<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_thread?p_l_id=&amp;threadId=5593130</link> <description>How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 01:45:46 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T01:45:46Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602058</link> <description>Right. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You could say the unwantedness is the thing we want to ignore and is the root of the proliferation of everything that follows. We&amp;#039;ll go to outragous lengths to avoid actually feeling that flavor of sensation, but that&amp;#039;s a big clue that a reaction pattern has been triggered. We would rather act out our anger than feel the hurt that triggers the anger. We would rather grandstand than feel the feeling of inadequacy that triggered the desire to show off. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A big part of building the capacity to be present is to get familiar with the actual feeling of &amp;#034;unwanted&amp;#034;. That&amp;#039;s also the challenge in sitting meditation, part of us just doesn&amp;#039;t want to keep sitting. That&amp;#039;s when it is time to look at THAT sensation. And note it. And really feel it. And surrender to it. And own it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s pretty much the whole of the practice, really.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 23:12:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602058</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T23:12:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601438</link> <description>I played with this a bit and it&amp;#039;s actually a really good cue.  By looking at the &amp;#034;unwantedness&amp;#034; you&amp;#039;re looking at the root of the feeling, I think.  It isn&amp;#039;t that the sensation is stressful so much as the struggle to push it away.  The emotional quality changes, but not the thought that triggered it, so it helps assimilate the thought without modifying it.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 04:41:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601438</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T04:41:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601041</link> <description>In a nutshell, I just go into them. Into the unwantedness, into the emotion. Usually the two are quite different aspects of experience and are basically confused into one compounded reaction &amp;#034;unwanted emotion&amp;#034;. When it is experienced and the component pieces separate, then the sensations of the emotion are clearer and tonality of the unwantedness is clearer.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sensations of emotions are just sensations and will be there as long as the emotion is triggered. The sensations of unwantedness just wants to be fully experienced, then it goes away on it&amp;#039;s own. Eventually it becomes instinctual to want to experience the unwantedness. You just know that going in that direction opens up the world.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 13:06:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601041</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T13:06:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600955</link> <description>I was gonna say this, albeit not as well.  Not Tao is Wise!  But Id like to write about the method that helped me in case that may help too....&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To deal with what is unpleasant:  1. ALLOW  2. Observe:  See it not as something unpleasant, but look at that which is unpleasant in the same way we listen to a sound.  See that it is not touching your core, but is a communication.  Listen to the song that the feelings sound like, if that makes sense to you.  If it doesn&amp;#039;t, it will later.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3. The other comments give techniques to quiet the mind.  If your fighting of the unpleasantness diminishes, then calming the mind is possible and the feelings that are unpleasant, themselves, will also diminish.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 08:45:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600955</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-08T08:45:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600262</link> <description>Good stuff.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I wanted to come back here and post my own personal solution, since I think I finally have a grasp on it.  Basically, the first step is to remove any resistance to the emotion - even if it seems very &amp;#034;unskillful&amp;#034; like anger or conceit.  I let myself feel it completely so I can understand where it&amp;#039;s coming from.  The next step is to challenge its usefulness directly - is it enjoyable, is it helping me with a situation, etc.  The answer is always &amp;#034;no&amp;#034; for me.  The two in combination seem to be attacking the ego from both ends - active effort is released, and the emotional trigger is disabled.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My favorite explanation for why this works is that a part of the mind is simply trying to say something with an emotion, and the tension comes from the fact that the conscious part of the mind is trying to ignore it.  If the whole mind is allowed to enter into consciousness without obstruction, the mind is unified and a PCE results.  I think the lack of resistance is what allows the mind to examine old problems without becoming absorbed by their emotional baggage - everything is allowed, so nothing causes problems.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 05:06:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600262</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-07T05:06:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593455</link> <description>A source of my anxiety is the fear of not being able to accomplish things. When I feel particularly anxious for no good reason, I imagine moments of accomplishments in the past. Can be very small things. The body responds to the imagination similarly as it does to the reality and some sensations are triggered. I pay attention to these sensations. They are very calming.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other than that locating the body sensations associated with whatever emotion there is, concentrating on them, accepting them, and trying to know their qualities. This has worked extremely well for me in the past. Requires good concentration to stay with the sensations since the mind wants to react when you focus on them&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then off the cushion stuff. Talking to people about these emotions, eating well, exercise, making my environment more pleasant. Sometimes can be something simple as tidying up.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 22:44:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593455</guid> <dc:creator>Trial And Error</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-28T22:44:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593435</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Simple quesion.  I&amp;#039;m looking for personal answers here, rather that interpretations of what other people have written.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The successful template for me is always:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) A way to understand them.&lt;br /&gt;2) Somewhere for them to go once they&amp;#039;ve been understood.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One without the other doesn&amp;#039;t work so well. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most consistently reliable form of this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) Seeing their origin, sustenance and supporting beliefs/assumptions.&lt;br /&gt;2) Seeing their composition as consciousness, letting them play themselves out as consciousness, dissolving back whence they came.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think the second is particularly important because some unwanted feelings, e.g., those arising from injustice and/or hopeless life situation, are endlessly justifiable and not easily reasoned away.... but still not beneficial.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But if you&amp;#039;ve got a good (2), it has a snowball effect because the ease of dissolution makes them less &amp;#034;unwanted&amp;#034;, less to resist, easier to understand, thus less likely to get entrenched in the first place.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 21:43:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593435</guid> <dc:creator>John Wilde</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-28T21:43:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593396</link> <description>I am assuming we are talking about day to day, not specifically during meditation.  I&amp;#039;ve had a number of way through my life.  First one was to ignore unwanted emotions or try to ignore them and try to carry on despite them.  That way didn&amp;#039;t work too well but it may have at least taught me now to resist getting sucked into emotion too much.  Later, I worked with attempting to change them, sort of like jhana surfing.  I found that if I could remember hard on an emotion I wanted instead, if I could remember it clearly enough, I could sort of jump into it and then I would get to it.  Thus anxiety could be shifted to calm confidence, for instance.  As might be suspected, I only worked consciously on trying to change bad to good, but not the reverse!  This tactic has advantages and I feel I learned from it, but I also noticed that unwanted emotions tended to sneak back again in short order.  It was sorta like trying to say &amp;#039;no&amp;#039; to a cat, the minute you aren&amp;#039;t paying attention, the cat is trying to sneak back again and do that thing you told it to stop and now it has become even more determines than before.  At some point, I realized the mood alteration method was not a long term solution and that I had to get at the source of the moods.  But I do think during this time that I started to develop an attitude that I was not stuck with what I had but that I had the ability to work with self and improve things and change things.  It was sort of like a dog training approach, I learned that just as the Dog Whisperer could change an apparently bad dog into a good dog, so might I perhaps also change myself.  Somewhere in this phase, I developed a more proactive approach and started to set aside a subtle victim mentality I had carried for a long time, although it was not until later that I was able to really recognize that shift and how important I think it was.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The primary way I did the next phase was via observing self scripts (the things you tell yourself) as much as I could.  Most people have running commentaries in their heads that describe their interpretation of life and events.  These commentaries include things like judgements on others, daydreams, assumptions on why things happen and why self and others behave and exist as they do.  I started a program of analyzing these scripts and often choosing to change them.  For instance, I might notice I am thinking some guy is a big jerk and hates me.  And I might decide that a better or more accurate assumption might be that this guy is clearly angry about something which may or may not have anything to do with me but that there is no point in letting it concern me at this time.  Or I might notice someone has left their clothes in the dryer and I might say to myself, &amp;#034;I HATE that, it&amp;#039;s my pet peave, I hate it when people leave clothes in the dryer,&amp;#034; but then upon noticing this mental script, might decide instead to realize that really it&amp;#039;s just not a big deal really, I&amp;#039;ll be done in seconds, it&amp;#039;s a nice day out, etc.  Digging deeper, I might even realize that the irritation actually arose out of self judgement that I had waited until the last minute to do my clothes and now was in a big hurry and how I often did that kind of thing and how it was really irresponsible, etc etc..(more scripts that were not useful..)   &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;IMO, a lot of these self programs are taught to us early on by parents and society and have become an internalized habit that we are barely aware of.  My goal was to become much better aware of them and give them a good hard look for usefulness and integrity.  Working on this took a number of years of daily work as there was a lot of bad habit to find and work on and it can be hard to change a life time of habit into a new direction.  Again, like cats, the old habits do tend to sneak back, but not as bad as when I had tried to just force the emotion with jhana surfing, and over time I did notice the new habits taking hold and a different type of momentum taking hold.  My outlook on things began to change and I made many useful insights at times about my own development and things around me. The course of my life was much less of a mystery to me.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a time in my life when I was also able to identify a lot of thought structures that IMO where counterproductive and it&amp;#039;s when I started a businesss, made it successful, and improved my life both financially and socially quite a bit.  I consider it the time when I was able to change the course of my life in a lot more positive direction and it actually was not that long ago, maybe like 4 or 5 years ago when it started.  And although I do not consider myself to have totally finished that process, still more work to do certainly, but seems clearer now after a lot of introspection that much of my problem previously was that I was at war with self, with parts of me wanting different things or pulling in different directions, parts of my telling myself one thing but other parts of myself doing the opposite, and once I had sort of integrated self better, there was much less of that, allowing a more clear direction and less problems and more even keel attitude.  Because I was always creating my own problems, I had just not realized it very well previously.  Outer life automatically corresponded to inner life so the only way to improve outer life is to improve inner life FIRST. Fixating on outer life is actually fixating on symptoms, not causes, I had to fixate more on inner self instead.  I was able to clean up a goodly majority of chaos with the analysis of self script method, a method that is used in some of the more effective forms of psychology as well.   &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Next phase was I noticed that although I had cleaned up most unproductive self scripts, sometimes negative emotion would just come anyway, apparently not connected to anything obvious, no self scripts and not even anything apparent in my outer life.  Like I might notice I felt really anxious, but not know why.  This surprised me, I had assumed when I cleaned up negative scripts, which was a lot of work, that I would then have fixed negative emotion, but I found out apparently it was not quite that simple.  Sometimes I would feel really great for no apparent reason as well.  Obviously one prefers the great and would avoid  the anxiety!  But still there is mystery about the cause of either not being apparent.  These moods would appear to cycle through the basic jhanas, although I didn&amp;#039;t not know about that being a typical cycle until I came here and read about it.  Previously, I thought of them more as random mood swings but once I heard there was a typical cycle, I saw they seemed to conformed to it.  These mood are particularly easy to think of  as &amp;#039;not me&amp;#039; because they seem on the face of it to come from nowhere discernable and I got fairly good at observing them from a distance and not getting sucked in.  Nevertheless, I was not fully satisfied with that situation and not understanding why it was happening.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So next phase was digging deeper for source and understanding.  I spent more effort trying to understand emotions themselves.  I made some new insights into sources way way back in childhood that were sort of preverbal times, and those insights did help.  Sometimes I could feel a sort of electrical release of energy when I figured something out, as if just the understanding alone is enough to help at least some.  Still sometimes finding areas of clinging that I had still managed to keep hidden from self, so working on those.  But also, I spent time just accepting the emotions and allowing them, emersing in them and realizing the good in the bad.  I noticed things like pleasure and pain are similar, happiness and sadness are similar, how anxiety is a form of excitement, etc.  This seemed to take a lot of the strength out of the cycling emotions and the cycles are more subtle now and harder to define.  I noticed that normally I would have a subtle resistance to sadness and anxiety and then I experimented with releasing that resistance and how different that felt and how sadness can shift to happiness sometimes by doing that.  A newer feeling now is one of intense boredom but that one too, seems like I can get out of it by accepting it and kind of learning to enjoy it, kind of hard to explain but it goes back to that accepting/allowing concept we sometimes heard so lately that is more of what I have been working on, simply because it feels right and seems to work.  This is about where I am at now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I used different tactics at different times but personally I do not consider any one tactic to be the be all and end all of tactics.  I think each tactic taught me things and got me to the place where I was ready to do the next one.  And I suspect that the tactics I currently am using would not have been something I would have been able to do if I had not gone through some of my earlier learnings.   Like if someone had told my 18 year old self that pleasure and pain are very similar or to learn how to enjoy your boredom, I do not think I would have been able to understand it much of a useful level.  So I consider all the processes to be different parts of a long and winding path that finally got me to here, where that is!  ;-) &lt;br /&gt;-Eva</description> <pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 21:14:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593396</guid> <dc:creator>Eva M Nie</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-28T21:14:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593254</link> <description>I watch the breath at the belly. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In other words, pure concentration meditation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know you don&amp;#039;t want quotes from other people, but I find it reassuring that studies exist to support this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;focused attention (FA) on breathing movements in the lower abdomen ... the level of oxygenated hemoglobin in the anterior PFC was significantly increased during FA on Tanden breathing, accompanied by a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;reduction in feelings of negative mood&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; compared to before the meditation session&amp;#034; (my emphasis added).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Int J Psychophysiol&lt;/em&gt;. 2011 May; 80(2) : 103-11.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;ncbi&amp;#x2e;nlm&amp;#x2e;nih&amp;#x2e;gov&amp;#x2f;pubmed&amp;#x2f;21333699"&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21333699&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 17:54:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593254</guid> <dc:creator>Derek Cameron</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-28T17:54:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593235</link> <description>This is a good question.  I find that the myriad practices help simply from continuing to do them over years and things get better over the years because the habitual impulses are less strong. &lt;strong&gt;Time in practice is the best for progress.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The practices that made the most difference:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistency&lt;/strong&gt; in awareness (noting, bare awareness, concentration). I still need this because it creates a good &lt;strong&gt;momentum&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Welcoming&lt;/strong&gt; unpleasant thoughts and sensations. You can expect them to arise again and again so you might as well welcome them.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Paying attention to how thoughts feel in the body and &lt;strong&gt;wait&lt;/strong&gt; for them to naturally pass away until the brain resets in equanimity.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;When the mind is wandering and you notice it, you&amp;#039;re already back so there&amp;#039;s no need to add stress by saying &lt;strong&gt;&amp;#034;that shouldn&amp;#039;t happen.&amp;#034;&lt;/strong&gt; (This ties into seeing &lt;strong&gt;deficiency&lt;/strong&gt; below.)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Cognitive therapy. Imagine the benefits of &lt;strong&gt;stretching yourself beyond your habits&lt;/strong&gt;. When those benefits occur, &lt;strong&gt;savor them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let go of examining/analyzing the mindfulness&lt;/strong&gt; because it is more &amp;#034;selfing&amp;#034; and it interrupts the quality of mindfulness. (Very big help.)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Purposefully letting go of clinging to &lt;strong&gt;preferences&lt;/strong&gt; and purposefully pushing against the &lt;strong&gt;cortisol barrier that prevents changes in habits.&lt;/strong&gt; Habits always feel comfortable (even if they are bad.) Rewiring your brain for different habits takes more effort and is the long-run goal. &lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;(what I&amp;#039;m working on now). &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Idleness causes so many problems. &lt;strong&gt;Keeping busy&lt;/strong&gt; is extremely important (what I&amp;#039;m working on now).&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;If there is idleness present it&amp;#039;s better to not do anything (especially supporting old habits) than to continue the old ways.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Watch &lt;strong&gt;intentions&lt;/strong&gt; like a hawk. They are always operating (what I&amp;#039;m working on now).&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not finding deficiency&lt;/strong&gt; in anything (what I&amp;#039;m working on now) - This is a good test to see if you really are intimately with the moment or lost in preferences again. Attitudes like &amp;#034;this shouldn&amp;#039;t happen&amp;#034; ignore reality and cause stress-speedbumps in your experience everytime you do it. It doesn&amp;#039;t mean you don&amp;#039;t try to improve conditions but seeing reality and acting on reality is more important than hopes and wishes.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 17:15:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593235</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-28T17:15:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>How do you, personally, handle unwanted emotional states?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593129</link> <description>Simple quesion.  I&amp;#039;m looking for personal answers here, rather that interpretations of what other people have written.  Also, stories of how you have overcome some persistent emotional negativity in the past would be interesting as well.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:52:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5593129</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-09-26T19:52:34Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 