Doing Away With Labels And Emotions! Can We?

One day, brooding over my own little emotional problems, I chanced upon a YouTube video that was going to change the way I looked at my emotional well-being forever! At first, it came as an unacceptable reality check but then chewing over it, applying this truth to my own life, much like one would chew a bitter herb of medicine to treat a bad cold or stomach infection, the depth of truth in these words left me astounded. It was revolutionary in some ways because in this self help universe, few spiritual teachers had the courage to tell human kind where we were going wrong, as unpopular as that might be. With passing years, as I grew more and more aware of this truth, it made my life easier and lighter. The outcome of living with this knowledge was simple-the positive emotions stayed while the negative emotions as purposeful as they sometimes may be, fell by the wayside.

“How to deal with our emotions? (It is a)Big problem!” said Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who has founded The International Association For Human Values, “Worrying too much about your emotions is lack of emotional maturity – feeling as though you are a victim of your own emotions. “Oh! I feel like this! I feel like that! What to do?” But what is the big deal about your feelings? Bundle them up and throw them into the ocean! Disown all that you think are your patterns. If you start identifying with them – “My patterns are like this, I am always angry, I am always defensive”, then you get caught. Sometimes you see dark clouds in the sky, but the space does not own them. It just allows them to come and pass away. Similarly, these emotions – sometimes they are pleasant, sometimes unpleasant; let them come and go. Just disown them. That is the first step.”

My first reaction was one of dismissal. Dismissal because we have constantly been told that it is okay to feel emotions. However, nobody really points out to us the futility of sticking to these patterns and identifying with them. For example, I believed (before hearing this talk) I was an angry person. But I had never paid much attention to those moments when in spite of every reason being there for me to lose my senses, I was calm. What did that say about my pattern of being an angry person? I have believed I am a lazy person by disposition and yet there are days when I have cleaned up my room, gone for a run, managed to get everything done I set out to. Not knowing or being aware of the temporal nature of emotions put me in a vicious cycle. For example, if a situation made me angry, then the following seconds made me guilty for feeling so much anger and sometimes hurting another being out of my anger. The resentment led to more anger and this emotional roller coaster would never end. I would just go from feeling angry to feeling sad to feeling something else, with no awareness of their real character, living my life believing them to be true. But are we just our emotions? Do we not need to look up and beyond these constantly changing set of feelings that we believe define us? How else do we spiritually evolve?

Sri Sri further said, “All emotions are linked with people, objects and events. Catching on to objects, people or relationships hinders freedom.”

Freedom is what every soul wants. It is the innate need for each soul. But I did not know that I had given my powers away to something as temporary as emotions. I could not stop myself from getting hurt from what someone said or did to me!

“Just examine why your spirits go down? More often than not, it is because somebody said something nasty to you. They had some garbage that they needed to throw out and you were there, ready to catch it. And once you have caught it, you hold on to it so passionately! Wake up! Don’t let your smile be snatched away by anybody! Nobody can feel bad or good all the time; these feelings come like waves. You can’t stop a wave that has already arisen; nor can you make a wave rise just like that. Just as waves come and go, clouds come and go, so also emotions come and go,” Sri Sri mentioned.

That is not to say our emotions don’t have any role to play. They can make you sensitive enough to grasp deeper truths about yourself. Without this sensitivity, there can be no depth or indeed even an inquiry into the nature of our real self. “One should learn how to handle one’s emotions. Your emotions can make you very weak and emotions can make you very strong. When your emotions are positive they make you sensitive to the truth, subtle, delicate and take you into a deep meditation. Emotion is your enemy and emotion is your friend. That emotion which makes you soft inside is your friend. That emotion which makes you rigid inside, is your enemy. If you have no emotions then you are like a dead rag and Divine Love cannot flower in you. Every emotion has a definite sensation in the body. Many a times, we get carried away by thoughts, or feelings and we do not observe the sensations.  We make so many affirmations: “Oh! I will not do this. I will do this. ” But, when the storm of emotion rises in us – we find ourselves lost.” Sri Sri added.

But how do we ‘handle our emotions’?

Nobody teaches us this fundamental skill to manage our emotions, in schools or colleges. Sri Sri opened my eyes to another spectacular truth that in itself was transformational-our emotions are linked to our breath! Each emotion if you closely observe has a concomitant breathing pattern. For example, when you are angry, your breath is short, when you are sad or upset, your out breath is long and when you are calm or praying, your breath is deep and balanced. Knowing this, now it became easier to manage my emotions and they were not just a reaction to life’s circumstances. Learning some deep breathing practices like Sudarshan Kriya where I learned the powerful rhythmic breathing that leaves the practitioner feeling totally hollow and empty, finding an oasis of calmness within oneself by the end of the practice, finally put the power back in my hands- power to lead a happy and emotionally stable life, which did not depend on whether my circumstances where favorable enough or not.

Yet another issue is self-judgement. We do not let ourselves go through the emotional experience with full authenticity because we judge ourselves so much. To which Sri Sri said, “There are no problems when we feel high. The problem comes when we feel low. When one feels low, then the more one tries to feel happy or cheerful, the more the feelings of low persist. When you feel low, dive to the lowest.  The hindrance is the stiffness and ego. Be like water. It always flows down. Water can take any shape, whichever glass you put it in. Water means acceptance of the present moment. It is not simply acceptance with fatalism; it is acceptance with motion, with dynamism, with readiness to jump up. How has the ocean become an ocean? It has accepted the lowest.”

Just agreeing with our lowest feelings and the readiness to embrace it fully is the one step that is needed to come out of it. The answer is not denial but total awareness of them. “Have you ever loved your low feelings? You have always fought with them. Just close your eyes and go into that low. “Okay, today I shall agree with my low feelings and I shall go to the depth of it. Just be with it” Do not do any action but just agree. How far will you go down? You will find the ocean bed (of low feeling) there. You will start rising up in no time.”

(Picture Credit: Stoice Ionela for Unsplash)

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