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Finding Freedom in Emotions

I started with this idea of just this inquiry of: why do we practice mindfulness? What brings us to the cushion? What brings us to listen to dharma talks or have a meditation practice? Whether it's regular every day or not, any meditation practice, what brings us to the cushion? And there are so many different answers to this question, but one might include that we want to feel some ease. We want to feel some peace. We want to feel a sense of well-being. We want to have some freedom from physical suffering and emotional suffering, some difficulties that we're having. Or maybe we want to have a sense of fulfillment or contentment. It's a little bit more satisfying to sit on our cushion rather than just going through our lives perhaps not completely engaged, but to be engaged with our experience while we're sitting on the cushion. Maybe that brings a sense of satisfaction.

Another reason we might be practicing meditation is to help support the sense of openheartedness or balance that can really support us in a life of service. Coming from some compassion in which we might help others, support others, help cultivate and develop a spirit of caring. And that's this openheartedness that allows us to approach those who need care and support without getting thrown off balance. So that could be a reason why we practice mindfulness. Maybe another reason is just to gain some greater understanding. To understand what are some of our habits of mind, what are some of our habits of behavior, what are some of the ways that we are inclined to behave. Why do we find ourselves often doing the same things in the same types of situations? So, to learn about what are some of the things that we do repeatedly, what are our patterns.

I could go on and on. There's a number of different reasons why we practice mindfulness. But I think most of us, consciously or maybe unconsciously—maybe it's not in the front of our minds—would like meditation to be kind of a chill-out session where we don't have to relate to any unpleasantness, where there can just be a certain amount of ease. There can be these other things too, but I think many of us would like meditation to be a peaceful, easeful experience. Actually, it's not uncommon; many people have this idea that that's what meditation is all about. And some types of meditation, and in some settings, it is about that, about finding ease. But mindfulness practice, that type of practice that's really going to make a difference in our life, that's going to be transformative, includes this practice of "this too." We bring in whatever our experience is, including the unpleasant ones, including the difficult ones. Which of course means that our meditation experience may not always be easeful and peaceful.

And some of what we're bringing into this "this too" practice is difficult emotions. Or maybe they're not even difficult, they're just emotions, and they're kind of "loud"—they have a certain energy to them or a certain activation to them. I would like to say that mindfulness, while it can bring some ease, what it really can bring, where the real power is, is to bring in freedom. Freedom to make a choice, to behave a little bit differently than what our patterns are. To behave and to think in a way that enables more choices, to go a different direction than perhaps the ways that we have been going. And of course, this includes the way we are with our emotions.

So meditation practice is a way in which we can have some more choice in the way that we are with our emotions and the way that we relate to our emotions. It doesn't mean we get to choose which emotions we have. It doesn't mean that we get to only have, "Okay, I'm just gonna have the positive, pleasant ones and not have the ones that I don't want." We don't get to do that. But it allows us to have freedom, that we can have the capacity to be with whatever emotion is arising, whatever emotion that we're experiencing.

I think I might have heard this from Gil^[1] the first time, this idea of e-motion. Like e-motion, this movement, that emotions move through us. That's the natural way that they arise and pass away. But it's not their nature themselves to get stuck, to get calcified, concretized, reified, stuck, but instead to move through us. But of course, that's not our experience. Often our experiences are that they are getting stuck, and we kind of get tangled up with them, and then they stop flowing.

And there can be a lot of this mental proliferation, or those of you who know this expression papañca^[2], a lot of story making: "Well this happened, and then because that happened, this other thing is going to happen. And because that other thing happened, it reminded me of this, and that other thing that reminded me of this made me think of that other thing." And then there might be a certain repetition, but we're not really going anywhere. So rather than emotion flowing through, it's kind of stuck. Maybe we create like a dam, where there's just this lake that's not really moving. And maybe even—maybe I'm taking this a little too far, this analogy—but maybe even the lake, we imagine there's a Loch Ness Monster in it, or we're afraid that we'll forget how to swim, if we do already know how to swim, or there won't be any boats, or whatever it might be.

So notice that I'm not saying that being mindful of emotions is about having only pleasant emotions, as I said. But also, we don't want to think that we would only have what's "the appropriate" emotions or "normal," whatever that is. Whatever ideas we might find in some psychology textbooks, or maybe even a dharma teacher saying about emotions, whatever ideas we might have about emotions, it's important to recognize that that's culturally situated, historically situated. Whatever group that we're in, whatever culture that we're in, including a dharma culture or whatever religious culture, or whatever national or ethnic heritage, they all have their own ideas or their own expressions of emotions. And so there's a large range of what we might consider what's appropriate, or what's healthy, or what's normal. And to be careful into thinking that there's like one particular way in which we should be, in which our emotional life should be. Instead, I would say that the human experience of emotions—what they are, how they get expressed, where they arise, and what affects the magnitude of them—I don't think human beings will ever get to the end of that exploration. This idea that, "Okay, we got them all figured out and have a little algorithm, and just do this, say that, and then you have only these emotions and not those," or something like that, I don't think that's possible. I don't think that's what the human experience is about. So I hate to disappoint you if you have this idea that finally you'll be able to completely figure it out exactly how to have only the emotions you want and not the ones you don't want.

So mindfulness of emotions isn't about that. Instead, as I said, it's about finding freedom. Freedom we can translate as being able to have a choice in the way that we are with our emotions, the way that we relate to them, and whether we get caught up by them, or are in the grip of them, or overwhelmed by them. Mindfulness allows us to not be in the grip of them, to not be overwhelmed. It means we might still be experiencing them, of course. So emotions, we can think of them as a form of communication from ourselves to ourselves. In this way, emotions are an opportunity to learn about ourselves. But of course, we can only learn if we allow the emotion to be there and we observe it in some kind of way. If we're always trying to bat it away or hit it over the head with a mallet or something like this, then there isn't an opportunity for us to receive the message that emotions are trying to tell us.

So what are these messages? Some of them can be that our boundaries are being crossed, that this is not appropriate behavior. Maybe the communication is that it is a loss, that we are experiencing a loss. Or maybe it's a communication that it's not a loss, but that there's been a gain, there's been a boon, and it supports us, supports the life that we want to have. So in this way, emotions can help mobilize us and motivate us.

We can think about the physiology in which, often when we're angry, blood flows to the hands. We might even find ourselves making fists or something. I know in TV or movies, if we're ever watching them without any sound, often the actors, this is what they'll do: make a fist as a way to indicate that they're angry, whether or not they're actually saying anything. Even if they were saying something but we've turned the volume off, we could just tell, right? In the same way, when we're afraid, blood flows to the legs so that we might be able to run. So emotions have this physiological correlate or physiological aspect that can motivate us, or can affect our attention. When we have fear, our attention can get really focused, and it becomes very clear what I need to do right now to take care of myself, or to take care of my loved one, or whatever the fear is about. There are lots of ways in which emotions affect our physiology and of course our behavior too. If we think of embarrassment as an emotion, often if we feel embarrassed, then we'll stop doing whatever it is that was the source of the embarrassment.

So in this way, emotions are composites. They are not one simple thing. There are physical aspects of them. There are sensations. At the guided meditation, I asked you to check in to see if there are some physical sensations associated with whatever mood that you are experiencing. There might be a knot in the throat if there's fear or sadness, for example. There might be a sense of opening or warmth in the chest and the heart center when there's some tenderness or love. Or there might be sadness felt in the eyes. I'm just offering these; I think all of us have our own ways in which we experience physical sensations that go with the emotions. There are also, of course, expressions. Earlier I talked about making fists, but our faces are so expressive, whether we want them to be or not, of our emotions. And then, of course, there are the mind states: whether there's a certain amount of the thoughts going really fast, or maybe there's a sense of ease and expansion. So an emotion is not just one thing. It's not one thing we can just put our finger on and say, "Oh, that's sadness." Instead, there are some physical sensations, there are mental experiences, there are expressions.

And so when we think about or talk about mindfulness of emotions, we can talk about mindfulness of any of these different aspects. Whether it's the bodily experience, or it's the quality of the mind—are the thoughts going really quickly or are they expanded?—or maybe the expressions that we're having on our face. Part of the way in which being mindful of our emotions can be helpful is that it can help us to tune into our experience, which can help us to have some greater understanding. Bringing some curiosity to whatever emotion we are experiencing can help us to observe it a little bit more, and in that way, not to be so much under the grip of it or feel overwhelmed with it. In this way, for example, we might discover, if we're able to just hang out with grief in a warmhearted, gentle way, we might see that there are other emotions also. So grief may include some deep sorrow. There might be elements of fear. There might be elements of hopelessness. There might be a sense of powerlessness, maybe a little bit of anger, maybe there's some poignancy, or maybe some relief—maybe a sense of relief when we finally are feeling the grief, if maybe we've been holding it back.

So mindfulness might help us to see that not only are emotions composite events, but even emotions themselves are composites. There might be some emotions that are underneath the surface ones. And in this way, there can be a greater understanding of ourselves, what's really happening. It can start to unpack and undo any sense of "there's this emotion out there that's this big black box," for example. Something that we can't see into, there's no light that's getting in, we're not able to shine the beam of mindfulness. Instead, it feels like a place in which we can't see anything, or maybe we don't even want to, it's scary. We can bring a little bit of mindfulness and start to see that there are so many different elements there that it becomes a little bit more alive for us. And maybe not as overwhelming. We can see there are different aspects, and just choose to be with one aspect, including being with the sensations in the body.

This of course is a way in which we can bring our experience here into the present moment. Of course, the body is here in the present moment. One advantage, of course, not only being in the present moment, but if we bring our attention to the felt experience, it can interrupt some of what's happening in the mind. Instead, it can transform or deconstruct this emotion which we had kind of constructed into this big blob, maybe a scary blob. We can deconstruct it into its elements, including the sensations in the body, and then just be with the sensations in the body. Be with the tightness in the throat if we're feeling sad, maybe the feeling behind the eyes. For me, sometimes when I feel sad, there's a real heaviness in the shoulders also. And then just to be with the sensations of heaviness in the shoulders, or the sadness.

And this way of deconstructing the emotions—by paying attention to the physical experience of them, by recognizing that there are physical experiences, and there's a mind state, and there might be other emotions all mixed in together—by recognizing that, we can deconstruct them. It also helps us to notice that they are constructed, that these are composites, that they are made, they're fabricated. That they are created out of a whole bunch of different elements. And there can be something deep inside of us that recognizes that, oh, things that are constructed can be deconstructed. Things that are conditioned can fall away. And in fact, this is exactly the way in which e-motions—in which emotions move through. We use this expression "move through," they arise and pass away. I even do this movement with my hands, like they're moving through space. But we might also use this language in which they're constructed and deconstructed. There's a way in which they're fabricated, as opposed to being calcified, but they can be deconstructed, unfabricated in some kind of way.

And this is where freedom is too. There's freedom in this recognition that they arise and they pass away. There's a construction that happens without any entity that's doing the construction, a construction that happens, and we can deconstruct them with our mindfulness practice. And that's part of our practice: to notice this process not only with our emotions, but with so many different aspects of our experience—and dare I say, with all of the aspects of our experience. So practicing to be with our emotions can be an integral part of our freedom in all areas of our lives. It can help us immediately when we're experiencing difficult emotions, or even when we're experiencing pleasant ones, or ordinary, not particularly difficult or pleasant ones. Notice how they're made up of different elements. Notice how there's a physical sensation, and notice how the elements maybe seem to shift and change. And in this way, they can be a great teacher for us to find more freedom in all areas of our lives, so that our capacity to be with difficulties can increase, to support ourselves and to support others. So that our capacity to serve others, to hear what others have to say, and to help them through their difficult emotions or whatever difficulties they're experiencing, increases. So in this way, working with emotions can help us, can help the whole world. Thank you.