October/November 2007
Sister Joan Chittister Speaks Out on War, Feminism, and the Catholic Church
James Kullander
The Global Church and America's War
Jim Wallis
Creating a World that Works for All
Sharif M. Abdullah
Protecting Oregon's Heritage Forests from Myopic Management
Lesley Adams
The Movement to Commit Poetry
Eric Sirotkin
Larry Morningstar
A Journey into Consciousness
Jody Woodruff
Getting Out From Under: Natural and Holistic Help for Depression
Gaea Yudron
Are Emotions Obstacles or Allies?
Gangaji
The Enneagram of Personality
Carl Marsak. MA
Choosing to Live an Inspired Life
W. Bradford Swift
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Are Emotions Obstacles or Allies?
By Gangaji
The truth is that when you really experience any negative emotion, with no story, it disappears. And when you truly experience any positive emotion, it grows and is endless. But, because there is not much in our culture that confirms this astounding revelation, we spend our lives chasing positive emotions and running from negative emotions.
Many people seek to be free from difficult emotions such as anger, fear, and grief, and seek the more pleasant emotions such as joy, happiness, and bliss. The usual strategies for achieving happiness involve either repressing or expressing negative emotions, in the hope that they will be pushed from sight or released. Unfortunately, though, neither way reflects the truth of one’s inherent self, which is an unmoving purity of being that exists deeper than any emotion and remains unaffected by any emotion.
Certainly, there are times when it is appropriate to repress or express an emotion. But there is also another possibility: to neither repress nor express. I call this “direct experience.”
To directly experience any emotion is to neither deny it nor to wallow in it, and this means that there can be no story about it. There can be no storyline about who it is happening to, why it is happening, why it should not be happening, who is responsible, or who is to blame. True innocence is the capacity to directly experience what is here right now, without any demand that it look, act, or feel differently.
Innocence is openness, the willingness to see and to trust, even if what appears seems absolutely untrustworthy. True innocence is not naiveté, nor is it delusion. However, it involves vulnerability. The willingness to be innocent is the willingness to be hurt.
This willingness to be vulnerable is what the term “spiritual warrior” really means. Vulnerability requires more courage than being cynical, strong, or powerful. It takes courage to be open, innocent, and willing to be hurt.
In the willingness to stop the suffering, which means the willingness to stop the story about the pain, the pain can be experienced just as it is. What has been previously thought of as unbearable can be experienced with an open mind, because the mind is no longer closed around some idea about the experience. The open mind has dropped all definitions. When pain is met with an open mind, then pain, like every phenomenon, reveals the truth at its core.
The truth is that when you really experience any negative emotion, with no story, it disappears. And when you truly experience any positive emotion, it grows and is endless. But, because there is not much in our culture that confirms this astounding revelation, we spend our lives chasing positive emotions and running from negative emotions.
If you think you are fully experiencing a negative emotion and it remains quite intense, then recognize that there is still some story being told about it—how big it is, how you will never be able to get rid of it, how it will always come back, how dangerous it is to experience it … Whatever the story of the moment may be, the possibilities of postponing direct experience are endless.
For instance, when you are irritated, the usual tendency is to do something to get rid of the irritation or to place blame on yourself or on someone or something else as the cause of the irritation. Then the storylines around irritation begin to develop. It is actually possible to do nothing with the irritation—to not push it out of awareness or try to get rid of it, but to directly experience it. In the moment that irritation arises, it is possible to simply be completely, totally, and freely irritated, without expressing it or repressing it.
Direct experience often reveals a deeper emotion. Irritation may be just a ripple on the surface. Deeper than irritation, there may actually be rage or fear. Again, the goal is neither to get rid of the emotion nor to analyze it, but to directly experience it. If rage or fear is revealed to be beneath irritation, then let your awareness go deeper: let yourself be absolutely, completely angry or fearful, without acting out or repressing.
Fear is often the biggest challenge because it is what most people habitually attempt to keep away. Of course, as they try to keep it away, it grows even larger, hovers even closer.
What I am suggesting is that you can actually open to fear. You can experience being afraid without any need to say you are afraid, and without following any thought of being afraid. You can just simply experience fear itself.
When I speak of directly experiencing fear, I am not speaking about physiologically appropriate fear. The response to physical danger, fight or flight, is natural and appropriate to the human organism. It is hardwired into the body for its survival. It is appropriate, for instance, to get out of the way of an approaching bus.
The fears that I suggest be directly met, all the way through, are the psychological fears, the fears that keep our energy and attention bound unnecessarily in protection and defense, such as the fear of emotional pain or the fear of loss or death. When a psychological fear is met rather than resisted and run from, it often reveals an even deeper emotion.
A deep sadness or hurt may be revealed under fear. This, too, can be directly and completely experienced with no need of a storyline.
If you are willing to experience these emotional layers all the way through, you will finally approach what appears to be a deep abyss. This abyss is what the mind perceives as nothingness, emptiness, no-body-ness. This is an important moment, because the willingness to be absolutely nothing, to be nobody, is the willingness to be free. All of these other emotional states are layers of defense against this experience of nothingness—the death of who you think you are.
Once the defenses are down, once the door is open, then this nothingness that has been feared can be met fully. This meeting is the revelation of true self-inquiry, revealing the secret gem of truth that has been hidden in the core of your own heart all along. The diamond discovered is you.
This is an immense discovery, but it must be discovered first hand. If you are willing to deeply, completely experience any emotional state, you will discover at its core the same pristine awareness meeting itself as both the experiencer and the experienced. If you can discover this truth for yourself, you will be freed from running away from so-called negative states and running toward so-called positive ones. You will be freed from either rejecting or clinging to what is inherently impermanent. You will be freed to truly meet yourself and rejoice in this meeting.
Whatever emotion arises in consciousness can be fully met by consciousness, with no need to hide in stories or analysis. In your willingness to not follow the workings of the mind, but just to be still and completely experience whatever emotion is arising, you will see that it is nothing. Emotions are only held together by thought, whether that thought is conscious or subconscious.
Fear, anger, grief, and despair exist only when linked to a story. This is an amazing, simple, yet profound discovery! I invite you to check it out for yourself. You can actually recognize that what you are running away from does not, in truth, finally exist, and what you are running toward is already always here.
In the Western spiritual subculture, people are fairly open to experiencing their emotions because it gives them a sense of depth and a sense of freedom, but this can become a cover for the fear of experiencing no emotion whatsoever. Defining yourself as an emotional being is perhaps a step deeper than defining yourself as a purely mental being, but it is not all the way home. What you avoid in defining yourself as an emotional being is emotion-less-ness, nothingness, emptiness. Once you have experienced pure emptiness, you know directly that who you are cannot be defined by any mental or emotional state, and this knowledge is freedom.
People often begin the spiritual life as an escape from the miseries of their worldly life. This is legitimate: it is the way we begin. But it is not the way we end. The ending, which is surrender, is the recognition that no escape is possible or necessary. This means fully embracing whatever appears in consciousness rather than ignoring any of it. When you do not define yourself by emotional states, then the emotions are free to arise because they don’t mean anything about who you are. You know directly that all states are simply passing through the pure space that is your true nature.
I invite you all the way in to the heart of pure being—not to get rid of any emotion, not to dramatize or glorify any emotion, but to discover what every emotion is calling for. This is an invitation to die to who you think you are, before who you think you are dies.
Gangaji, an American born teacher and author, has traveled the globe since 1990, speaking with spiritual seekers from all walks of life. Her message is powerful in its clarity and simplicity: True peace and lasting fulfillment are not only our birthright, they are the essential nature of our being. Gangaji invites you to discover the possibility of living your life in the freedom and joy of simply being. She is the author of The Diamond in Your Pocket, Discovering Your True Radiance and You Are That, the newly updated collection of her classic offerings. Visit www.gangaji.org for more on her programs and events.
Gangaji
