By Adam Oakley
People can confuse emotional wellness with no longer feeling any emotion.
Emotional wellness is not to do with what emotions are present, it is the response or resistance or acceptance of them that makes the difference.
If we feel angry, hateful, resentful, fearful or anything else “negative”, we can often condemn ourselves for it, taking the emotion to be a measure of who we are, where we are, how well we may be doing on a spiritual or self-improvement path.
But don’t be fooled by society’s interpretations or stories around emotions. They are energy movements, they arise by themselves, and they fall by themselves.
Rather than trying to work them out, describe them, analyse or fix them, let them be there without demanding that they be some other way. Often our objection to our own feelings is what creates the suffering, and makes the emotions seem bigger than they really are.
Once you no longer have a problem with waves of emotions, the fluctuations, which may at first feel more intense as they are released from the body/mind, start to ease out. There is a stillness surrounding the emotions, already allowing them to be. The stillness is life, and as the inner emotions and thoughts are no longer resisted, the attention can merge back in with this life-force, without any strenuous or personal effort.
Our strongest or most painful emotions or sensations can be gateways into the depth of what we really are. If they are continually resisted, continually given great importance with the intention of removing or fixing them, then you will feel trapped within them. At a certain point we realise that the sensations of life, the emotions and thoughts that arise, are arising before we even know about them, before we decide that they be there or not. When this is seen, it is easier to no longer resist them. They are here before you can even object to them, and the objections only make them feel more solid and tangible.
“Undisturbed: A Guide To Emotional Wellness” reminds you that there is no one perfect way to feel. It points again at the child-like nature of experience, that we need not strive for an idea of a perfect experience from day to day. All this does is make us resist any pain or latent resistance that arises, leading to us feeling trapped within our minds and bodies.
Don’t have an ideal of how to feel. Don’t assume that it is wrong to have a busy mind, tight feelings in the body or what we may call uncomfortable emotions. Allow them the space that they already have. Let them be there, without poking at them to see if they will leave yet.
This book also looks into more specific emotions, our reasoning behind them, and how the emotions that we may believe are helping us, are actually no longer serving us.
In a world that preaches happiness, or in a marketplace that is selling you joy, we can feel as if there is simply something wrong if any kind of lower-frequency emotion flows through us. If we do not restrict the energy, if we do not fight it, it can act as a purifier, taking away our small, suffering sense of self, and taking our attention back into the universal field of life, where all useful action and intelligence lives.
And then, without trying to attain it, a sense of peace, and indeed joy, are found to be in the place we were always looking away from.
Let yourself feel how you feel. Then see how you feel!
All information about Adam and his book “Undisturbed: A Guide To Emotional Wellness” can be found on his website, here: http://www.innerpeacenow.com/Undisturbed-A-Guide-To-Emotional-Wellness.html