Emotional Freedom

[lightmystic]

Nothing wrong with enjoying life. If it goes, then it's just noticing what hurts and attending to that....

Mar 22, 2010 22:28:51 GMT -5 loverofall said:

Well now comes waves of good feelings this weekend. Dare I say it felt like real love and peace but at this point I don't even like labeling any feeling. It was triggered by connecting with others. It seems like feelings are loosening up with all this letting go and feel the I scam. All I know it was very good and I was more content than I have been in a long long time. It was hard to not try to hold on to the good. Maybe even harder than trying to embrace that bad. Interesting experience. I know all states come and go just finally some really good ones. LOL.

[karen]

Emotionally charged memories have vexed me since I was in 6th grade. They've been on order of a PTSD magnitude whereupon the memory would pop up and I'd be trapped thinking and feeling it.

And so years ago, I learned that if I would accept these feelings, I would be free of them. And it helped.

But not for long.

So for the last several years, I've still been dealing with these.

It got to the point one or two weekends ago where I laid in bed being confronted by another painful memory and I seemed to have had a breaking point.

I asked what have I done. I've tried pushing them away. And I've tried accepting them. What else must be done? I can't do anything I thought - I'm screwed.

Then spontaneously I started saying "pour over me! Keep coming! Don't stop." And it dawned on me that these patterns have been visiting me for decades and perhaps I should start thinking of them as friends.

My earlier attempts at "acceptance" was merely me "gaming" myself. I was pretending to accept the feelings in order for them to go away. There was always an underlying expectation or arch of progress whereby I would be free of these thoughts.

But I now see: why must I be free of them? They actually do no physical harm. And I've never had such stalwart friends as these.

[maggie]

Karen

Thank you!!! Your post is so helpful....Is it something in the water?
I am in deep and at times feel like I am going under....death comes to mind.....the emotions are powerful and come up so quick......I am about the same business of just feeling, really feeling....looking directly at these appearances......they seem to be undone, then crop up again in still another form.....then I judge myself! Today being Easter and all I guess its a good day to die/ Resurrect. All I can think of is to keep on keeping on moment by moment as each appearance makes its debut.....silence is here and this is the weird thing.....I have been in meditation/silence so beautiful.....just out there with it .... here goes???

[enigma]

Mooji, another favorite of mine, has a saying: "No thought is self employed", meaning that without your attention, no thought, and therefore no feeling, can continue.

It can be noticed that nothing can be experienced unless it is in motion. Experience is literally the experience of change, and if something is not moving, either as a changing sensory perception, or as a 'movement' of thought or feeling, it disappears. Hencely, there is no such thing as a thought or feeling that is stuck, or somehow haunts us without our complete cooperation. We experience the arising and falling of a feeling, but in order to create the illusion that a feeling is remaining, we have to stimulate it into arising over and over with the thoughts.

If this is seen, and not just held as an idea, then the solution is obvious; stop giving it your attention and it will die quickly. Fighting it, embracing it, trying to resolve it, transform it, heal it, are all attention. As I think I've mentioned before, the warrior who is waving a white flag is just as engaged as the one who is waving a sword. When does the warrior walk off the battlefield? When he's lost interest in the battle.

[loverofall]

Apr 4, 2010 23:35:44 GMT -5 enigma said:

. As I think I've mentioned before, the warrior who is waving a white flag is just as engaged as the one who is waving a sword. When does the warrior walk off the battlefield? When he's lost interest in the battle.

Thanks, a great pointing.

This warrior at times runs right back on the battlefield and then asks why did that happen again when being off the field is the way. The mind loves the battlefield I guess. I do enjoy this analogy.

[loverofall]

A strong distracting mind is created by emotional pain as a defense to the vulnerable natural state. Maybe that is an explanation. Getting back on the battlefield is still a way to control I guess.

[loverofall]

And for those with backgrounds of emotional pain from family situations, holidays will always bring up strong emotions and thoughts.

My one friend has a very crazy family past even compared to whats out there right now and about a few weeks before every holiday the control and fear patterns start arising. Excessive planning, complaining, drinking and anxiety. Then relief after the holiday that makes her feel like it was a great holiday. One way the mind keeps control is to distract and then relieve. Never a moment of not in control.

[maggie]

Enigma

Thanks for the message...yes this is true that paying attention to the movement is the continuation. I feel the noticing here has to do with the content of the illusion/drama. In this case an emotional string that pulls me in, you know boyfriend with terminal throat cancer, gets new girlfriend...it has all the painful memories triggered ..........a particular ploy to draw this back into the fray.......I know better than to ask the how question, but these imaginings seem to have me by the throat...not paying attention seems a tall order right now.

[karen]

Yes of course one shouldn't bring attention to these painful memories, but when one is surrounded already with the pain, to say simply turn off attention is rather simplistic.

In fact, I've already tried that. The most I could muster was the imitation of turning off attention - i.e. pushing away.

In fact my post above is the description of precisely how I turn off attention to painful memories.

Think about it. What's the "upside" (for ego) of thinking about an awkward or painful memory? The only "upside" is the painful emotion that keeps one cycling about it. If there is no emotional charge, there's no hook.

[enigma]

Yeah, I don't suggest not paying attention as some kind of practice. Interest is at the root of it, and mind doesn't have control over interest, which is a movement of attention which is actually more fundamental than mind in some ways. If there is a solution, it must be in noticing, since that's all that Awareness 'does'. If we fail to notice the destructive nature of our habits of attention, we can find ourselves in a position of giving attention to things we don't want to attend to, which is odd and unnecessary.

In the case of emotional attachments to past events, there may be a sense of wanting to 'fix' or 'heal' them, but of course they can't be made to not have happened. There may be a desire to understand those feelings and reactions, in which case exploring them can be helpful. There may be a need to feel deeply, in which case the memories serve their purpose and need not be struggled with, though there are other less destructive feelings that can be felt with equal depth. There may be a desire to play the role of victim, which dissolves in the light of seeing this. There may be a desire to prevent such things from happening again, to heighten vigilance, to be right, and I'm sure many other motivations that don't occur to me now, but the clarity of noticing what that motivation is, is generally the end of the interest.

[maggie]

There is a great seeing here....that the motivation for this attachment is to feel a victim, and then plan for a future of "I will never do that again" or "how did He get under my radar".
All thoughts/ hallucinations of a past or future that does not exist...and disappear as mist before the sun evaporated in the blink of an eye, as they are seen never even to have occurred...... ha ! What a thin veil, what a joke I play on myself....all in the purpose of carving out an identity/niche separate from All ness...

Thought I was long ago done with that... and am grateful for the simple way of seeing through that...yes reckon it is good to read your post and it makes me glad that I bare the very things I might like to hold...glad there is a place to hear such pointing and to ask for help.

[loverofall]

Yes because to feel like a victim, you are creating feelings based on thoughts which is still not as bad to the mind as being vulnerable to the moment and being free to feel true deep pain that started the emotional control tricks of the mind. I always look at it like there goes my defense mechanism again, creating false emotions based on thoughts instead of just being vulnerable.

I now understand when they say peel it all away and only love remains. The problem for the mind is it still jumping in the way to protect against any real deep emotional pain even if that means creating mini suffering on thought. A child starts watching their family fall apart or is abused and learns to stop the true emotional pain of the moment by thinking and imagination. For those of us undoing our imagination and thinking it becomes a challenge in that the mind believes we are taking the locks off the door that protects us from those bad events.

Fear of that pain is deep within and enlightenment says let it all pass through and stop using thinking and imagination to control our experience. The mind says no way, it won't matter what you experience because I will jump in and change it to save you from ever being truly hurt again.

[karen]

That's why it's important IMO to hand off immediately once seen from the story to the feeling in the body - and make that the old friend.

And this victim thing I agree was a strategy built up long ago to create a parameter between myself and a painful possible future with the logic of better to suffer in hurt in private than actually suffer and hurt in the actual experience.

But there's no difference between the two really. It's a bad deal all around.

[loverofall]

Karen I agree its a bad deal all around but there really is a difference from an emotional freedom perspective.

Created sufferings like resentments, rejections, loneliness, frustrations, anxieties are thought based emotions created by the conceptual mind.

True sufferings are deep emotional pain that the causes all the insanity out there because the mind blocks that vulnerability with the mini sufferings as one tool.

A broken heart can cause a life time of mini sufferings to avoid ever having the heart vulnerable again to be broken or hurt. Keeping it broken allows it never to be broken again.

The bible talks about a hardened heart causes the loss of sensitivities and the increase of sensual living and futile thinking (though they say it is with the gentiles which is wrong in that it includes most Christians because many I know have lost sensitivities and are living in sensuality and thoughts).

Unhardening the heart is what I believe happens as part of this journey.

[maggie]

The discovery I am sitting with at this moment is that this appearance is not such a bad thing at all....I have written,inquired, deeply felt, cried .....

The most amazing thing that happened is noticing this is all just an believed scenario with all kinds of emotions attached...perhaps old and ingrained to boot.....

However something loosened and a new perspective opened up/ I can see. The feeling is I can breathe....hard to explain the unexplainable.....

All I know is freedom to be is open and before I was all tangled up in what felt like a trap.....could it be that the trap and freedom are both leading me beyond? This is all "occurring" in/as awareness so what is wrong? Nothing!