Day Seventeen: Emotions minus the inner words

DAY SEVENTEEN
Emotional choosing, sense the feeling, leaving behind the words

Into all lives some rain must fall. Good for the garden. Good for the soil. Good for the soul.

Yesterday we played with the idea of sipping through the straw of sweetness and not the one of bitterness. This was either easy or hard or a little of both.

Let’s give this a little more help.

Later in the book, we will spend lots of time, playing in the fields of Waking Up from Emotional Suffering, via the “Work of Byron Katie.” This is an amazingly simple and powerful tool / gift / offering, sprung forth for humankind’s benefit in 1986.

For now though, today, we are going to play a slightly different game. We are going to notice our emotions.

Notice and name. Unhappy. Sad. Happy. Worried. Afraid.

We are going to notice the sensations involved with whatever emotion we are feeling. Often “feelings” will bring stuff to happening in our chest and stomach and torso area.

We are going to notice those sensations, AND LET GO OF THE WORDS THAT GO ON AND ON ABOUT WHY WE ARE HAVING THE FEELING.

Usually these words are of the “So and so should be different toward me” sort. Fine. That’s the way we suffer. For today, sensing legs all day and our breathing, when emotional “feelings” come up, we are going to:

A. Name them

B. Sense what they bring about

C. Skip the words

D. Sense our legs and gravity, and our breathing and air as the anchor into being alive in the moment, no matter what feeling we are having.

E. This is hard, huge, amazing, give it a try.