Freedom from Negative Emotions

How do I deal with negative emotions?

For clarity in answering this question, we will make a distinction between what I am referring to here as 'sensations' and 'emotions'. Firstly, a sensation, according to my definition, is simply the raw experience of the bodily innerscape and atmosphere; the silent feeling from within the body and the feeling of the apparently external environment from within and through the body. Examples of sensation include: the visceral topology of the wind meeting the face, the texture of linen sheets on the skin, the heartbeat in the chest, the contour of the teeth against the tongue, etc.

It is important to recognise that even these descriptive examples are merely pointers, a form of conceptual shorthand for a raw experience that is far more intimate than any commentary. The act of naming a sensation, of categorising the raw moment into a neat phrase like 'the texture of linen sheets', is a secondary cognitive event. It happens a moment after the initial, unmediated experience of Reality. Before the mind intervenes with its labels, there is only the pure, unadorned event itself. The sensation to which we refer when we say 'the wind on the face' or 'the heartbeat in the chest' is experienced as utterly unnamed and non-conceptual in the pristine immediacy of its initial arising. If we are strictly honest, we don't even know it as 'the wind on the face' or 'the heartbeat in the chest.' We just know it as pure....sensation, absolutely silent experiencing.

Alternatively, an emotion is a compound of a raw bodily sensation - such as 'the heartbeat in my chest', 'rumbling in the tummy' or 'tightness in the throat' - and an additional qualifying label, like 'this is an emotion called anxiety'. It is this merger that transforms an innately neutral sensation into what is believed to be an emotion. 'Anxiety' is a label that is conceptualised as an afterthought, and is then superimposed onto the naked and silent sensation, giving what is essentially neutral and ineffable an 'emotional' connotation, like a running commentary of subtitles added to a silent movie.

Indeed 'the wind on the face' and 'the heartbeat in the chest' are labels, specifying descriptions of sensations, however they have not yet become 'emotions', for they arise, at this stage of their elaboration, as neutral attempts to accurately represent the current experience without using emotional definitions, such as anxiety, sorrow, depression, apathy, etc. The sensation only seems to become an 'emotion' the instant that we attach an emotional name or concept to the raw sensation, giving it an interpretation that is not essential to its living, unemotional Reality.

Now, with this distinction in our understanding, it is evident that a so-called 'negative emotion' is simply a raw bodily sensation onto which the mind has affixed the label 'negative.' The instant that the mind assigns this sensation with a label like 'anxiety', and subsequently believes its labelling to be truly accurate, a subtle or not so subtle resistance to the sensation is set in motion. By definition, the sensation is not positive or good, and is therefore, not the pole of the polarity that the mind is oriented to seek. This seeking to achieve positivity or goodness as opposed to the seeming negativity of the sensation is the resistance that, down the road, coalesces into the form of asking for help to 'deal with it', which is code for 'how do I get rid of it?'

Why would we want to do something about it? What is the small print in this request? We want to eradicate the sensation in order to be all good, to be at peace, because we believe this sensation has taken away our capacity to be at peace.

Is that so? Can a sensation really prevent us from being at peace? Let us see.

It might seem so palpable and commonsensical that the sensation is negativity itself, however if we look closely, with the microscope of sincere introspection, we can easily discern that the defining label 'negative' is a superfluous addition that arises after the raw experience of the sensation. The sensation and the label 'negative' are two distinct events that occur in succession, which have, through an act of imagining, merged to give the appearance that they are one and the same phenomenon.

If we breakdown the frame by frame experience of this 'negative emotion' we will invariably see that firstly a neutral and undefined sensation arises, and then, as quickly as you can say 'negative', a thought pops into view, attaching a conceptual label to it. That’s how it happens, every time. No sensation comes tailor-made with a label of definition embedded in it. All sensations come totally naked and ineffable. The notion of what this sensation is, is always added. For example, anger, fear, shame, depression and guilt are merely ideas, abstract symbols, which are added to the experience of a neutral sensation.

The thought that interprets the sensation is not the sensation. The sensation is the sensation. There is a common experience that clearly elucidates this understanding of the distinction between thought and sensation. When we see a beautiful landscape display itself within Awareness, the mind plunges into silent appreciation, and from that silence, the mind rises with the utterance, 'wow.' The naked experience of the landscape is a silent contemplating of the view. We are just there, in the innocence of pure experiencing, beholding the totality of the moment. The word 'wow' is an attempt to give the experience a label. But need we try to make a sound in order to know the Reality of the experience? No! Before the thought arises to label the experience, we are already fully knowing what the experience essentially is. We could just as well ramble gibberish in the face of the beauty, to suffice as communication of our experience.

The label 'negative' alone, like the 'wow', is not the trouble, rather it is the belief that the label is what the sensation is, that it truly defines what we are experiencing. That belief alone manifests the sense of psychological suffering. Let's look at how absurd it would be to take metaphorical thoughts literally. We can have a sensation be described by thought as 'butterflies in my tummy' and know full well that there are no actual butterflies in our tummy, and therefore we don't wonder, 'how did they get in there in the first place?' Nor do we freak out and run to the doctor for surgery to remove the winged ticklers.

Just as we can have all manor of thoughts without believing them, we can have a sensation that thought describes as 'negative' or 'anxious' without believing such a thought. In that case, what will our experience be of the sensation? That this sensation is just what it is; pure sensation.

How do we see this truth with clarity?

By seeing that the 'negativity', and all possible adjectives, are not inherent in the sensation itself, but are rather evanescent superimpositions of thought. We can then pragmatically remove the labels and enquire into the essential nature of the sensation, to discern what we are actually experiencing. If we do this, we will discern every time, if we are thorough enough, that the sensation is just pure, undefined, unnamable sensation, that makes no threat to our Presence.

How would the experience be if thought were not believed in?

Check it out now. If you don't refer to any mental interpretation, what is really experienced here?

...silence, pure sensation.

Precisely. And are you affected by this sensation? Are you, Awareness, that which is aware of the sensation, affected by it? How would you even know that you were 'affected' if you have ceased referring to the interpretation of thought?

You would have no idea or conviction of 'being affected'. The raw experience of yourself and the raw experience of the sensation admit of no evidence of 'negativity', 'unpleasantness', or 'being affected.' It is merely from the imaginary point of view of the mind that such things seem to occur.

Now, to sink deeper in our contemplation, to deeply establish our intrinsic freedom and imperturbable peace, we can ask our Self: am I bound by the domain of the mind? Or am I the Reality of Awareness which is aware of the mind, from an independent perspective?

I am aware of the mind. I am not bound by it.

So, can you ever be bound by any of the ideas that the mind fabricates, such as 'being affected by the mind', or 'affected by a sensation'?

No. I could only imagine that I was affected by the mind, or by the sensation. But, I wouldn't really be affected.

Right on. Awareness, yourself, can never be affected by the mind, or by sensation. Deeper still we can reveal why, in the essential truth, Awareness cannot be affected by the mind, by sensation or by any form or phenomena that exists. The reason for this imperturbability is that Awareness is not separate from everything that exists. Rather, Awareness is the essential Substance and Reality of all that exists. Just as a screen cannot be affected or perturbed by the movie that appears within it, Awareness cannot be affected or perturbed by the movie of phenomena that appear within it.

How to confirm the inseparability of Awareness and everything that exists? How to verify that Awareness is the essential Substance and Reality of all phenomena?

Noticing that Awareness is aware of something is all the confirmation we need of the unity of Awareness and that thing. To notice this is already to taste the immediacy of union. Awareness could not be aware of something that was separate from itself, for to be aware of it is already to confirm a connection between Awareness and that thing. Awareness and the 'something,' whatever shape or texture it takes - sensation, perception, phenomenon - must therefore be made of one essential Reality.

In the moment we are lucidly aware that Awareness cannot be separate from what it is aware of, we are experientially verifying the essential Reality of both our Self and whatever we are aware of. The conceptual distinction of a subject (Self, Awareness) interfacing with an object is already made of one seamless Reality. That Reality is all that we really experience there, as the Substance of our Self and of the apparent object. The sensation, perception, or phenomenon is not standing apart as an alien other; it is already vibrating within the indivisible medium of our very Reality, the essential Substance of Awareness itself.

There is only one essential Reality and Substance to all that exists, and that Reality is Awareness itself, your very own Self.

In that direct recognition, we are not philosophising but touching the living truth itself: the indivisible unity that underlies and silently dissolves the apparent duality of subject and object, Self and other.

Being one indivisible wholeness, there is no possibility of Awareness separating from itself to issue forth an action to itself. As such, it remains unaffected by everything that appears within itself, just as the sky remains unaffected by the play of clouds, wind, storms, hurricanes that appear within it.

See thoughts, sensations and perceptions appearing like weather systems within your wide open sky, and see that you are eternally free from their influence. That imperturbability is peace itself; the Substance of all that exists.