This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Touching Emotions; Introduction to Mindfulness (15 of 25) Centering on Emotions.. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Intimate with Emotions; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (15 of 25) Centering on Emotions. - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Intimate with Emotions

Hello and welcome. Today we will do the last exploration of mindfulness of emotions. I hope that over the course of this week, I have managed to convey a deep respect for emotions. Emotions have an important role and place in our lives, and learning how to be mindful of them is a tremendously beneficial art.

I call it an art rather than a technique because it has to do with our inner life—the depths, fullness, and range of it. It is something that is constantly shifting and changing. Understanding how to be with emotions, how to respect them, learn from them, and plumb the depths of their potential is a constantly shifting phenomenon. We are finding our way and discovering.

It is important not to have a simplistic idea that there is a simple technique for knowing how to be with emotions. If there is a simplistic idea, it is that we want to show up for them and discover the capacity to be with them without being swamped, controlled, or troubled by them. We want to avoid resisting or overly succumbing to them, and instead see them clearly so we can find the wisdom and freedom that they point to.

In the course of this week, one of the themes was the idea of giving lots of space to our emotions. I have given this analogy before, which I think is very powerful: sometimes when people think they are supposed to concentrate on something with mindfulness—really bore into it, look at it carefully, or study it—the mind contracts and becomes tight. It is like all my fingers coming together to a point in order to address something. This movement to gather and focus causes a strain or tension.

The alternative is to keep the mind relaxed, soft, open, and receptive. In some sense, it is broad; we do not tense up anything in the mind. However, we also do not want to stay so broad that we don't necessarily see carefully or well. We want to be able to see through something, behind it, or see the roots of it.

The idea is to have a different kind of one-pointedness where whatever we are looking at comes and just touches the most sensitive part of the mind, just like the most sensitive part of the hand might be the palm. If we make a fist, the palm is not available to sense and feel. So, stay soft. As we approach an object, sometimes the mind will tighten up, so we want to pay attention that we don't do that. Rather, we come and just gently touch.

This means putting ourselves right in the middle of the emotion. We get really close to it. That is where mindfulness of the body is so helpful because what we put ourselves close to is the place in the body where the emotion is most expressed—where the sensations of the emotion are present. In a sense, we put ourselves right in the middle of that, perhaps creating a place for the emotion to rest in the palm of our hands. It can rest and be supported. The important place is the point of contact between awareness and the emotion. Just reside right here; let this become a place to feel, be absorbed, and be present.

It is very intimate and very close to the sensations of the emotion. That movement can be like touching into difficult emotions. The image I have for that is that sometimes, when there are really difficult emotions, awareness is like a soft cotton ball that just comes gently and taps. We don't tense up, we don't resist; we keep a relaxed, open mind and experiment with how close we can get while keeping it relaxed. You don't have to go all the way; just go as far as you can before you start tensing up. It might be that you have to stay quite far away to be aware of it, and that is okay. If you are going to tense, resist, or get afraid, maybe stay far away. But over time, learn how to bring that soft cotton ball sensitivity right into the middle of the emotion. Really be there.

I find it useful to imagine there is a chair right in the middle of the emotions and the physical sensations, and then I just sit there to be with and accompany the emotion. This intimacy, this closeness, is not always the right thing to do, but it is one of the ways to be mindful of emotions.

Assume a meditation posture. With emotions, the posture you take is actually very significant. Really be thoughtful and careful about what the posture expresses in terms of how to attend to an emotion—how to respectfully make room for it and make contact with it.

Some people find it particularly useful to be grounded. With the eyes closed, perhaps on the exhale, feel the weight of your body being supported by the chair, couch, cushion, or bed. Whatever supports the weight of the body, on the exhale, ground yourself there. Settle there as if this place where you are sitting is a refuge for you. The actual place that receives your weight is a place of safety and grounding. Ground yourself a little bit into your body. Gently take some deeper breaths, feeling the body—especially the torso—and relaxing as you exhale. Soften around the tension and the holding. With every exhale, soften and relax different parts of the body.

Then, notice what tension and holding there is in the mind—the thinking muscle. Notice any forcefulness, tightness, or pressure associated with thinking, or perhaps with emoting, wanting, and not wanting. On the exhale, relax and soften the mind. Soften the energy, agitation, and pressure of wanting and not wanting, of thinking, planning, and remembering. Soften and relax the energy of being self-concerned.

Center yourself on the breathing in whatever way the body’s experience of breathing might be comforting, settling, or grounding for you. Look around and see in what way you can feel the physical experience of breathing. Is there a location—in the belly, the chest, the rib cage, the nostrils, or the back rib cage—where it feels grounding or settling to accompany the body breathing?

[Silence]

Then, notice and recognize how you are feeling in terms of emotion, a mood, or a mental state. How are you feeling in your inner being? It might be quite subtle, or it might be strong; either is fine. See if you can recognize if there is any location in the body that is the center of how you feel. Is there any part of your body that is a little more activated or where there are sensations that seem to be part and parcel of your emotion or state of being?

Some subtle meditative states can feel like they extend beyond the edges of the body. Some difficult emotions can seem like they are throughout the body. But whatever it is, is there a center of gravity for it? If there is, let your awareness hold it spaciously, maybe from a distance. Allow your breathing to accompany your emotion or your state, as if you are breathing through it or alongside it. Your breathing gets close to it, but you don't merge with it yet.

[Silence]

Begin centering yourself on the middle of the emotion. Get closer with your awareness so you begin feeling it and sensing it carefully and receptively. It is almost like you bring yourself right up against it, or right into the middle at whatever center there is for how you are feeling. Maybe you use an awareness that is like a soft cotton ball. Maybe all you can do is tap your emotional state gently, feel it, stroke it gently, and then pull away. Or maybe you can open your hand wide, your mind open and relaxed, and receive the emotion in the open mind and open hand.

Or, place yourself in the middle of your emotional state—your mind state, state of being, whatever it might be—and sit right in the middle. Just be with it. Not fixing, judging, or analyzing. Be a good friend who just sits in the middle of it and lets it be, accompanying, feeling, and sensing the physicality of the emotion. Maybe it is an ephemeral sensation. Whatever it is, gently let yourself be in the middle of it all and see what happens.

As you do so, keep an eye on whether the mind is contracting or tightening. See if the mind can stay relaxed with a relaxed attention, relaxed connecting, and relaxed receiving while you are centered and grounded in whatever seems to be the middle of your emotional state.

[Silence]

As we come to the end of the meditation, end the way we began. Let yourself be grounded in the place where you are sitting. Whatever receives the weight of your body, feel that support of the floor, cushion, chair, couch, or bed. Whatever part of your body is touching the surface that is carrying your weight, feel the solidity and grounding of it. In a way, it prevents you from free-falling, being pulled by gravity. Take some long, slow, deep breaths, and on the exhale, feel the grounding of the weight of your body—the substantiality of your body here and now.

Take a few last moments here to appreciate your mind. Even if sometimes it acts in ways that are not so helpful for you, most of this mind of ours operates without recognition, without us knowing, to take care of so many of the different functions that allow us to be alive. Even if our thinking is not always so helpful, 99.9% of the mental functioning supports us all day long. Appreciating the mind, appreciating your heart.

Then, turn your attention outward into the world. No one needs to know you are doing this; it doesn't mean you have to do anything, talk to anyone, or help anyone. But you can just now, for a few moments, spread your good will¹ out into the world. Yes, it would be a great thing if there was more peace, more well-being, less hunger, and more people being supported out of poverty, despair, and oppression. It would be a good place, this world, if people didn't suffer² so much.

May it be so. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

May my good will find a way to spread into this world, nourishing it, supporting it, making a difference for this to be a better world for everyone.

Thank you. While I drink my water and prepare for a little talk, if some of you would like to say a few words about what that meditation was like for you—was it helpful, challenging?—that might help me understand how to do this teaching in the next few minutes.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (15 of 25) Centering on Emotions.

Thank you for the comments. I certainly sympathize with those people who felt there were a lot of words during that meditation. That is the trade-off between silence that helps us to settle versus receiving some teachings and approaches during the practice—explaining them along the way and feeling them here and there. There is a long history of receiving teachings like this and then going off to meditate with them.

This week, we have been exploring mindfulness³ of emotions. I hope I offered different perspectives on the art of how to be present for emotions. You can have different choices of how to be with them at different times and in different ways. It was also a little bit progressive; we were building the container and the context so that we can do something which is often quite difficult: to sit in the middle of our emotional life. We want to sit in the middle without being caught in it, entangled, or reactive, and without feeling that we are victims of our emotions or collapsing under the weight of them. We want to find a way to sit in the middle where we feel at ease, free, strong, and capable.

When the time is right, we can really be intimate with them to feel closely the exact present moment experience. Often with emotions, especially difficult ones, there is a very strong connection to thinking, reacting, believing, interpreting, or predicting. We somehow relate the emotion to our sense of self—what this means for me, how this defines me, or what I have to do. The idea in mindfulness practice is to learn a "radical simplicity" where so much of the reactive, interpretive, judging, and analytical ways of being with emotions recedes into the background or becomes quiet.

It is like doing some kind of craft at home, but there is a loud radio blaring all kinds of political speeches and opinions. It is difficult to be absorbed in your craft or in reading a nice book. So, the radio goes off or gets turned down, and now you can really be with what you are doing. To really be with the emotion—whether sitting in the middle of it, coming from underneath it, or in some intimate way making room for it to be all of us if it's really strong—we need that simplicity of attention. We need the capacity not to react, judge, or interpret, but just to breathe with it or make room for it to be what it is.

That intimacy and capacity are invaluable, I would suggest, for two main reasons.

One is that our emotional body has a lot of wisdom about how to let our emotional life unfold in a healthy way. Sometimes our emotional body has much more wisdom than our thinking mind, where we predict and judge based on life experience. If we can relax enough and feel safe enough to drop into our body and just feel intimately what is happening, the process by which emotions process themselves can happen in a healthy way. The more closely we are connected, sometimes the easier it is to really allow the depth of what is happening to unfold.

The other reason, which is sometimes even more important, is that through intimacy and presence, we start seeing that whatever the emotion is, it is in a certain way the surface emotion, or the louder expression of something more core underneath.

For example, when there is a lot of anger, sometimes what is underneath the anger is fear, or maybe a sense of hurt. Being close to it and feeling it allows us to begin seeing the message underneath. That can be a game-changer. We thought we were dealing with anger, and we had opinions about expressing it or giving people a piece of our mind. All that stuff is just on the surface. If you are able to drop into a deeper wellspring—what is really bubbling and activated in a deeper place—you might see below that to the hurt or the fear. That is more primary and sometimes more useful to deal with.

Sometimes anger isn't covering fear or hurt, but deep sorrow and grief. The anger is a kind of ricocheting off the difficulty of being with our own grief and pain. Certainly, we want to be very respectful of how difficult that is and not rush to connect to it. Maybe feel it from a distance, or use the "soft cotton ball" to gently touch and pet it—"I know you're there"—and then pull away.

So, these two very helpful processes can happen. One is that the emotion can unfold naturally. Generally, emotions know how to unfold in appropriate ways if we get out of the way and allow them to be there without being fueled by stories and reactivity. The second is that we start seeing through them to what is actually deeper.

The examples I gave were all difficult emotions, but sometimes underneath there might be something beautiful. Maybe there is anger, but we find that underneath there is love. Somehow the love, care, and compassion⁴ have taken the direction of anger, but there is really compassion underneath. Maybe there is another way to let the compassion be expressed. Underneath sadness, there might also be love, care, or a sadness that our generosity or friendship is not received. Sometimes there are beautiful things to discover.

Underneath fear, there might be a very wholesome sense of wanting to protect oneself—care and support for one's own well-being. It feels very satisfying to touch into that underlying care and desire to be safe, independent of the fear. That can also be a game-changer. We can ask ourselves, "Is there another way of becoming safe if that is what I want, as opposed to somehow contending with the fear?"

The world of our emotions is a very rich world. As we learn in mindfulness meditation to be present for it in a mindful, non-reactive way, the greatest potential is that emotions become just one more thing to be aware of as things unfold and move through us. It isn't that the emotions are then validated or more important than anything else, but rather we cultivate the ability to settle down and be simple. Whatever arises in attention, we just say, "Oh, that's what it is; this is going on now," and leave it that simple.

The capacity for simple, ongoing recognition and presence to what is happening in the present moment becomes uninterrupted. The emotions are not prioritized or taken to be more important than anything else; they are just one more thing to recognize and know. That simplicity allows for deeper settling into the path of mindfulness.

I hope all this is supportive. Remember how important it is to respect your emotions. Care for them and be wise about them. Hopefully, what we have done this week helps you understand how to better take care of yourself when these emotions are here, and how not to be caught in them too much. Learn to take a break, talk to a friend, or do whatever else you need to do.

Next week, I will talk about mindfulness of thinking. That overlaps quite a bit with mindfulness of emotions. Hopefully, you will see that being able to be mindful of emotions is really helpful to get a handle on how to be mindful of thoughts, so that being mindful of thinking doesn't prompt you to think more.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to our time next week.