gap

My last blog post was incomplete. I got to thinking about it afterwards–the evolution of our emotional life, that is. We evolve in the way we deal with them–the emotions. I have observed that progression in my life. And it 1,000% correlates with Buddhist teachings–the parallels between my own observations and the teachings being very validating and actually very comforting.

Let me try to explain. You see, in our younger years (there are always exceptions) due to lack of experience/immaturity, we tend to act out our emotions. When we are feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of the wave of feelings that occur when emotions arise, what we tend to do before we know any better is to act out in some way, we re-act.

No matter the chronological age of the individual who is experiencing the emotion, immaturity or ignorance causes us to have a particular view of emotion. The reaction may be to run away from the situation or stimuli that triggered the surge of emotion in order to relinquished or release the energy. Therefore, the individual does not examine their own inner response. The don’t hang out with the emotion long enough to realize the truth that emotions arise and then then dissipate. There is no ability, therefore, to create enough space around the feeling to allow that realization to occur. Emotions are viewed, therefore, as something bad or something that must be gotten rid of as soon as possible.

Once I heard a Buddhist monk speak about how some advanced Buddhist practitioners will purposefully hold a difficult emotion that arises and try to expand it and to work with that energy for the intentional purpose of extracting wisdom information from the emotional energy. They also do a practice called Tonglen with the energy in order to help all sentient beings. Wow; impressive!

Many of us, because of societal conditioning, have been told that strong emotional energy is like poison or is highly undesirable and further that one must repress, suppress, avoid, or run away from or get rid of anger, fear, etc. as soon as possible. And further that we are a sinner!

But eventually, if we progress in our evolution as a human, we begin to see how we can counterbalance an emotion by transforming the energy into it’s opposite or into something else instead–like in my last blog post. For example, we learn to turn anger into compassion instead. Whatever or whoever our anger may be about, even if it is anger that we have toward our own self, it is possible to transform it into compassion for self or others.

So then we first try to get rid of the emotion, run away from it somehow, eventually we progress to learning how to transform the emotion and then finally (and this is where I personally am deep into it), we take emotion “as the spiritual path itself”. Yeah. Heavy.

I’m doing a lot of that lately (just as others are) with the grand cross today, 13 degrees Pluto/Jupiter opposition in Cap/Cancer respectively and then Uranus/Mars in Aries/Libra. Two oppositions and 4 squares–and we’ve all got that activated now! That’ll intensify emotions if anything will. ( I’ve also got a lot of energy aspect-ing communicative Mercury in my personal chart today so I thought this to be a good time to write a little bit about all this.) But getting back to the topic here…

The other day I posted a line on Facebook that sort of speaks to using emotions as the path itself: Fit regular life into spiritual practice, not the other way around.

And speaking of the other way around, when we can use the emotion to create something positive by flipping it around, this leads to really working with the energy–using it in a positive way instead of running from it or stuffing it. This begins the awareness of the emotional causes and triggers and opens the door to a deeper understanding of one’s self and others.

One begins to notice patterns or triggers and begins to understand how past or present conditioning (cause and effect, karma) play into the emotions.

We can almost see emotions as friends because they assist us to relate to ourselves and to the world differently.

We exit the world of duality and separation and begin to see all people have similar motivations. Just as the Embodiment of Compassion, Dalai Lama, always says, we see that all beings are, similar to ourselves, in that they are seeking pleasure and happiness and trying to avoid pain and suffering.

Another benefit is that we don’t feel alone in our emotional thunder storms and we can seek the shelter of viewing them from a higher place–seeing the bigger picture.

We can realize that without emotions there is no spiritual path! Emotions contain spiritual wisdom, knowledge and information.

And this aspect of incorporating emotion into the spiritual path involves looking at the true state of emotion and finding the wisdom there. The spiritual path IS seeing the nature of emotion.

And the emotion gets stronger and stronger as our teachers (if we ignore them) in order to show us the wisdom and knowledge and information contained within the feelings.

The previous blog post (a divination about emotion) was about the stage in which we take that emotion and flip it or transform it. The stage after that one is to really wish to see the emotion for what it has to teach–asking what is this emotion’s wisdom nature?

So we let ourselves feel the emotion knowing it will recede just as abruptly as it arose and we hold still with the feeling and allow a gap between the feeling and our old tendency to react or run (fight or flight). And as the gap forms we can distance ourselves enough to see the psychology of it all, to understand and to do something constructive and positive with it. To change.

That’s all for now! I have psychic reading clients calling soon and this is all the time I have right now. I hope this information helps someone today!

The wisdom teachers tell us that this reality, this lifetime is a bardo state just as the state after death is known as bardo—and that bardo states are states of deep uncertainty. Many people live their lives in that state of deep uncertainty while being out of touch with the self as well as, anxious, restless and often paranoid. I don’t think there’s all that much difference between the state after death and our states-of-being while alive; yet, I’ve not much aside from my own intuition to base that on. Anyway, I’ve been thinking how what can be true for people is how we have energies that co-emerge especially in times of crisis—wisdom and confusion arising simultaneously in ways that life presents us with a choice.

There does seem to be a certain clarity and wisdom behind the confusions of life (the dramas) and this is where we can turn to for our guidance moment-by-moment. It is not a contradiction; we can have and do have (if we self-examine our life with honesty) both clarity and confusion arising at the same time. It’s like we have a choice to look deeper for the co-existing wisdom that exists with or right alongside confusion; it’s always there.

I’ve also been thinking about gaps in thinking as being the basis for primordial consciousness or what I’ve heard referred to as sky consciousness—the sky is always there while there can be local weather and dark clouds or even thunder storms; if you go high enough you see there is clear and calm sky above the storms. Within our minds, this clear sky is the god-consciousness or use the word (s) you prefer to describe that clear sky—First Cause, Divine Intelligence, etc. I wrote about that in this week’s newsletter: The essential nature of mind has been called “God” by the Christians and Jews; Hindus call it “the Self”, “Shiva”, “Brahman” and “Vishnu”; Sufi mystics name it “the Hidden Essence”; and Buddhists call it “buddha nature”.

So these gaps in thinking during meditation and the gaps that happen and get even wider during a shock or trauma are opportunities to experience moments of enlightenment if we see them, recognize them.

Oh, my car used to give me those moments, believe it or not! One minute driving along and then suddenly the engine chokes and then surges and then chokes again; a bit shocking! Once it even (due to near zero transmission fluid/leaking without my knowing) went from 70 mph to 5 mph in less than 5 seconds. Well who had time to count seconds?—seemed instantaneous to me. Like some invisible force slamming on the brakes while you were fly along the Interstate Highway! Yeah, talk about giving you pause! Recently I slammed my small toe into furniture resulting in it hanging off to the side of my foot at about a 90 degree angle. Again, talk about slamming on the brakes! Those types of moments when the entire reality seems to change and one holds one’s breath in a way—time standing still because you are a bit shocked by what is happening… those are moments of heightened awareness and a bit of that clear sky manifests in the mind.

First there is a shock and you are a bit paralyzed and that is followed by a moment of deep stillness. It’s like you take a second or two to realize something horribly different from the previous reality has just occurred and then time stands still—any previous state of mind has completely vanished and in that in between state where one reality changes in to totally and drastically different one there is a peace in that transition, a deep relaxation and it can even become a momentary feeling of bliss as everything let’s go. There is something there in that transitional moment when reality suddenly changes in those ways and it’s that primordial sky-type of Presence with the capital P. There comes along with that an acute alertness that the reality isn’t real – the mind becomes totally free, liberated.

Strange as it seems to write about it now, those moments are weirdly comforting. Makes you wonder about people who continually seek those types of moments out—thrill seekers and the like. That’s not me by any means! Nor is there an intention to seek out those kinds of moments. Yet those moments can be really good re-aligners (if that’s even a word) helping us to come back into alignment and fully “present”. Personally, I’m for allowing things of that nature to happen naturally and only if necessary. I’ve been thinking about these types of events and wanted to blog about it. Next time (if there is a next time but certainly the time of death will be that type of time for all of us) my reality changes drastically like that, I’m going to try to hang out in that moment, that gap, intentionally for a bit longer in even more of a state of awareness if possible. The trick, I suppose, if there is one, is to remember to do that in the moment of crisis. Here’s hoping! 🙂