Our Emotions As Allies

In this lecture, we're jumping into world identification. We will look at our emotional landscape as a lens to witness the constant impermanence of our being. Our emotions, like the weather, are always changing and evolving, as we release identification with this aspect of our self, we arrive at vast freedom and surrender to what is arising rather than what we desire. In this lesson, we'll jump deeply into redefining our relationship to our emotional body!

Transcript

All right,

Welcome back.

If you're watching this,

That means you've probably watched the first lecture.

I hope so.

But if not,

We're going to talk a little bit about this course.

So today we're going to be speaking about emotions as allies and how we view emotions.

And this is part of a larger course of probably 10 parts,

But we'll see what ends up happening because there's always good stuff to talk about.

And this course is part of a holistic health course,

A way to reprogram and consciously continue to program how we relate to ourselves,

To our mind,

To the world.

And when I say to ourselves,

What I really mean is to the multi-dimensional self,

That there are many selves within our self and we have a relationship with all of them.

So what we'll talk about today is emotions,

The emotional body.

And what's awesome is that there are many,

Like,

I guess I'd say theories,

But I like the word philosophies,

Whether it's Taoism or Buddhism or Egyptian alchemy or religion that has a framework of how we view the self.

Who's us?

Is it this body?

Is it my emotions?

Is it my mind?

Is it God?

Am I God?

And what I have found to be interesting is that it's yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

And yes.

That how we identify ultimately changes how we view life.

If I identify with my body,

It's,

I have a very different life than if I identify with my emotions.

If I believe on my emotions,

Then life goes like this because now I'm happy.

And that's what we even say.

I'm ha I'm happy.

What we're really seeing is that I'm identifying with my state of being.

So rather than I'm experiencing happiness,

I'm saying I'm happy.

Those are very different things because when we say I'm happy,

It means I am the happiness.

And when it's not necessarily true or not true to say that I am happiness that I'm experiencing,

Rather how we identify changes our life.

So we'll talk about how identification,

What that actually means right now.

We'll do it right now.

So if I'm identifying with parts of myself that are inherently always changing,

Then my life becomes very rocky.

It's almost like living on the surface of the ocean that when there are waves,

You're like,

Whoa,

And when it's calm,

You're like,

Ah,

And that's why as a society,

We see that we value happiness and we idolize happiness instead of seeing it as just as beautiful as sadness.

It's good to feel happy.

It's bad to feel sad.

Well,

That's the truth.

If I'm identified with my emotions,

I want to be happy.

And when I'm happy,

I feel great.

And when I'm sad,

I feel terrible because I believe that's what I am.

But the truth is,

Is that these emotions are always shifting.

And the truth is,

Is that I can't hold on to any of them.

So by identifying with a part of my being that is constantly changing and impermanent and trying to hold on to that,

That causes suffering and misery.

When I'm happy,

I feel great.

When I'm sad,

I'm just trying to feel happy again.

And I'm fighting with what is because I'm looking for a specific experience that is inherently going to be changing.

So the question is,

Is there a part of us,

Of this multidimensional self that is more stable,

That isn't always changing?

So then we bring up this idea that we have a physical body.

We have a body that is in the Newtonian world of matter that's flesh and bones that has blood,

As many layers as blood as veins and as arteries,

It has bones and all of these are slightly different layers and variances of our physical body.

And then we have our non-physical body.

And there are many layers to that non-physical body.

There's our energetic anatomy,

As well as physical anatomy.

Now we're used to this idea of physical anatomy because we can see these things.

And when we see things,

It's easier to believe in them.

I don't know why that's the case,

But when we see them and they feel material and they're dense,

We have an easier time believing in them.

But the truth is,

Is that we can experience our energetic body as well.

And there are many layers to that energetic body.

One of the layers is our emotions.

One of the layers is our thoughts.

Now,

If you talk to anybody,

We recognize that thoughts are different than emotions.

We experience them differently.

They're slightly different.

So we have this energetic anatomy as well,

This formless anatomy.

Because everybody knows that thoughts are different than emotions,

But it's hard to tell exactly what that means because we can't see them.

They're more subtle in comparison to our form body.

But they're not really that subtle if you think about it.

You know when you're experiencing an emotion.

You know when anger comes.

So these are kind of like two parts of our physical or like our little soul.

So there are many aspects on how different theories and different philosophies see us as a human and I want to,

Or us as a person,

Us as a self,

And I want to introduce a concept that the self is multidimensional and that has two main parts.

It has like little soul and big soul.

In the book Eastern Body Western Mind,

The way they say this is there's spirit which is everything and spirit manifests itself through unique individual souls.

So we have my little soul which is spirit coming through and expressing itself through me.

So a way we can look at that is through ice cream because everyone loves ice cream.

That if you look around,

Everything is made of ice cream,

But they're each different flavors and the flavor is the unique expression of that ice cream.

So I'm ice cream,

But I'm also chocolate and someone else is vanilla and that tree is cranberry.

I don't know.

Cranberry ice cream.

When we're caught up in identifying as chocolate and vanilla,

We see ourselves as separate.

I'm chocolate,

You're vanilla.

We're different.

But then when we remember that even though we're chocolate,

We're also ice cream,

We see that we're the same.

So in this way,

We're both unique and the same.

We have the same fabric,

But a different design.

And so if we can hold both of these ideas,

Because it's a paradox,

How can it be the same and different?

Well,

It depends on what layer we're looking at.

Am I looking at from big soul?

I'm looking at it from little soul.

So in big soul,

We are vast and we never die because we're everything.

And we're continually growing into unique expressions.

Every flower comes from the same fabric.

If I'm identifying as the fabric,

I'm not so worried about my body dying.

But if I'm identifying myself as this little bowl of chocolate ice cream,

Then yes,

That chocolate ice cream will go away.

And that's where our fear of death comes from.

That's where our fear of losing this body comes from because we are identifying solely with the chocolate,

The bowl of chocolate ice cream instead of the concept of ice cream.

So let's say,

This is what I'm proposing,

But let's say we have this big soul and we have little soul,

We have spirit and we have soul,

Like a white light coming through a prism and on the other side,

There's a rainbow.

There's many colors that come from the same light.

So within the little soul,

My little body,

My little Sam self,

There are these two aspects.

There's the physical self and there's the energetic self within that little layer.

And what I'd like to propose is that we experience many things,

But we are not our experience,

Rather we are what perceives the experience.

We are what experience is and that is always changing as well.

The experience is always changing.

I'm always having different emotions coming and knocking at the door.

I'm having different thoughts coming and knocking at the door.

But as far as many different paradigms,

Including cognitive behavioral therapy,

It's creating a distance between who I am and what I'm experiencing.

So I'm not my mind,

Rather my mind arises within me.

I'm not my emotions,

My emotions arise within me.

It's almost like I am everything and things come into that space,

Like the weather.

I'm not the weather,

I'm what holds the weather.

So what I'm proposing in this context,

In this conversation,

Just to play with is instead of identifying with what arises,

What would it look like?

What would life look like if we identify as the container in which things arise?

How would that change our experience?

Now this is a beautiful idea,

But it takes a lot of time to practice the actual shifting of identification from little soul to big soul.

It takes a long time,

Or it can take a long time,

And it's not necessarily even that it takes a long time,

Rather it takes practice.

It takes practice of viewing the world in a different way and it takes the idea of holistic knowing.

So sometimes our mind knows things and sometimes our body knows things.

And when our body and our mind know things we get this holistic experience which changes our perception of reality.

Knowing,

It's a deeper holistic knowing,

Not a partial knowing.

Because even if you might agree with the things I'm saying,

It doesn't mean you're not afraid of death anymore.

It doesn't mean when an emotion comes you're not like,

Oh I'm so angry,

Because it's a partial knowing,

But what happens is as we start to partially know and we start to practice experiencing this,

Then our experience of life changes.

And that's what we're looking at today.

Let's change through practice and through theory the way we perceive our emotions and our thoughts so that we identify less as the fluctuating weather that comes within us and we are actually that which experiences it.

So instead of living on the surface of the ocean,

We are 10 meters deep,

Witnessing everything.

And when we're 10 meters deep,

Everything's always calm.

And everything's calm while there's a storm.

And that's another paradox we're going to look at.

How can I be okay even when I'm not okay?

It seems like a paradox.

But what it's really saying is how can I receive every experience in life,

And when I say experience I mean emotion,

Every emotion of life with love and with value and with deep okayness.

How am I receiving my emotions?

So today we'll look at emotions as allies.

So we're going to do this reframing that an emotion is a little ally that's trying to help us out and trying to give us a message.

And I'll attach a practice that we can do at the end,

Or that you'll do on your own but I'll introduce at the end,

To really tap into how we can view our emotions as friends and allies and people and like people and little entities that are looking out for us and trying to support us.

So if we look at evolutionarily,

We can see that all of our emotions have a purpose,

Or at least serve the purpose from when we were living in tribes.

And they're still trying to fulfill that same purpose,

But it's not always matching.

So imagine that we're driving a car.

So my consciousness is driving a car,

And all of our emotions are trying to give us directions.

And they're all trying to get us to the same place,

Love and safety and acceptance.

But they all have a different route to get there.

So fear is going to have different directions than inspiration,

Or love,

Or sadness.

But they're all trying to get us to the same end destination.

It's really about what path we want to take.

Now,

All of them are valid,

But they're not all necessarily appropriate for what we are wanting to choose.

What path do I want to choose?

And you always have the right to choose because you're driving the car.

But often what happens is we let the emotions drive the car.

So anger comes,

And it's like,

Tell them to fuck off and all these things.

And it starts driving the car and chooses the behavior of how we're interacting with the world.

And we start yelling at somebody.

And then later we regret it,

And we feel bad because it's like,

Wow,

That wasn't me.

That was anger that was driving.

But what would it look like if we could always be driving the car and at the same time listening to each emotion give us direction,

But then ultimately we are those who choose what direction to take.

We are the ones who choose our behaviors.

And there's a concept in Zen Buddhism that's called the two arrows.

And the first arrow is what happens in our environment,

Life,

That hits us with an emotion.

We don't get to choose the emotion that we feel.

That's why all of these enlightened beings aren't super peaceful all the time.

They still find,

They still get hit with emotions.

You read a text message that said someone you love died or you get a phone call that said,

Hey,

You just lost your job.

And you get hit with an emotion.

The second arrow is how we choose to respond to that emotional response.

So enlightened beings feel the full spectrum of emotion,

But it's how they receive the emotion that dictates what happens from there,

The cascade of events.

So for example,

We get news that something terrible happened and we feel this hit of sadness.

And when we start to see this sadness as trying to show us something,

Then we start to sit with the sadness and welcome the sadness because we know two things.

We know the sadness is here to support us,

Not to hurt us.

And we know that the sadness is always passing.

It's not us and it won't last forever.

So with these two pillars that sadness or emotions are impermanent with a deep knowing that everything is impermanent and a deep knowing that this is here to serve me and help me,

We can start to navigate our emotional experience differently.

So we're going to talk about two ways to address our emotions.

One is our logical mind and how we can theoretically connect with our emotions.

And one is our visceral emotional experience at the time of our emotions.

So let's talk about the emotional experience first,

And then we'll talk about how we can frame to see our emotions as serving us.

So whenever I have an emotion,

Whenever an emotion arises,

I don't go into my mind.

I don't go into why it's valid or invalid that I have this emotion because as long as I'm doing that,

It prolongs the emotion.

I don't try to avoid the emotion by going into my mind because that's ultimately what we're doing.

We're saying,

Oh,

I shouldn't feel this way because,

Or it's okay that I feel this way because,

But as long as that happens,

It keeps the emotion running.

Most of us don't want to feel certain emotions and the more we try to avoid them,

The more power we give them and the more they stick around.

And it's kind of ironic.

There's this backwards idea that the more I don't want to feel an emotion,

The more stuck it gets because it's trying to give us a message.

It's trying to show us something.

And like a little kid who wants your attention,

The more you ignore it,

The more it yells and the louder it gets.

So instead of running away up to our mind to try to avoid,

Distract,

Justify or invalidate,

The more the emotion will grow.

Sometimes it grows in a very subtle way and it boils and starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger that it explodes and you get angry after 20 years,

You kill it,

10 people,

You know.

Or after a few weeks you start yelling at somebody.

All this pent up frustration or pent up emotion.

So in the moment of emotion,

Let's look at addressing it on the physical body.

So instead of going into the mind,

Drop into the body.

So this can look two ways.

One,

It could just be start screaming or moving and releasing it on a visceral experience.

You can ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh and let the physical energy or the subtle energy move and release out of the body so you're not holding on to it.

The second thing we can do in accompaniment or separately is we can close our eyes and go inside our body and try to find and locate where the emotion is.

And instead of labeling it or judging it and saying oh I'm feeling anger and this is why that's going into the mind,

We actually can just expand the experience of the emotion.

So basically let's say I'm like ahhhhh I'm so frustrated.

Where am I feeling it?

I drop into the body and I feel,

And I'm saying this out loud but this isn't what I'm doing in my head.

I'm literally just feeling,

But I'm just saying this because I need to explain it.

I'm feeling tightness in my chest and I'm zooming in and I'm zooming in and I'm zooming in and even my eyes are closed because I'm really trying to go deep into it.

And I'm feeling all these little subtle sensations that I can't even really explain what they are.

And the deeper I go the more expansiveness is in that and I'm just going deeper and deeper and deeper and then what happens is something very fascinating.

If I'm not judging and labeling what's happening,

It's almost like I enter into the door of this emotional experience and I fall into this abyss of nothingness,

Of expansiveness,

Of spaciousness.

And the door of anger is the same door as happiness is the same door as joy is the same door as sadness.

The door looks different.

Anger is the door and it's a scary door and joy is this really exciting door.

But it doesn't really matter because they're the door to the same thing and that same thing is this unbelievable expansiveness.

What we may call as the true self.

This nothingness,

This void,

This connection to everything is often called non-duality.

It's like the little self goes away and you fall into this pool of everythingness which is also nothingness.

It doesn't make any sense but that's the visceral experience that we're having.

And when we go into the body and fall into this like whoa,

It's almost like we fall into this awe of overwhelming experience that we've never had before.

So that's in the moment of an emotion.

When you're finding yourself having a strong physical response and experience,

Remove yourself from the situation and take a moment even if it's just 10 breaths to go inside without analyzing,

Without judging,

Without labeling but just fall into the emotion.

See what happens.

It's a fantastic experience.

If you're alone,

You can definitely do that.

If you're around other people,

Just take a minute and just go to the bathroom and get it out for a minute and let the physical sensations,

Let the physical response move through the body instead of holding on to it as tension in different parts of our body because when we store tension through memories,

Through experiences,

When we store tension in our fascia,

In our very subtle physical body,

We hold on to it.

We need to release it.

We need to let it move through because otherwise we start carrying that in our backpack up the mountain.

And yeah,

Maybe one emotion here today is not so big a deal but when we gather more and more and more and more,

It explodes because we're carrying a really heavy bag and it weighs us down and it depletes us.

So that's the physical practice.

As a theory,

We can start to look at how emotions are actually trying to serve us and give us messages and they're giving us different messages at all times but as a concept,

Each emotion is there to serve us in a specific way.

So one of the practices we're going to,

What I'll give is the meditation of how to go deeper into our emotional body,

That's the physical,

But our other practice is how to relate to our emotions and it's writing them little letters and then they write us letters back of why they're trying to help us,

How they're trying to help us,

Almost like a little monologue from your emotion that's talking to you and saying,

Hey man,

I'm trying to give you advice,

Listen to me.

This is what I want to share with you.

So as an overview,

We'll just kind of look at it and then we'll actually dive into the practice and that will be on your own time.

So as an overview,

I started realizing,

Let's say anxiety.

When is anxiety showing up in my life?

And I started realizing two times where I was feeling anxious.

One was when I wasn't prepared for a test.

I started feeling anxiety the night before and what anxiety was trying to show me in that moment was there's something important that you're not giving enough energy or awareness or attention to.

This test is really important to you and you're not giving awareness to it.

I'm trying to show you that you need to give more awareness to it.

Another time that I realized I was really anxious was when I was on a bus and I was running late for something.

I was feeling really anxious that I was going to be late and what my anxiety was trying to show me,

The exact same thing,

Is that there's something you're not giving enough awareness to and that's other people's time and respect.

That respect is something really important for you.

It's really important for you to respect other people's time and by being late,

You're showing them that you are not respecting their time and this is something that's really important for you so I'm trying to get your butt there faster.

Now what happens is when we don't address these things,

The anxiety actually does something very interesting.

It inhibits us from actually reaching our goal.

If my goal is to bring more awareness to the test tomorrow,

It's actually very difficult for me to study when anxiety is there.

So what happens is when I address the anxiety and I say,

Hey man,

I see what you're trying to show me,

Thank you,

And I go into the emotional body and release it,

That actually gives me the spaciousness to address what the anxiety is trying to show me.

And then I can actually sit down and study or I can say,

Okay,

I'm on the bus right now and this is the most I can do so I'm just going to rest because I can't go any faster.

But what I can do is message the person and say,

Hey listen,

I just want you to know I'll be a few minutes late and then I'm addressing the respect of their time.

So when I'm in anxiety,

When it arises and I'm consumed by it,

It actually limits my thinking.

But the arising of anxiety is trying to show me something when I can receive that message,

Release the anxiety in my body,

Then I can act from a place of me driving the car instead of the anxiety driving the car because the anxiety is not a very good driver.

It's a great director,

It's a great friend and backseat driver sometimes,

But ultimately it's not very good at driving the car,

I'm the one who knows how to drive the car.

So that's anxiety and I'll give just one more example so we can look at it,

But you can do this with any emotion.

And any inspiration is technically not an emotion but it's a concept that drives us.

So another one was jealousy,

I wrote a letter to jealousy and I was just like,

I hate you,

You're ruining my relationship,

You're so toxic.

And jealousy wrote a letter back to me through me as I stood in the frame of jealousy and it was trying to show me where I'm insecure because I saw my partner talking to somebody else and I started getting jealous.

But what the jealousy was really trying to show me was I'm afraid to lose my partner because if I lose my partner that means that he's better than me and that means that I'm not worthy,

That I'm not valuable.

And jealousy was trying to show me where I'm giving my value away to something else.

That the truth is that if my partner leaves me then I want her to be happy with this new person and that actually doesn't mean that I'm not okay,

That I'm not good enough.

Jealousy is trying to show me where I'm not whole,

Where I'm giving my wholeness away to others,

Where I'm not viewing myself as valuable,

When I'm putting my value on the external world.

And when I noticed that,

When I wrote this letter and got a letter back from jealousy I actually felt so much appreciation and gratitude,

Thank you jealousy.

Now I see what's really happening,

When you come up it's showing me that I need to go take a few minutes and just be like,

I love you and you're whole and everything's okay.

Whether or not she is connecting with this other person has nothing to do with how special and amazing you are.

And jealousy is now one of my best friends that is showing me that it's time to connect in deeper with myself,

That I'm not connecting deeply with myself right now,

I'm giving my power away and giving my value away to external sources.

So let's do a little recap of what we talked about today.

The first aspect we talked about is the multi-dimensional self,

That I am both my body and my energy body and what arises within me and this container,

This everything that holds that.

I am the fish in the fish bowl and I'm the fish bowl and I'm what's happening inside.

And that's a really beautiful concept that's very hard to hold but we can start to experience it the more we start seeing the world that way.

That when we hold it both as a theoretical concept but also experience it in our mental framework and in our body,

We can start to see that we are both the container that things are happening within and we are what's happening within.

I am the anger that's happening within me and I'm what's holding the anger.

But wherever I'm identifying with will alter my experience.

And what I'm proposing in this talk today is that if we don't identify with our emotions that we can interact with them,

We can create a relationship with our emotions and our thoughts.

That we can receive them in a certain way that ultimately we don't have control over if it's sunny or if it's rainy or if we're happy or feeling sadness.

But we can control or we do have an influence over how we receive that.

That's the two arrows.

We don't get to choose the first arrow but we do get to choose if we shoot the second arrow.

And that brings us to our last two concepts,

Our last two practices.

The first practice is diving into the bodily emotion,

Diving into the physical experience of what's happening and zooming in and zooming in and zooming in and shaking it out and letting the physical,

Emotional body release.

And the second is reprogramming the way we see and the way we relate to our emotions.

As seeing our emotions as allies,

As someone trying to bring a message to us.

And the closer we bring it,

The quicker we get the message,

The faster the messenger can leave.

Otherwise the messenger is going to keep knocking and keep knocking because its only job is to give you this message.

That doesn't mean you have to follow the message because you're the one driving the car.

So today's experience is about driving the car while listening to others around you and those others are our emotions.

So I'll attach a meditation of going in and diving into our emotional body and I'll attach a framework or a written explanation,

Direction guiding you into writing a letter to a few different emotions and exploring your relationship to open up to seeing the beauty and love that everything in this planet is trying to help you grow and become more whole.

And our emotions are no exception to that.

So thank you guys for listening.

We'll conclude today with three OMs and Hari Om Tat Sat.

May it be to this divine being.

So let's take two deep breaths together to just receive and let everything land knowing that we don't have to remember anything.

That everything that has come that needs to stick around is within you.

Let's take a deep inhale and just release.

Deep inhale.

We'll take three OMs.

Deep inhale.

Om.

Om.

Taking a moment to sit in this silence.

Taking a moment to sit in this subtle experience.

May your journey through your relationship with emotion and your emotional body be one of joy and love and acceptance.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for doing the work.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Enjoy your practice this week and we'll see you next week.

Reviews

Yesterday I joined one of your workshops that was fantastic and really nice to hear this talk. Thank you for your gifts ❤️

One of the best explanations of how to deal with emotions that has totally resonated with me ! I thank you Bodhi 🙏🫶💞

Woooohhh thank you 😊 that sounds clear and easy
Thank you for introducing your dealing with emotional practice

So beautiful