Weather Watch
(Steve Hagen)
Meditation isn't about cutting off our feelings, or ignoring
them, or transcending them. It's just the opposite. In meditation,
we freely experience and realize our emotions fully -- without
increasing them with thought, without trying to end them or
continue them, without trying to do anything about them at all.
In meditation, we don't analyze our feelings or thoughts. We let
them come up, observe them fully without commenting, and let them
fade away. That's all.
Usually, when we have a feeling, particularly a negative
feeling, we're tempted to vent it in some way to get it off our
chests. We believe that expressing it will enable us to be done
with it, so that it can dissipate.
Maybe. But maybe not. In fact, it's not the expression of the
feeling -- that is, talking about or demonstrating the feeling --
that allows it to dissipate. It's in realizing it directly -- that
its, in feeling it fully without adding thought to it or
interfering with it -- that we can truly let it go.
It's possible that unloading our feelings may help us to feel
them by making them more real or intense. But it is not helpful if
we then can't let them go and return to here and
now.
We need to be careful. For in talking about our feelings to
others, rather than just noting them completely and quietly and
then letting them go, we can sometimes get caught up in them, not
to mention stir up emotions in others as well. Instead of simply
watching them as they dissolve, we grab hold of them and pump them
up, or obsess over them. Often, as part of this process, we imagine
events from our past or fantasize about our future. These reveries
are never real, but we tend not to notice that. Whether they're
based on memory, hope, fear, or dread, we're imagining them.
They're delusional. They're not here and now.
Yet look at the power such thoughts have to carry us away.
Imagine that you drop in on a friend who's been feeling down
lately, to see how he's doing. He tells you, "I feel great today.
Yesterday I wasn't doing too well, but today I'm just fine."
"You weren't feeling well yesterday?" you ask. "Tell me more
about that."
He does, and soon he's back in his depression.
This is exactly what we do with ourselves when we allow our
thoughts to work on our emotions. Even though we might feel fine in
this moment. our minds drift into the past or future, where our
thoughts stir up negative feelings, say, in response to our mental
images. Then, instead of letting those feelings and images drift
away, we take hold of them, turn them over, and review them
closely, telling ourselves more about how bad we feel.
We tend to think that by analyzing our feelings -- particularly
our painful ones -- or the images we conjure up in our minds that
engender them, we can find some core to our mental problems, get a
good look at what's wrong, and then fix everything. We imagine
there's something warped or bent our of shape in our minds that
needs to be repaird, and if left unattended, the disturbing or
painful feelings will continue indefinitely.
But simply feeling bad is not the problem. It's the process of
needing to fix what isn't broken that's the problem.
Simply feeling bad at times is normal. So is simply feeling
good.
When we feel good for no particular reason, however, we rarely
say to ourselves, "Why am I feeling good? I need to figure this
out, look deep within, and try to find a reason for this good
feelings." We're more likely to just let ourselves feel good and
not give it another thought.
We can (and ought to) do the same with emotions we don't like:
experience them completely -- that is, notice them, but without
trying to control or resist them. Just let them wash through and
fade away.
Our problem is not that we're warped or broken at the core. Our
problem is that we get caught up in our thinking. Instead of simply
feeling, we mentally obsess about those feelings, and then confuse
those thoughts with Reality. We grasp the fleeting feeling and hang
on, continuing to relive our painful thoughts over and over. While
we're mentally fixated on an event that took place yesterday, or
last week, or twenty years ago, the actual, fresh, clean, vibrant
reality of this moment flashes by without our even
noticing.
In this moment, there's no dragging out our past.
There's no projecting the future, with all its attendant worries,
excitement, dread, regrets, and expectations.
This isn't to say that we ought to ignore the past of the
future. But we need to understand that the past and future are
never here but only as thought. It's always now; it's
never then or when. Now is where everything takes place.
We all have a great deal of learning and experience in our
memories and thoughts. Use them, but use them wisely. As my teacher
used to say, "Put them in your backpack and carry them lightly."
Let your past inform your life, not hold sway over it. Draw upon
your past only as you need to, as experience and learning that can
be helpful in this moment.
Sometimes we imagine our past as a massive weight on our
shoulders, under which we must somehow lumber down the road of
life. But the past simply isn't here. It can't be. Our
thoughts about the past may appear in this moment, but
thoughts don't have any intrinsic weight of their own. To whatever
degree we imagine the weight of the past on our shoulders, it's
weight that we're needlessly loading on ourselves. There's no such
weight. It's only that we think there is.
The same goes for the future. If you dread it, you're forgetting
that it's only thought. On the other hand, if you're filled with
great expectations, you've just set yourself up for a big letdown.
In the meantime, how much of your precious time are you going to
let slip by without noticing?
Sometimes, too, the more we talk about our feelings, the more
solid and permanent they appear. We fuel those feelings with
thought, giving birth to them anew in each new moment. In this way
we make ourselves quite miserable. We then grow attached to these
feelings, believing that the stronger we feel them, The more
powerful or important or profound they are. We overlook that it was
in our carelessness that we artificially made them so intense. But
if we carry on in this way, is it because we're capable of feeling
deeply, or because we're, to some degree, insane? We're not
noticing our part in all of this confusion.
We may imagine that if we talk about how we feel and why, we can
get down to something genuine and true. But we can't. We can't ever
really explain how we feel -- we can only feel how we
feel. This is as far as we go without our thoughts otherwise making
a mess of it.
Had we simply let our initial feeling alone, it would soon fade
away like the morning dew. And our sense of urgency -- our need to
somehow deal with the feeling -- would evaporate as well.
So in meditation we put our effort into coming back. In each
moment, learn to spot yourself forming and running off into the
past or the future. Then come back. Just come back. Don't say
anything, not even to yourself.
.....
We commonly imagine that thoughts and feelings are separate
things. But they're not exactly, as we've seen. They constantly
feed each other.
Sometimes you'll hear someone describe themselves as a thinking
person or a feeling person, but the fact is, we all think and we
all feel. None of us just thinks or just feels. This is directly
experienced by all of us. Thinking and feeling occur together at
once. Heart and mind are not separate. (indeed, there's a classic
Zen text that identifies them as one in its title: "Trusting the
Heartmind.")
...
In meditation, we give full attention to direct experience --
that is, what we feel, see, think, hear, smell, or taste right now.
That's all. In other words, we don't comment on it. We don't ignore
it or squelch it or analyze it or dwell on it or control it. Thus
it all washes through.
In learning to come into this moment, we realize feelings
directly, and we see the thoughts that often come attached to them.
But we don't judge them or talk about them. We don't make anything
of them at all. They come and go, and we taste them fully and
directly, with no aftertaste. We don't consume them, and they don't
consume us.
We only need to watch. Negative emotions under wordless
observation cannot last for long. As long as we don't say anything
to ourselves about them, they will naturally weaken and die away.
But if we feed and amplify those feelings, they will just as
naturally remain and grow.
Our emotions and thoughts are like the weather. They are
sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, always changing. We can
do little to control them directly, and are wise not to try. Yet
they needn't control us, either. What we can do is be alert. Just
observe and let them be what they are. And after the occasional,
inevitable storm has passed, we only need to quietly watch as the
clouds dissipate on their own without any help from us.