Day Eleven, Toward Heaven, 2, emotions without words

Emotions can crowd in and “take over” our lives. Another way toward freedom and love is to separate out the sensation of an emotion and the words/ chatter/ obsessive story that usually accompanies.

Yesterday we gave ourselves a real treat, and begin to experience and “play” with emotions as actions we can vary in length, and intensity. As actions we can perhaps even see as just one choice among many (someone gives us a hard time? Try out angry. Try out curious. Try out amused. Try out loving.)


Today, we are going to come back to the core of this book: unity with nature and with now.

As creatures on the Earth, we are always in some Now.

As emotional creatures, we sometimes have “feelings” and emotions. These feelings always have a here and now set of sensations: something happens in our breathing, something happens at various places in our body.

Almost always we have words around the motion. “He should have given my more respect.” “That was a mean thing to do.” “This isn’t fair.” “So and so is so selfish.” “How can they do this to me.”

These words distract us from the present. These words tend to be of a sort that we go over and over them, and often try to talk to/ complain to someone else and get them to agree with our words, agree that we are “right” and someone else is “wrong.” But even without complaining, we can go over and over with these words.

And today the game is to keep the sensations, get into them with as much awareness and presence as possible, and to let the words slide.

Just sense how the emotions and feelings are resonating as here and now experience. Be curious and attentive to this here and now experience. Don’t dilute it with any words.

See what happens when you do that.