It’s amazing what we will do to not acknowledge, avoid, or get away from our feelings. Why is this? The answer is because we dislike how they feel. We only want to feel good things and when something comes up in our minds and bodies that feels uneasy, anxious, terrifying, sad, hopeless, etc., we push it away.
Is it possible only to feel good all the time? Not in the world we live in, and not in the bodies we preside in. Life is full of ups and downs. We will have happy moments and sad moments and maybe even tragedies. If we cannot adjust to all of life’s moments, we will be unhappy, sad, fearful, or hopeless.
Have you ever tried to just sit and be with your feelings and, deeper yet, the sensations of your feelings? I have and it’s shocking how they feel in my body. I want to welcome in all the feeling and sensations going on in me, not just the pleasant ones. The growth is in the unpleasant ones, so if I want to evolve and grow, I need to pay close attention to the disturbing sensations in me.
The other day, I was feeling very anxious and after I tracked the feelings and where they were coming from, I sat down and explored the sensations going on in my body. What I found was total terror. The sensations were tightness in my chest, nausea and shortness of breath. I kept the story about why I started feeling this out of the picture. I only sat with the sensations, and within a very short period of time, the sensations were completely gone. In Buddhism there is a belief that when these feelings come up, we are exhausting them not only for ourselves, but for other sentient beings as well.
I was able to feel the feelings and drop the story.
I’m not sure that it is realistic to believe that in this lifetime we can rid ourselves of all unpleasant sensations. If we cannot, then I choose to allow them in with love and compassion and feel them without judgment or resistance. This process allows for such spiritual renewal and teaches us how to be with our feelings just as we are, with all of the pleasant and unpleasant feelings life has to offer. It also helps us see things through our higher self, knowing that all feelings and sensations are for our higher learning.
