Don’t be carried away by thoughts and emotions… Just Be
By Maryrose Mitchell
Emotions, perceptions, and thoughts are transient and emerge over and over throughout our day. See them as if you are standing on a train platform watching them go by like cars on a metro train. Instead of being carried off by every thought and emotion we can stand back and watch as they move out of sight.
Visualize your emotions or negative thoughts when they come. Be the curious watcher. See if you can remove the label and just feel the sensation in your body. If you take away the words “fear” or “anger” what is left for you to experience?
When you remove the story or label, you are left with a type of vibration in your body. What does this sensation feel like? Is it pressure? Is it tension planted somewhere in the body? Is it a feeling that causes you to be unsettled and wants to flee? Can you sit with this sensation and see what happens?
You may discover that the more you “unwrap” what you experience the more interesting it becomes. If you can lovingly explore the unwanted sensations that accompany negative labels like fear, anger, rage, sadness, jealousy, etc., then they eventually lose their power. The more often you drop the labeling and sit with just the vibrations, sensations in your body or whatever remains once the story is gone, the less power those emotions will have over you. The story that, I am angry because my mother insulted me., becomes just a vibration left in the body when you drop the story behind it. Our thoughts and the emotions tied to them are what cause us most of our suffering.
If you can just tell yourself, “One person had an exchange with another” and remove the mother/daughter labels, then you won’t be overtaken with emotions. You can have some degree of serene detachment because you have removed a giant chunk of the drama. When you can let both the story and the emotion attached to it move away like a train moving down the tracks without “jumping on board”, you will begin to experience true freedom and a deeper level of consciousness. This makes way for love to arise.
Understand that even joy and happiness will come and go many times a day. If you become aware that your emotions, perceptions, and thoughts are impermanent and are constantly changing throughout the day, you will stop being carried away by them because you will see that they are not who you really are. Perceptions, emotions, and thoughts drift by like clouds and you are the sky behind it all that remains unchanged. It’s exhausting jumping on every emotion or thought train that passes by from minute to minute. When you do this repeatedly, you miss out on what is happening right here and now, which is all we ever really have in life.
When you are in your head imagining what you should have said or what you will say next time, you can’t experience the richness of present life experiences. There is nothing wrong with validating your feelings and experiencing them to the fullest degree when they arise, as long as you use it as an opportunity to discover who you are deep within. Don’t hold back on how you feel. Let it all surface without resistance. After that, keep the attention on your self. If you are stuck blaming or feeling shame or guilt, then this will not result in personal, positive transformation.
When you become aware of how often you are carried away by your thoughts and emotions, this is the first step in breaking the cycle of addictive thinking and feeling. When you recognize you are being carried off, you can use the phrase, “I am” and then pause to bring yourself to the deep stillness and silence of the moment. This peaceful “space” is you “pre-thought”.
You are content and undisturbed before your thoughts and emotions arise. If you learn to “drop the thought” and be present several times a day you will have more serenity and less stress. You can also take a couple of deep breaths to help you anchor back to the present moment when you seem to be carried off. When you are in the here and now, calmness arises. The less you think, the more you will be in touch with the deeper, authentic self. You will also have so much more energy because you won’t be expending it running after each feeling or thought.
Don’t mind what others think. This only confuses you. Go within and know who you are and then you will not be confused. Knowing oneself is the most important endeavor of our existence because if you don’t know who you are, you will spend your life either rejecting or pleasing others and never really have lived your unique purpose. You don’t want to realize one day when you are very old that you are at the end of everyone else’s life.
Sometimes we must make decisions that may seem oppositional to others. This is absolutely fine as long as you know that your inner and outer selves are aligned. You will know this when you don’t feel guilt inside and you feel love towards others even when you disagree. If you experience guilt, shame, or strong defensiveness it usually means the ego is arising. It may take a while for these old thought patterns to dissolve. Just understand that your loving, true self is not harsh, but is forgiving and wants you to know that everything you feel is fine.
Your deeper self wants you to take steps towards finding out who you are and connect with the consciousness of every living thing, which has been forgotten and covered up by society’s demands. If you allow the outside world to decide who you are, then you will never discover your true self.
When you are feeling confused or guilty it’s a signal that your outer actions and words are not aligned with your true self. Examine these feelings and be honest about why they are occurring. Don’t blame others for making you feel bad. Nobody can make you feel one way or another without your permission. You and only you are responsible for your happiness or unhappiness. When the inside self is aligned with the outside self, you will be confident, even when there is disagreement from others.
It’s not your job to convince others of anything. It’s your purpose to make personal choices that adhere to who you are within. Just be authentic. If you feel unsettled, then your ego is influencing you rather than your loving deeper self which is connected to everything and accepts life as it unfolds. When you are tapped into your authentic self, you will stop minding so much what happens in the external world. You will understand that you have no control over people and circumstances and you only seek the truth. Illusions are removed as you come to know your self.
We often believe the thought that someone else can make us feel inadequate, unworthy, guilty, or bad about who we are. Let me demonstrate how this doesn’t have to be the case. I was recently speaking to a young man. He told me that he was bullied in high school due to some learning differences which made him vulnerable. After graduation, he was bullied at work because he sometimes took longer to learn a task than others. He is extremely humble, dedicated and hard-working. He was recently starting a new job and was concerned that others at his new job may be as unkind and impatient as the job he left. When he left that job he told me, “I send love to the haters.”
I told him he’s matured a lot in the last few years. In the past, he was insecure and he allowed others to convince him that he wasn’t good enough. This made him defensive and angry, which was normal at the time. I asked him, “If those same people who “made you feel bad” came into your life right now and said the same things to you that they had said in the past would you still feel angry, sad, or defensive?” He thought for a minute and said, “No. They can’t make me feel bad anymore because I accept myself as I am.”
Then I made him aware that he felt this way because he had changed. He loves himself inside in a way he hadn’t before. Therefore, he doesn’t absorb what others say. He knows he has flaws and weaknesses like everyone else, but he still likes who he is. Although he would prefer for people to be kind, patient, and not bullies, he doesn’t need anything to happen a certain way to find joy. He understands he is the master of his happiness Domaine. You see we don’t need people or circumstances in the outside world to be a particular way in order to find peace and joy. This is just thought many of us believe and it causes us suffering. Believing we need someone or something specific is just the mind grabbing at something and then holding on tightly with thoughts or even fear. It’s just an old habit we can break with time and practice. Allow everything to rise up, even your darkest shadow side and eventually negativity towards ourselves will dissolve. Gradually what is left is all-encompassing love, not just for ourselves, but for others too.
Once we understand that we can’t be diminished by anyone or anything outside of us, we are free. When we love who we are, then we trust and allow life to be as it is. Although it feels great, we don’t even really need people to love us. We only have to be authentic, then we have done all we can. Our joy comes from giving and accepting freely without thoughts or expectations. Whatever we see in others is also inside of us, so others can help us to know ourselves better. Being aligned on the inside and out makes all the difference. When we are accepting, understanding, and loving towards ourselves, then this can create harmony with people and situations on the outside as well. All harmony starts within.
About Maryrose
I’ve had lots of phases and honestly feel I’ve lived many lives. There was a long career in nursing and I’m still having fun with 4 kids. I’ve loved learning things about myself that I didn’t want to know and then there was no unseeing them. The raw truth transforms. I became a mindfulness meditation instructor. Now, every day I learn I know nothing. Well… maybe I know a few things. The most important one is, we are all one consciousness, so it’s my job to know myself if I want to be of any use. For some odd reason the more I know me, the more I love me. It’s not that I’m so great. It’s just fun-loving such a flawed person. I’m my own underdog, so I’m rooting for me! And the best part is— the more I love my self, with all my defects, the more I love everyone else and accept their defects. I never saw that coming. It really rocks!
I have a website that I created for fun. Feel free to visit: love2bmindful.com .
