Search Results for: feeling

~~ don’t chase and don’t run away from feelings ~~ (and yoga teacher training update)

photo by Monica Cassani. Grass.

first! thanks to those of you who have made donations towards my yoga teacher training. I’m now officially enrolled. I’m excited. It’s the first ongoing commitment I have made (outside of my home) in 10 years. I was explicit about my limitations and they remained enthusiastic about my participation. I will continue taking donations. I’ve paid for one third of the $3000 tuition fee. I have until June to finish paying in monthly installments. Any help will continue to be much appreciated. ***and now some regularly scheduled odds and ends for your perusal:

The life-liberating impact of feeling the feeling

By Georgi Y. Johnson — The moment we choose to feel a feeling, we have moved beyond thought and into direct experience. That is, we have moved out of the programing of the temporal, linear, left brain, which builds agenda through the composition of time frames and stories. Feeling what we feel does not take place yesterday, and will not take place tomorrow. It always happens in the now. Feeling is so much in the now, that even if the thoughts are in the future, the feeling will still be in the eternal now. Because of this, when we move from consciousness to awareness, or from mental awakening to sentient presence and begin to feel what “is”, old, unfelt feelings will emerge, even if decades have passed in the interim. — Contrary to popular belief, it is not possible to “think” away a feeling. We can check it rationally and we can relativize it. We can justify, excuse, build stories and rename it. But all of this thinking activity is dependent on the allowance of the feeling in the first place. We cannot know what the feeling is that we think we are “thinking away” (by changing our thought patterns) unless we first agree to feel it. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

Feeling broken?

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

Feelings

There is no requirement to act out any feeling ever. Feelings are information but they need not determine behavior. This is most significant in that one can sit with feelings before acting so that any action might be skillful rather than reactive. … [click on title to read and view more]

Can you stay with that feeling?

You never remain with any feeling, pure and simple, but always surround it with the paraphernalia of words. The word distorts it; thought, whirling round it, throws it into shadow, overpowers it with mountainous fears and longings. You never remain with a feeling, and with nothing else: with hate, or with that strange feeling of beauty. When the feeling of hate arises, you say how bad it is; there is the compulsion, the struggle to overcome it, the turmoil of thought about it.Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that’s what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love, or with the word love. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. Can you? Have you ever tried? … [click on title to read and view more]

How long should I stay with uncomfortable feelings?

I think this is a very important thing to discuss. When is it okay NOT to be with what we are experiencing? Meditation is called a practice for a reason. It can be very hard and sometimes impossible at certain points in ones life before one has acquired a certain proficiency. Sometimes it’s appropriate to NOT meditate. When I was in acute psychiatric drug withdrawal syndrome the noise and chaos and pain and suffering was so immense that trying to deeply be with that ugliness for more than a few seconds at a time was more than I could bare. This is true for most people in acute phases of psych drug withdrawal. It’s easy to imagine all sorts of other potential sorts of situations that might be similar. Distraction and dissociation when things are that grave and chaotic are simply a way to be merciful to oneself before more skill has been developed. When trauma is that severe it’s also pure and simply about surviving. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑