Brandon Bay on Emotional Freedom
By Brandon Bays
We so often have the misconception that our emotions interfere with our experience of ultimate peace: that they are the storm that distracts us from the spacious calm. They seem to limit our experience of freedom and obscure the boundless field of grace, which by nature is vast, free and emotionless.
There are so many false notions about emotions. In some traditions they teach the value of transcending emotions; as if they are the ‘bad guys’ that hinder our experience of the divine. We are trained to believe that enlightenment is what happens when we have become free from our emotions, as if emotions are the captors that imprison us in the illusion of life.
Even if we’ve not been introduced to such concepts as transcendence and non-attachment, we still learnt at an early age that there were ‘good’ emotions and ‘bad’ emotions. If we were crying about something before going to school, mummy was quick to shut us up, and shut those ‘bad’ emotions down with a, ‘Come on dear, dry your tears. It’s time to go to school. Chin up…’
So from early childhood we learnt that ‘bad’ emotions weren’t welcome and that only ‘good’ ones were allowed. If we felt fearful, shameful, hurt or angry, we were taught to cover it all up, push through and be strong. Those ‘bad’ feelings would only make us appear a wimp to the rest of the world, and a sissy to those more strong than us.
Pretty soon, any strong emotion arising caused an instantaneous shut down, and cover up, as we quickly tried to transmute it into something more comfortable to society. Even if we secretly sequestered ourselves away, hiding in our bedrooms to allow ourselves a few private moments to be with the emotion, we would often fight back the tears, try to talk ourselves out of what we were feeling or diminish its importance, and maybe even felt ashamed of our weakness in the process.
Emotions became our invitation to go to battle. The instant anything arose that we or society felt was too emotional, all our strategies to annihilate, deny, or transmute it arose … we fought it, resisted it, tried to explain it away; we argued with it, projected it and blamed others for it, blamed ourselves for feeling it, and ultimately started to develop more long-term strategies for suppression. We took up smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating, senseless television watching, endless reading of just about anything; all in an effort to narcotise and put to sleep any and all so-called unacceptable emotions that might dare to raise their heads and try to destroy our peace, or rob us of our self-acceptance or the larger acceptance of society.
Emotions became the culprits to be destroyed before they destroyed us.
It was almost as if some terrible devil called emotions lurked within each of our beings, and our job was to quell them, oust them, subdue them, get rid of them, push them back into the recesses of our consciousness – back into oblivion, where they belong.
In some spiritual traditions, they ask you to repeat mantras or incantations any time a ‘negative’ emotion arises – to avoid its ill effects, and keep your attention on the supreme. And in other traditions, aspirants submit themselves to extreme austerities and self-deprivations – braving the elements, chastising the body, undergoing fasts – they punish their bodies for being impure vessels, which gave rise to these ‘bad’ emotions.
Some yogis meditate in caves for years, so they won’t be required by life to engage in any activity that might cause emotion to arise: that way they aren’t plagued by these ‘worldly demons’. And some western religions have confessional booths, or testimonials to congregations, so that one can confess the sins of having experienced an unholy feeling or an impure impulse. You may then be given a series of tasks, the difficulty of which is dictated by how bad your emotion or impulse was, to absolve yourself of your sin.
In nearly every spiritual tradition there is some reference to the need to obliviate or conquer the natural expression of human feeling; and those rare beings who seem to have successfully purified themselves of their impure and unholy emotions are celebrated as saints, or holy ones.
Indeed, everywhere we look, in every context of society, secular or religious, it seems that all of life is conspiring to kill our emotions, to suppress our natural feelings. It seems nearly everyone agrees with the culturally conditioned belief that most emotions are bad and must be subdued at all costs.
It’s no wonder we can’t experience peace for any length of time. We are always on the battlefield, fighting wars against the enemy – an enemy that won’t give us any rest, for as soon as we quell one regiment, the next surge of emotion comes marching behind it, in an endless stream of never-ending waves. It’s a battle we all fight, even though we know it’s one we will never win.
For as long as we have breath in our bodies, and have life in our being, emotions will come as a natural part of being human.
It’s as if we are fighting our very selves, our own nature. And what a fruitless, endless battle it is. It’s exhausting. It’s as ineffective as standing on the shore and holding up a shield against a tidal wave. Nothing you can do can stop its force, and any resistance only drains your energy and exhausts your being.
In fact, it is our very struggle against feeling that robs us of our peace, and disturbs our wellbeing. When so much effort is wasted trying to resist the natural flow of life, there is not much life force left to experience the inherent joy of life.
We are always on the battlefield, always at war: at war with ourselves. And it’s our very resistance to what is that destroys our peace, robs us of fulfilment – not the ‘negative’ emotion itself, but the struggle against it; not the feeling, but the ferocity of our will to kill it.
We have become warriors: warriors fighting a phantom enemy called emotion. And when the battle becomes too much we collapse into depression, into a place of numbness, where the acute pain of the fight cannot reach us; and we seek counsellors to help explain our way out of the war zone, or doctors and psychiatrists who prescribe drugs to block out our intense feelings. Or we engage in pointless and mind-numbing activities to distract us from our feelings: we zone out watching vacuous television game shows, we wash the car or hoover the carpets when they’re already clean, we gamble, we chatter and gossip endlessly about other people’s problems – all in a game of emotional avoidance. Or we temporarily raise the white flag and plead for mercy: we turn to God and start to pray, seeking respite, or we go to an enlightened master and learn to meditate or to recite mantras. At best, we get a short window of peace before the next battle begins.
It never occurs to us to drop the role of warrior; to cease the battle altogether.
Maybe we all just need a change of profession. Maybe we weren’t cut out to be soldiers in battle, fighting against life. It’s just that no one ever gave us another job opportunity – they didn’t offer us an alternative choice. Upon birth, society simply said, ‘Oh, another warrior has arrived. Here child, take up your armour and shield like a good little soldier. Life is a battlefield, and though you’ll never win the war your job is to fight the tide of emotions, no matter what. If you make some inroads we’ll give you a medal of honour. If you succumb to weakness we’ll ostracise you. It’s an impossible job, but those are the rules. Keep up a brave face. Now march on, young one, march on.’
But what if you decided not to play the game of war? What if you finally said, ‘No, I don’t want to be a marine. I never signed up for the army in the first place.’ What then? … What if you gave up all resistance? What if you simply refused to fight?
What if, instead, you said, ‘Come one, come all. All of my emotions are welcome into the ocean of love that is always here?’ What if, instead of a battlefield, it was discovered that life is an infinite field – a field of trust, openness, love?
And what if, in this infinite field, all the natural flow of life’s feelings were free to come and go? What if you provided no resistance whatsoever to the natural flow of life? … I wonder what would happen?
That which you resist persists.
Your resistance to emotion is perpetuating the very thing you wish was not there. It’s in the moment of true surrender, openness and acceptance that your emotions feel so welcome that they easily come, and just as easily go. Resistance keeps your emotions in play, and creates only more of itself. Resistance begets resistance.
It’s time to call off the fight and welcome your enemy with open arms. When you put down your weapons, lay down your shield of protection, and look this so-called ‘enemy’ in the eyes, you will see yourself shining there; for there is no difference between you. There before you is the most human of human beings. You are looking into the eyes of a friend, and that friend is your Self.
The invitation is to finally lay down your arms, dear one, and welcome all of life with all your heart. Your old enemy will turn out to be your closest friend, and the only enemy still at large will be realised to be resistance itself.
The time has come to befriend your emotions. They are the gateway to your Self. They are the gateway to freedom.
Based on the book Freedom Is. Copyright Ó 2006 by Manifest Abundance Limited. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.