We had a two hour talk that ranged from relationships to car insurance to college to human psychology. We dove head first into how we can move past anger and sadness. Feeling emotions is a human experience. We will never get away from feeling anger, sadness, jealousy, or hate. Ask Pema Chodron or the Dalai Lama if they have never felt these emotions and they will say no. We cannot escape our human nature. However, we do have choices.
Many times people believe a zen person lives in complete joy and peace 24/7. Unfortunately that is not the case. Sweeping things under a rug pretending that we don't feel a certain way and projecting a false image doesn't help us deal with it long-term, either. Instead, approaching difficult emotions head on is truly the only way to make progress.
We live in a culture in this country where we expect everything to be as fast as our drive through lunch. And like our drive through lunch, it's not good for us. Would we look at a baby and say "OK, walk now!" No. The baby needs to learn to perhaps crawl first, then gain muscle strength, learn how to stand up, discover balance, and then start taking those first few wobbly steps before they are walking like a pro. We cannot expect someone who is illiterate to pick up a pen and start writing or someone with no exposure to a computer or smart phone to just know how to use it. Skills need to be learned and developed. And we all get there at our own pace.
So, why would we feel that healing our emotions would be an instantaneously mastered experience? We are all made up of experiences that impact our personalities and reactions. We have genes that also dictate our personalities. If I grew up in a foster environment with parents who abandoned me and then foster parents that did not nurture or love me, why would I naturally be able to trust people. One wouldn't.
My husband has always said he doesn't like psychology. Not because he doesn't believe in it, but that it takes the mystery of things away. However, even though we know how a plane can fly, doesn't make it any less amazing.
Here's what I shared with my daughter: you need to train your mind to start to look at emotions differently. First you are in the emotion, say, anger. Then eventually with practice when you feel angry, you realize you feel anger. You have labeled it.
Next you start to sit with that anger forgetting about who caused it and where it happened. You just sit with anger. At that point, because humans are amazingly curious, you will probably start to think about where did you develop this anger, why it cuts so deeply and find through psychological analysis things that stemmed back from your childhood. And then you have your "why" answer. You don't need this part, but many people have a "need to know."
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| Photo courtesy of yourcourageouslife.com |
From there, you make a choice. I choose to either remain angry or I choose to look at it objectively and not act angry. Perhaps you yell. Perhaps you punch a wall normally. But now, you choose not to. You labeled it anger. You know its anger. And then you breathe through the anger until either it passes or you look at it like you'd look at a cookie or the color orange. It's now something tangible happening that you may not feel as intensely anymore.
It's like you smell cinnamon and you immediately think of a streusel, and Starbucks. You start to let go of the idea of Starbucks. Let go of the streusel. And you are sitting with cinnamon. You think about cinnamon and then it perhaps becomes the cinnamon stick or spice and you see it in a jar, in your cupboard. By the end, you may be no longer thinking about cinnamon because you've started objectively thinking about cinnamon as a thing, rather than as a longing. A monk doesn't escape feeling these human emotions. They just have more time practicing than most of us do.
I'm not saying it's easy. It takes practice. And you learn step by step. But eventually, each step gets a little easier. Kind of like walking.
In 2010, Time Magazine interviews His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Below is a quote from the article.
"Question: Do you ever feel angry or outraged?
