Let’s face facts for a moment here. We all have a prejudice against “negative” emotions. No one want’s to feel sad or hurt or afraid. Everyone wants to have feelings like comfort and joy.
That’s natural enough in and of itself. There is nothing wrong with preference, but often times we get ourselves in trouble with an attachment to (or an avoidance of) certain states of emotion.
It is obviously very common for people to be very resistant to feeling sad or hurt or afraid. Usually we have a comfort zone in certain emotional ranges and types while others we don’t handle very well at all. In general it is the negative emotions that people tend to be opposed to, though sometimes these negative emotions can be attached to positive experiences like trust which can cause serious hardship in relating to others.
Most people can’t handle extremes of emotion very well but when we suppress one or more of the the types of emotions entirely, we end up in hot water. Some times we have a refusal to feel sadness and so we express anger instead. We might do the opposite and refuse to experience anger and so express only sadness.
Our particular prejudices are generally built on childhood experience of some sort and when pure emotion arises in the moment, it triggers a life time of defense mechanisms. Because we are still reacting to the emotion from the place of the 5 year old child who wasn’t able to appropriately handle some event, we feel like it is still too powerful for us now.
Our defense mechanisms are psychological habits that cause us to reflexively tighten down on the energy of the arising emotion in an attempt to control it. The refusal to allow these energies to express fully in the moment creates a lingering tention in our experience. This tension can wear many masks, ranging from apathy to urgency to excitement and even optimism.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is certainly possible to transmute negative emotions and express them fully with Joy and Gratitude, but that is an expression of the emotion, not a supression or deflection of it, and this kind of transmutation is only possible when we experience our emotions fully and without judgement.
When sadness is fully expressed in the moment, without resistance or or a deflecting facade it is an experience both beautiful and sweet. This expression of sadness never becomes depression because it is fully expressed. It is honored for what it is, accepted and allowed to roll right through our being.
Because nothing holds back, nothing holds on, and we are left pure and clear like the air after a storm.
Peace 🙂
Michael Sunspirit
