Question 35
How do we deal with difficult emotions like sadness, hurt and anger, and how do these repressed emotions affect our capacity to be present?
Answer
To the extent that you have past emotions repressed within you, you cannot become permanently established in Presence. You can be present for short periods of time, but soon, those repressed emotions will be triggered, and you will be pulled back into the past and future world of the mind. The past will come flooding in to distort the truth and reality of the present moment. If you are to awaken and become permanently established in Presence, you will have to go through a process of allowing these repressed emotions into conscious and responsible expression. It is not difficult and it should not take very long, once you learn the art of being fully present, and once you come into right relationship with your feelings.
When you came into this world, you were a very present little Being. But you came into a world where no one was really present. To varying degrees, your mother and father were unconscious, wounded, and lost in the world of the mind. Very simply, they were unable to be present with you to the extent that you needed them to be in order for you to feel safe in such a new and strange environment. And so, during those early formative years, your needs were not being met. You felt hurt over and over again. And in response to feeling hurt, you became angry. But you soon discovered that these feelings of need, hurt and anger were either too much to bear or were simply not allowed, and so you began the process of repressing them within you. They gradually accumulated into reservoirs of repressed feelings held within the body and now they are constantly being triggered in reaction to events in your day to day living and in your relationship with others. These repressed feelings project onto the present moment and distort your sense of what is really happening. To the extent that you believe in the story behind the emotions, you are caught in your own past, and lost in a world of illusion. You are not in the truth of life. Your experience of life is delusional. If you are to liberate yourself from these projections from the past, you will have to go through a process of allowing these repressed emotions to surface into the light of consciousness.
When emotions arise, do not have the sense that you are trying to get rid of these feelings. You are simply inviting everything that is repressed within you to arise. The feelings will surface with a story from the past. It is important that you do not believe in the story, and yet you must allow the story to emerge. It is as though you are playing two parts. On the one hand, you are needy, sad, hurt, or angry and you express it fully and authentically. On the other hand, you are fully present as the feelings arise. You are witnessing the whole event as it emerges from within you, and you know that it does not have anything to do with the present moment. You know that it is simply the past emerging for completion. If anything, you are mildly amused by the whole experience. This is not therapy. You are not trying to fix anything or get rid of anything. You are simply correcting the earlier decision that you made as a child to repress difficult feelings. You denied those feelings the right to exist. And now you are restoring to those feelings their right to exist and express. But as an awakening adult, you do so responsibly. Do not dump the feelings on anyone. These feelings need you to be present with them as they surface and express, and they need to arise and express within an environment of love and acceptance. They need to be allowed to be themselves as they express. Anger needs to be allowed to blame and cuss and kill in response to feeling hurt. Allow it full expression. But do not identify with it. Do not believe in the story. Exaggerate it until you begin laughing. Anger repressed leads to violence and abuse of others. Anger expressed responsibly leads to laughter, forgiveness and compassion. If sadness arises, then cry. It will soon pass and be replaced by joy. Do not be afraid of your feelings. They cannot hurt you, and if you accept full responsibility for your feelings, they will never lead you to hurt or abuse others. And your body will be extremely grateful to you for relieving it of the burden of having to store these repressed and painful emotions for you.
Q: It seems to be easier to be present when I am in a beautiful place, a quiet place. Would you say something about moving through daily life, and bringing the quality of Oneness and Presence into everyday life?
L: It is like we live in two different dimensions. There is the dimension of awakened presence which is essentially eternal. At the deepest level, it is beyond time. It is impersonal. There is no world outside of the moment. At this level, your question is irrelevant, because there is no time. There is only now. You need at least three caretakers if you happen to awaken to this deep level of eternal Presence. It is an exalted state. It is total immersion in the moment of now. But you cannot function in the If any of us have 5 minutes, or one minute, in this eternal dimension, our lives are never going to be the same again. Everything is transformed, almost instantly in that opening into the eternal. That can occur right now in this moment. The eternal simply means I am in a dimension beyond time. I am so utterly of this moment that time, the past and future are not here. And of course at that level there is no thought, just silence. All thought takes you into the world of the mind which is the world of time.
We live in two dimensions so that you cannot function in the world of time at this very deep level. I suggest we open into this eternal dimension, the impersonal, the I am, the pure consciousnedss and we allow that to become fuller and fuller within us, we relax more ihto this so it becomes the very founcdation of who I am. I know this dimension of me is the truth. This is the truth of me and life in this moment is the truth of life. There really is no deviation from that. I am that. When I do move into the world of experience, mind, time, the ego gradually gently comes to a place of surrender. It relaxes. As you deepen into presence and as you bring to it unconditional love, acceptance and allowing, the ego starts to relax. Then more and more you are able to express in the world, driving a car, making love, going shopping, you are fundamentally present. There is not much thought happening unless thought is appropriate. When it is no longer appropriate it stops and you are present again. Now what you are is a personal expression of that impersonal dimension of you at the very deepest level of your existence. Another way of putting it is now you are an individual expression of God, or oneness. No longer functioning at the level of mind/ego, you are a personal expression of impersonal. That means that in your expression of the impersonal you are expressing all those qualities of the impersonal. All those qualities of God, love, presence, silence, power, truth, compassion. These are all the qualities that begin to express through you as you become a personal expression of the impersonal, rather than an expression of the ego at the level of mind. It is not just about awakening into presence. You better hurry up and get enlightened because that is the easy part. It has taken us about 78 lifetimes or more, maybe 780 lifetimes, it is still the easy part, because once you have awakened and you know the truth of life now, you know yourself in this moment, the question is now that I am awake how do I live in this world?
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