Dominic Young
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Has meditation helped me with difficult emotions? I can say without a bit of doubt that YES, absolutely meditation has helped me with difficult/afflictive emotions! Now, as for exactly how that happened, I have no real complete understanding. So, damned if I know the ultimate workings of how this happened or happens. There is an element of “magic” beyond concept to it that I can’t explain.
But I will give some thoughts about why or how this happens. Meditation in an ordinary, yet profound way allowed and allows me to be here right now and be with, deal with, whatever with the emotions I experience right at that moment, and the next moment, and the next moment, etc. It allows me to stay and be with, and not hide or run away from myself and my emotions. However, if they get too intense or overwhelming, I take care, as one should, of myself and take a break. I stop and do something else that is not overwhelming, something that is enjoyable for me.
Meditation not only allows one to be with strong emotions, but it also opens up/ cultivates your awareness to “see” things from a different perspective. Different from the limited one you get caught up in when you are experiencing difficult emotions and feelings. It also has a “magical” way to open you and your heart with this newfound awareness. When you have difficult emotions you often end up with a broken heart because someone or something hurt you/me. This broken heart born from awareness actually softens you and you begin to drop your defenses (ego) allowing you to be real and yourself fully, and feel more fully. Seeing reality as it is and not as you want it to be.
Meditation also allows you to experience and come to understand the impermanence of everything. When meditating you follow/feel your breath and when a thought arises from space, you notice it and come back to the breath. You notice the thought floats by and dissolves into space. After a while, you come to realize that is similar to how our emotions process. Emotions arise from some experience and you sit with them and come back to the breath over and over; the emotions seem to lessen or lose their tight grip little by little and even dissolve at times.
All of this is important, I believe because when you have difficult emotions, you have to process them in some way. Through your mind and body. One has to sit with difficult emotions, feel them fully, and process them. Then one can begin to let them go compassionately and fully. This is how all emotions are processed. If you don’t go through this process but ignore or push emotions down or away, it will cause many negative issues both physical and mental like depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and so on. It will be a detriment to your well-being or the well-being of others around you, where you might take out your unresolved difficult emotions on others. One caveat is if one is experiencing severe trauma, then one should seek assistance from a qualified professional.
An example from my own experience; I fell into a deep depression when there was a loss of a significant relationship and right after was the death of my mum. I received help from a clinical social worker, which was needed and very helpful. But what really allowed me to fully heal and move forward was when I found meditation and was taught the meditation technique by my meditation teacher.
This training and practice is what truly allowed me to be with my difficult emotions and my broken heart, to stay with them, and really feel deeply what I was feeling. Before all of this help, I hid and suppressed all of my feelings. I didn’t really experience my emotions I numbed them. That led to depression and health issues, like obesity and high blood pressure. Once I actually experienced and felt my strong emotions, I could begin to process them. I could see what I was really doing from a fresh perspective, the truth, that I couldn’t see before learning meditation. I felt my emotions without a filter, very raw, I could experience what was going on inside of me and just be with it. Then started to accept the impermanence of everything, including relationships and life itself. I began to accept that my relationship was over, it hurt but was true. I began to accept my mum’s death, which broke my heart, but it was the reality. This realization and acceptance allowed me to begin to let go of these strong, difficult emotions and the past. This allowed me to fully heal. Meditation was the key to my healing; a very simple, profound, and magical practice. I am grateful to have found meditation or it found me, that is the magic beyond concept or comprehension. Everyone who I loved and lost is still in my broken heart in some way (energy?), especially my mum.
Dear Anne, I can appreciate it when you say “My sense of self can be a bit wobbly sometimes”. I know that happens to me at times as well and you are in good company when you say that you haven’t let go of ego or self in any “long-lasting or meaningful way”. I can feel your joy when you talk about teaching your students. And I feel that when you let go of your expectations of a certain response from your students, you find the most joy. Thank you for being a great teacher for your students!
Dear Ginny, I loved how you took and ran with the metaphor, or is it a simile? I’m not certain on this point. But it is great how you use it to show how you can lean into experiences and try them out with a light touch to see if this actually is happiness to you personally. I can also appreciate the hesitation or difficulty you have with asking for blessings for yourself directly, I know it can be difficult at times, but I see you opening up to doing so in your essay. Finally, I could feel your tears as you saw this simple, yet profound act of generosity before your eyes while in traffic which has been a source of angst for you. So, beautiful.
How do I reconcile “letting go” of self as a path to happiness? Damn good question! What is it we are “letting go” of exactly? What is self actually? From a relative point of view, the self is ego or small selfish self always having a personal agenda of; what do I get out of this or that? Ego is always being “in your head” and doing things that may be good and very helpful, but always with the view that “I” will get something in return for what “I” am doing. It has a very transactional quality. As Trungpa Rinpoche says “holding onto one’s existence”, not to say that we shouldn’t do good in the world, we definitely should, and doing so is great! But are we doing so to prove that we exist or that we are more important than others? We must try to be mindful of why we do what we do and why we are doing it.
From an ultimate point of view, Self is beyond concept, beyond knowing, and way above my “pay grade” to fully understand or comprehend. Maybe in another life, I will be able to understand or explain ultimate Self, but for now, I will leave that as unknown to me.
I do think it is possible to “let go” of self, the relative self, at least in a moment-to-moment way. As our lives are a series of separate moments strung together so closely that we rarely see that this is the case and think that it is a continuous string. My meditation teacher and many profound teachings have called this emptiness or momentariness. When we can “let go” of self, of grasping onto self there seems to be an openness, we can be vulnerable, and drop the “suit of armor” protecting our self. We realize at that moment that we are free, open, and spacious because there is nothing substantive there. True happiness is an open and broken heart. Sounds like a contradiction, I am and I am not, but it isn’t a contradiction somehow.
An example from my own life, I will share, is when I am in a coaching session, a real coaching session. I ask my client a question and then just pause and be open to listening without any expectations or listening to respond. In a way I am “empty”, and just sit there in the silence as my client ponders the question. For a few moments, there seems to be no “I” or “other”, just open space, open experience and that is all there is in that moment.
It is very momentary, but I imagine that is what letting go, even for a fleeting moment feels like, as Trungpa Rinpoche says there is a “gap”. As for letting go of self in a more permanent way, I will leave that to those masters who have fully realized their true nature. That isn’t me for sure, not even close, whatever that means. It is a good aspiration to have though.
Anne, I could really feel the confusion and distress in you during this painful time in the world and more personally in your life. I can’t imagine having to deal with so much and so many people in a small space all at once and so suddenly. I can appreciate that you wanted to “run away” from the pain of confusion. I am glad you came through all of this with a more open heart! You are stronger than you realize. I am happy to be on this journey with you in this class.
The painful experience in my life that I learned most from was the death of my mother ( mum, as always called her ), she was and in some ways still is the most important person in my life. When she died I felt as though I had lost everything, she was my biggest supporter and loved me so much. I didn’t know what I would do without her in my life, I completely fell apart and shut down. I felt such deep sadness and even anger that she was taken out of my life. I no longer had my mum, my rock, my supporter. I felt groundless and hopeless.
I shut down so much that I no longer cared about anything at all, not even my own life! Even though I still had good people and things in my life, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. fell into a deep depression, was a shell of my former self, and barely existed. I was going through the motions without emotions, totally numb. Not taking care of myself or any of my stuff at all.
One day, one of my nurses outright told me “You stink”, but not in a mean-spirited way, in a truthful and compassionate way. It woke me up at that very moment, not exactly sure why. I went to the doctor right after that and sought help. She sent me to therapy for a little while, which helped a lot. Then, shortly after that, I found meditation, and my meditation teacher, my “spiritual friend”. It was an oddly “magical” series of events. I have healed my depression now, not that I don’t get sad, but I don’t get lost in the sadness anymore.
What I learned from this experience is that I can ask for help when I am going through troubled times and through struggles in my life and there are people who are willing to help and who really care. All I really needed to do was ask, I didn’t have to do things on my own. I learned that it is OK to ask for help and be vulnerable. I learned that I had to feel my emotions fully and not push them down. Truly feeling my emotions and expressing them allowed me to process them and then begin to let them go, that was an amazing realization for me.
As I view this experience now, in the present, I know that I am not alone in these feelings and emotions, they are very human and everyone goes through such emotions in life at some point. Possibly, this is something that I had to go through to find my way, my true path in life so that I truly and authentically could be of benefit to others in the world. To be able to really help others who are struggling with similar situations. Who knows for certain, but I believe that it is a strong possibility.
I do know that my mum is still in my heart and my heart always guides me.
Hey Betsy, I was moved in reading your essay. Especially when you said “I feel like a broken record”, I have a similar feeling regarding a painful experience that happened in my life some years ago. Maybe we both can show some compassion for ourselves on this point as they are deeply painful experiences. I love that you have come to realize that it could be a story you are telling yourself, about how things should be. I am glad you found a path forward for yourself and are continually growing. I believe that you have found that “loving relationship” you were looking for; it is a loving relationship with yourself. You are a strong person. Thank you for your essay, it is inspiring. I am glad to be on this journey with you.
I love your metaphor of “circles” of wisdom holders around you as being part of your lineage, Jenn, and how they get finer the closer they are to you and less fine the further away they are from you! And I can relate to your way of understanding how your lineages support your practice. It seems that it helps you to know you are not alone in having whatever issues you might be going through in the moment and that your lineage allows you to shift your perspective, that others also have similar things they are going through. There definitely is some kind of magic in being held within some kind of lineage. Thank you for your essay, it touched my heart.
I love your essay Karen and the way that you “intuited” your own Truth by learning and experiencing life! It seems to have a magical quality to it, which is often the way when finding your Truth within and from your own experience. And I too have found that the most painful have actually taught me the most! Beautiful essay.
Immediately what comes to my mind when I think of my own lineage is quite simple, but upon further contemplation could easily get more complex. As a way of explaining, I will say that the first thing that comes to my mind is my Buddhist lineage. My meditation teacher and my Spiritual Friend ( my guru/ not my guru, lol ), Lodro Sangpo is of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages as his teacher/guru was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche who is and was the lineage holder in both of these traditions. I took refuge with Sangpo and plan on taking the Bodhisattva Vow with him in the near future. My Refuge name is Sempa Sangpo, so this is my lineage and always will be, it is deeply special to me.
To explain how it could get a little more complex, I too am a Baha’i and I have a lineage in this Faith tradition. I grew up Catholic and feel that all traditions have wise teachings that have spoken to me on my spiritual path. In the Baha’i faith, it is taught that there is a line (lineage) from Abraham to Jesus, to Mohammad, to Baha’u’llah, and then to his son Abdu’l’Baha, then to Shoghi Effendi. So this too is a lineage to which I am connected.
Then to go even a step further, I have my own personal family lineage to which I am closely connected, though I don’t know much of my family tree beyond my great-grandparents. My mum and my dad who are no longer with me physically, are lineage holders of the Young line which is very important to me, both my mother’s side of Forrester and my dad’s side of Young. I am the next holder of this lineage and right now do not have children and my sister will not be having children, so I am unsure right now if my lineage will stop at my generation. I hope/plan to have a child in the not-so-distant future with my girlfriend and future wife. Which I would love to have a child and so would she, so it would be great if it happens and my family lineage continues, but whatever happens happens. She has a son already and I hope/plan to adopt him one day and maybe he will become part of the family lineage.
So, it seems a bit complex on the surface, but if I look deeper it really isn’t that complex at all! It is rather simple, I am part of/ holder of three(four) lineages. A Buddhist (Kagyu/Nyingma), a Baha’i, and a personal family lineage.
My lineages greatly support me in my personal spiritual practice so much so that it would not be as stable, consistent, and rich as it would be without my lineages. In the morning I wake up before 5 am and make an offering of myself and what I feel and who I am being right at that moment and try to let that go as I begin my practice. Before I begin, I chant The Four Dharmas of Gampopa, The Seven Line Supplication to Padmakara, and the Supplication to the Takpo Kagyu which seems to stabilize my practice in some unknown, possibly magical way. Then I meditate for an hour, sometimes it is awesome and sometimes it is so boring, but it is what it is.
After meditation practice, I say a few prayers from the Baha’i writings, for guidance and healing for my loved ones, myself, and the world in general. Then listen to the Long Healing Prayer, and then sit in silence for a bit to be in that energy of healing for all sentient beings.
Finally, I do a gratitude practice to finish off my morning practice. I say out loud what and who I am grateful for in my life and what I will be grateful for going forward. The most important thing I say is that I am grateful for my family which includes my girlfriend and future wife, my sister, and of course my parents. Especially my mum for being my greatest supporter, for giving me life, and never giving up on me when I was born and the doctors told her that I would not survive. At that moment I always turn to a picture of her that I have on my wall where I practice.
So, these are my lineages, and they are all so important and supportive of me and my practice!
Hi Betsy, I love how open you are about your feelings about aging and about living alone for a long time. You have great courage to live your life to the fullest with the time that you have and you are an inspiration to me. I am honoured to be with you on this journey.
Hi Kelly, I love that you are so open, raw, and real about your struggle to comprehend the teachings and this particular article. I could really feel your frustration over not being able to “get it”. I am glad that you were able to let go of that and to just let it be as it is and stop trying so hard. And to just sit with the teaching for a while. I am glad we are on this journey together
Hi Karen your essay is so deep and personal, my heart goes out to you. The loss of a marriage must be difficult, to say the least. You went through a lot and came out on the other side much stronger! I have read some Tolle, but I have not seen that particular quote, and it definitely rings true for me. Thank you for your beautiful essay!
Thank you for your kind words Rena! I am glad that my thoughts gave you some inspiration. I appreciate you! I am honoured to be on this journey with you!
As I have been thinking and contemplating about which of the first three Noble Truths I wish to write about to express in my own words and share an example in my own life, it has been quite difficult to choose just one as they are all inextricably interconnected with one another.
I will start at the beginning, as that seems to be the simplest place to begin, lol. The first Noble Truth is that life is suffering. As I understand it this means that life is constantly changing and never static. And that everything is impermanent, nothing lasts, nothing is completely solid. We will die, people we love will die, people will leave, moment to moment things will not stay the same or the way we want them to be. That is the way it is. That is the nature of reality and then we start to cause our own suffering by wanting this to not be the truth of reality.
As I said, it is difficult to separate these simple yet profound truths, as I am straying into the second Noble Truth already! Life is suffering or unsatisfying and that is very true. We will suffer in some way or another from the time we are born, from sickness, from old age, from death, from losing loved ones, from losing friends, from losing a job, from not having all the things we want and it goes on and on. Then we cause our own suffering by pretending, wanting, or hoping that these things won’t happen in our lifetime. Basically, the suffering of suffering.
In my own life, I have experienced this Noble Truth of suffering, as we all have for certain. I experienced this very deeply with the death of my mum, she meant the world to me and was my rock and biggest supporter. I felt the pain of the loss of her from my life, this was such a deep loss and suffering for me, that it broke my heart. Then I didn’t allow myself to feel the loss and completely process the loss of my mum who was my foundation and support my whole life. I didn’t want it to be true, I didn’t want her to be gone, I wanted her to still be here. I started to just live in the past, so to speak, to be like it was when she was alive, for her to still be alive! I actually stopped living and just barely existed for a very long time. I was definitely suffering from the loss of my mum ( which was completely understandable ), and further creating more suffering by wanting and ignoring the truth of the death of my mum to not be true. I was ignoring reality and thus suffering not only the truth of reality but the further suffering of not accepting the reality.
Through meditation, I was able to have compassion for myself and became aware of the suffering I was causing myself by grasping onto what I wanted to be the reality and not truly feeling the actual reality of the death of my mum. Once I stopped grasping at the reality I wanted, I was able to process the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the loss of my mum and let go of the past ( as in wanting the past to be my present reality ). I still have my mum with me in my heart and my mind, her energy lives on through me. She is gone and not gone at the same time.
I guess I described and/or defined both the first and second Noble Truths in this essay. They are definitely so very interconnected with one another!-Dominic Young
