Emotions

This talks explores emotions,to know and understand the ways that the emotions feed our thoughts and reinforce habit patterns that push against our wholesome inclination.
Emotions tend to live in the body for about 90 seconds. A minute and a half. What can happen in those 90 seconds is the emotions can influence the thoughts you are having. Negative thinking patterns tend to be largely mood dependent. The negative mood brings on the negative thinking.

Transcript

So this week I want to explore with you our emotional landscape.

We've been looking at these heavenly qualities over the past couple of weeks,

What are known as the Brahma Viharas,

The divine abodes.

And these qualities we can cultivate in ourselves.

We can practice inclining the mind towards love,

Compassion,

Unselfish joy for others,

And equanimity,

Balance.

And what really helps in this inclination of mind is to know and understand the ways that the emotions feed our thoughts and then reinforce habit patterns that push against this wholesome inclination.

So emotions tend to live in the body for about 90 seconds,

A minute and a half.

And what can happen in those 90 seconds is the emotions can influence the thoughts that you're having.

Like maybe you wake up and you're in an irritable mood and the thoughts that follow,

The thoughts that go through your mind are negative or have something to do with inconvenience or annoyance.

I didn't get a good night's sleep.

It's kind of like that.

Have you had that?

Or you wake up,

Didn't get a good night's sleep.

And then everything that follows,

The thoughts that follow have this flavor of inconvenience.

And what's interesting is that researchers who study depression have found that negative thinking patterns tend to be largely mood dependent.

So the negative mood brings on the negative thinking.

And once the negative thinking gets going,

The negative mood gets even worse.

And it just keeps reinforcing it.

There's a simple Native American story that illustrates this beautifully,

And I'll share it with you.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

A fight is going on inside of me,

He said to the boy.

It is a terrible fight.

It is between two wolves.

One is anger,

Envy,

Sorrow,

Regret,

Greed,

Arrogance,

Self pity,

Guilt,

Resentment,

Inferiority,

Lies,

False pride,

Superiority,

And ego.

He continued.

The other is joy,

Peace,

Love,

Hope,

Serenity,

Humility,

Kindness,

Benevolence,

Empathy,

Generosity,

Truth,

Compassion,

And faith.

The same fight is going on inside of you,

And inside of every other person too.

The grandson thought about it for a minute,

And then asked his grandfather,

Which wolf will win?

The old Cherokee simply replied,

The one we feed.

So what are we feeding?

What are we feeding?

And just to say that when we look at the habit patterns of the mind,

It's really important to remember that our habits are conditioned.

And sometimes those causes are several generations old.

So when we look at what we've been feeding,

It's important to understand that perhaps our emotional responses are largely based on emotions that were modeled to us.

Remembering that we are not our fault,

Right?

Dropping in that sense of compassion for ourselves as we look.

If you grew up in a household where problems were never discussed,

Like historically,

Family shame was sort of swept under the carpet and not looked at,

Then avoidant conditioning might be your strategy.

If the common currency in your home life was anger,

And anger was the response to most experiences,

Then you may emote anger as a way of being.

Or you may be so afraid of anger that your survival strategy is to just try to keep the peace by any means possible.

And sometimes keeping the peace looks like protecting the angry person,

Making excuses for their anger.

And sometimes it's avoidant.

When avoidant behavior is turned deeply inward,

It looks like addiction to drugs,

To alcohol,

To gambling,

To shopping,

And now kind of to our devices,

Right?

So emotions,

Thoughts,

And actions,

They all influence one another.

And what this path of practice is pointing to is that you can change how you feel by changing how you think and what you do.

And this doesn't mean that you need to think positively or do fun things and all your emotional problems will be solved.

But chipping away and enduring,

Actually enduring negative emotions,

Involves slow and steady change in our thinking patterns.

When we wake up in a lousy mood,

Or something happens in our day that brings on irritation or frustration or anger,

It's possible to be mindful how emotions and thoughts are influencing.

Like,

It's possible to see that,

Oh,

This is,

I'm getting lost in this thinking about what happened.

And then it's like a perpetual motion machine of basic dissatisfaction.

And if we can give space to what's going on,

Something happens,

Irritation arises,

Hears irritation,

Not acting on it,

Give space,

There's a balance there,

Facing whatever that problem may be.

And what happens for people that don't meditate regularly,

And even those that do,

But there's this orientation when something happens,

We've got to fix this problem that just happened,

Right?

People are often attempting to sort of fix the problem or think themselves into a new state of mind.

I don't like this frustration.

So therefore,

I'm going to fix it.

Like the idea is to figure it out.

But with mindfulness,

You can change your state of mind before you actually change the apparent problem.

When we're not aware of our operating patterns in our mind,

When we're not aware of what we're doing with our attention,

Whatever unhappiness or dissatisfaction that we're feeling,

That becomes the motivation of the mind.

And then so the mind goes off brooding,

Or it ruminates or it wants to change the so called problem.

So we come to practice to remember,

You know,

A different framework for working with our life,

A different framework,

When problems show up,

And afflictive emotions arrive.

I think it's important to ask the question to ourselves.

And just ask this to yourself for a moment.

Do you really expect that you will have no more problems?

No more problems?

You will have no more problems at some point in your life?

Do you really expect that at some point,

You'll have no more problems?

You'll get everything checked off your to do list?

Life is mostly about solving problems.

And I think it's I think we're all a little guilty of treating problems themselves as sort of anomalies.

On some level,

We think that we should get rid of all of our problems and avoid any new ones.

This is all of us in a way.

And it's ridiculous.

And we can never get to a place where problems stop appearing.

But yet there is something in the mind that buys into this life is an evernote like an unending series of complications.

So how is it that we're surprised by the next complication?

You know,

Sometimes the magnitude of our problems or complications are surprising,

But that new complications are arising for us every day,

Every hour is absolutely to be expected.

You know,

At some point,

The machine that we're connecting on,

That we rely on to keep us comfortable and connected,

And our zoom room will break.

And this is guaranteed to happen.

At some point,

We will catch a cold,

Or our plane will be late or our flight will be canceled.

At some point,

We'll be injured,

We'll injure some part of our body,

And we're going to need to see a doctor for it.

And that's the way that it is.

And the expectation that it can be,

Or should be another way is in fact,

The source of our suffering.

And the irony is that we can solve this problem.

If we can expect that every day,

Every day that we're alive,

There will be will face some complication,

Some problem,

Some situation.

And this may seem obvious to you,

Or even unwelcome to hear.

But the intention is to bring into our sight that whatever circumstances that we're in,

Whatever emotions are arising,

If you're worried about something or some situation,

Or you're dealing with loss or anxiety,

Or you're just so busy rushing around speedy,

Like all of these areas,

Our life,

These experiences are a template for insight.

And what I mean by insight is to simply recognize that whatever is occurring to cultivate the ability to see,

Oh,

This is thoughts,

I'm thinking,

Thoughts or thoughts,

Emotions are emotions.

This is what's arising.

And I don't have to be captive to them.

I don't have to be a prisoner to my thoughts and my emotions.

And just to keep in mind that as we explore this realm of our emotions,

Keep in mind that what we're doing here is not a self improvement project.

I think that sometimes that happens in practice.

We're not trying to get rid of certain emotions,

The path,

Our path is to suffer less with the way things are in our life,

To be steady,

Even when there are challenges and problems,

To stop trying to change our life and to open to the way that it is.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that in our next practice.

So thank you for your for your kind attention.

Reviews

Exceptionally inspirational 🌟 Thank you very much for sharing. And the egg picture is hilarious 😁