I am really enjoying the book and podcast by Helen Russell called ‘How to be Sad’. She shares partly her experience from growing up to becoming a successful editor of Marie-Claire and a journalist, and partly her quest for Happiness as a true researcher when she travelled the world, etc and interviewed a vast number if doctors, athletes, psychologists, education specialists and others. She found that Happiness might prompt some to push Sadness down, and by repressing Sadness, and resisting it as a baddy emotions, it can actually makes things worse. What you Resist Persists is the famous quote by Eckhart Tolle. So if we should not bottle up ‘negative’ emotions, then we should not either put ‘positive’ emotions on a pedestal. Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett and Mark Brackett are clear: there are no bad or good emotions, emotions are physiological signal to take action.
I particularly love what Jack Kornfield Mindfulness Teacher says about Emotions in his book ‘A Lamp in the Darkness’:
The dimension of our human life that is our feelings are both mysterious and rich. However, if we lack mindfulness of our emotions, we may react automatically, hold onto pleasant feelings out of habit, avoid the unpleasant ones, and remain unaware of what is neutral. This reactivity limits our ability to achieve balance and clarity in our daily life and love fully.
To bring mindfulness to our emotions, we should try to become curious about them. Although many of us happen to suppress or ignore our feelings, they still drive our lives in an unconscious way. Simply starting with an awareness of pain as pain, or sadness as sadness can be a great way to begin.
Gradually, we can become aware of our feelings as they rise and fall, and we can name them: joy, excitement, fear, contentment, and so on. With this awareness, we see that we are not our emotions, but nevertheless we get to befriend, name and accept them for what they are.
By bringing mindful attention to our emotions, we learn that emotions themselves are not the problem, but our relationship to them is. We can bring a mindful and kind attention to all of our emotions, even the difficult ones like fear, grief, hatred, and jealousy. Coming back to Jack ‘s first advice, Treat all emotions with curiosity and enquiry, a yogic approach in fact, or what others call and emotional lab scientist (Mark Brackett)
However, we should also notice the happy and beautiful emotions, not just the painful ones. Joy and sorrow are interwoven, and we cannot have one without the other. Human feelings are ever-changing like a river.
When we are not aware of our emotions, we can become lost in them or frightened by them. But if we can create enough space to hold them with mindfulness and wisdom, we can see how they represent an important part of the picture, but not the entirety of the truth. Even anger has some truth in it, but it also has some delusion. Similarly, when we see love clearly, we can see that it too has some truth and some delusion. By resting in loving awareness and becoming mindful of the river of emotions, we know that we are not limited by what is arising in the river.
When we are willing to touch the full measure of our emotions, including fear and longing, failure and tenderness, and great love, a grace comes to us. We become the loving witness, the higher self. As we allow our feelings to be met in the space of loving awareness (where they can come and go), we become free.
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