom from negative emotions and feelings and rise to the heights of health, you can take help of the following ways:
- Share your feelings with trustworthy friend or well wisher.
- Write down your feelings.
- Encounter your feeling by asking yourself evincing questions until you get to the bare facts. In most cases you will find that the feeling was unnecessary.
- Look at your feeling with a positive frame of mind. Take it in a way that the feeling has come to teach you something. Use it as a ladder of progress.
- Determine the worth of every incident. Do not give value to trivial incidents and waste your energy in worrying about them.
The ultimate method
The most effective method to become free from the grip of negative feelings is to view them as a detached witness. Emotions are like storms raging in the ocean. They come and go. Your viewpoint while the storm comes and goes is the most critical aspect of this method. If you alert yourself and raise your awareness in this time interval, you will learn the trick to detach yourself from the emotions.
The trick then is to neither express, nor suppress, but witness emotions from a detached standpoint.
Such detached witnessing has three aspects:
1. Understanding
When we observe our emotions, we may initially find it difficult to detach from them, as we are habitually identified with them. There is a deep notion within us which suggests that ‘All this is happening with me.’
When we learn to abide in the experience of the Self, we gain conviction that we are neither the mind nor the body. The mind and body are expressions of pure consciousness that we essentially are. This understanding will help in detaching from the emotion and connect with the alert awareness that is witnessing all this. Secondly, understand that any emotion is temporary and it will vanish after some time. Only Who-we-truly –are is permanent. Witnessing emotions with this understanding (which can be strengthened with the practice of meditation) will help in releasing emotions. This witnessing is with true love and acceptance of those feelings, which de-energizes them and leads to their release.Why do emotions get released when witnessed with love? It Is because, there is neither attachment, nor aversion in pure love.
2. Sameness
The other aspect of detached witnessing is a sense of sameness with which we perceive all emotions and thoughts. Sameness is about ascribing a value of alikeness to both painful and pleasurable emotions. A perspective of evenness where there is neither a like nor a dislike for what is being witnessed.
Superficially, emotions like anger, depression, or resentment will appear to be very heavy and intense. The subconscious programming triggers an instant impulsive reaction by giving an exaggerated weight to the emotion.
When we slow down and watch the emotion with an attitude of sameness, we are able to question the weight of the emotion. What may appear to be a heavyweight emotion, of the order of 50 kg, will then turn out to be not even 5 grams. This is the revelation that can result out of deep observation with evenness.
3. Alertness
Being vigilant is essential to remain detached. When we are not alert, the natural tendency is to identify with the stories and their associated emotions. We need to have an alert awareness that is uncompromisingly focused on itself. It vigilantly utilizes emotions and thoughts that arise as hooks to defocus from what arises and focus on our essential Presence.
Summary:
Negative feelings have debilitating effect on health. We need positive feelings like peace, love, and courage in addition to ideal food to keep good health. Emotions are programmed responses from the subconscious mind according to our past programming. People either express their emotions on others or suppress those. Both ways are wrong and affect relationships and health. The most effective method to become free from the grip of negative feelings is to view them as a detached witness with understanding, sameness and alertness.
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