This too shall pass

We spend alot of time and energy in life trying to avoid feeling whatever it is we are afraid to feel. Be it pain, love, abandonment, or a million other things, we utilize a vast array of tactics to avoid feeling them.

Not being present and not being grounded are the two most common. By getting into that non-present state of wishful thinking, dream-like, I'll be anywhere but here thinking, we carefully avoid feeling anything that is actually happening to us.

We can spend entire lives building up walls, creating protective devices, living in some other realm that has nothing to do with reality, all to escape feeling pain - and yet how painful is the existence we have built!?!

This too shall pass. Feelings are just feelings. They may hurt, but a feeling won't do anything further, and we are at liberty to let it go at any moment. It is only when we become attached to the feeling that it creates pain, only when we resist and resist and resist feeling it that it becomes monumentally painful.

The thing is - avoiding feeling doesn't really make it go away. It really will pass - here is a remedy:
1) Sit with it.
2) Clear your mind of judgment about it
3) Feel it
4) Express yourself if you feel need: cry, write, scream, laugh - whatever helps you express
5) Let it go. If it helps visualize holding it in your hand like a bird and releasing it into the light. Or write on a piece of paper and in an appropriate setting/container, burn it as a ceremony of release.

Using a technique like this is useful - it allows you to feel the feeling and let it go, and get back to living, get back to what's happening now, and doing what you need to do. Your happiness depends on your ability to allow yourself to stay pesent, feel, and move on.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop