To truly grow into healthy men and women, into mindful humans on this planet, we have to grow into ourselves as individuals. To do this we need to be engaged with our feelings. Without access, awareness and healthy engagement with our feelings, we are disconnected from our Self.
Every moment of life we have feelings. Our feelings are continuously changing and this is a natural process. What is unnatural is that most of us are disconnected from our feelings, so we are ultimately disconnected from our Self. Why the disconnection?
We are disconnected because our natural impulse is to run away from the bad feelings and move towards the good ones. In running from feelings such as fear, sadness, anxiety and anger towards those like joy, pleasure and excitement, we deny reality as it is. We try and by-pass that which is difficult for that which is easy and in the process end up exacerbating the difficult and making the easy more elusive.
And of course we do this. Why wouldn’t we want to have the good stuff always? But we know that as much as we may love sugar, too much of it makes us sick in a variety of ways. Only aiming towards the good only ends up being not good.
The other confounding aspect to this issue is that society is set up to support our dysfunctional ways. You don’t want to feel pain? No problem. Grab a cigarette or a beer or a joint, buy or eat something you don’t need, watch lots and lots of TV or play hours of video games, have indiscriminate sex or even work too much. That last one is a particularly good one as working too much in this society is highly respected. Stay disconnected from yourself and keep working - good job!
And of course, there is little education about how to do things differently. In our society accomplishment is lauded. Feelings are something you keep to yourself or disregard all together if possible.. If we follow the thread of our society’s dysfunction closely enough, we see that the denial and inability to access feeling is at the root of all strife on the planet. Because as a collective we swallow our feelings, then these feelings that demand to be expressed in one way or another result in being expressed in a toxic way.
The collective is made up of the individuals. Each of us unable or unwilling to touch and express our feeling in a healthy manner adds to the collective dysfunction of the planet. The greatest power to heal the planet we have as individuals is to learn how to accept and deal with our feelings as they are in any given moment.
And the truth is, its simple to do - though it does take commitment and practice. We need to reprogram ourselves and bring ourselves back into our bodies. Because we spent so many years learning how to avoid, we moved away from our moment to moment experience of feeling within our bodies. Every feeling has a variety of sensations within the body and by learning to slow down and pay attention, we can watch as the feelings expressed as sensation move through the body, shift, change and dissolve away.
As an example, I often feel anger as a tightness in my belly. Rather then get wrapped up in the story and lost in my head as to the cause of the anger, I feel the sensation of tightness in my belly and watch as it shifts to different areas, changing in qualities until it dissolves completely. This way, I do not deny the feeling and do not exaggerate it either. I merely watch it, giving it full freedom of movement and expression until it has passed, then moving on fluidly to the next in a series of unending feelings.
When you have a moment - and any moment will do because you are a constant stream of feelings - slow yourself down and pay attention to your body. You may or may not be in a deep emotional state, but no matter, you are constantly in the stream. Focus in on your body and see where your attention is drawn. Stay with the feeling whether it is pleasant or unpleasant and note the quality. It may be a sharp pain, a dull ache, a tingle, an itch, warmth, or any other sensation. Stay with it and notice that it is not constant. It will inevitably change, in quality, intensity, location until it is gone completely. This is how it works. Bringing curiosity and openness to the moment allows the feeling to move freely and dissolve away into the next. Like magic, but easier.