Ever noticed how we categorise good and bad? Someone might say, “I’m doing really well right now” because they are identifying with ‘good’ emotions they are experiencing, such as happiness and joy. Then you might hear them say “I’m not doing so good” when they feel ‘bad’ ones, such as sadness or fear. These emotions are beautiful when we allow them to pass through us gently like a stream. But an attachment to the ‘good’ often creates tension when we inevitably experience the ‘bad’.
I can be caught off guard by unpleasant emotions. Maybe I’ve been really committed to my practice and everything has been going ‘smoothly’ when suddenly old familiar feelings surface with more power than ever before. They smother all of my ‘good’ work and I feel like I am back at square one.
That is the experience of emotions when we decide some are bad or wrong. Certain emotions, such as desire, can be all encompassing and take over our beings like an addiction. To ignore them, or try to push them away, only makes them come back fiercer.
Recently I noticed some old familiar feelings of desire arising. I wanted to act upon my desires, because I was identifying with them. In my mind, I was still the desirer, rather than the observer of the desires. It’s a subtle difference. At first, I felt pangs in my belly urging me to engage, to follow my mind down the rich path of fantasy about what would happen if I got everything I wanted. Instead, I got real close and personal with these thoughts and feelings. I watched my mind as it did its little dance for me. I wrote some poems that made me feel shy. I lay on the floor and wriggled around. I talked to my friends and my partner about the way I was feeling. In the past, I’d decided these feelings were bad and shameful. This time I smiled at all of my thoughts and desires. I gently held them in full awareness, with love.
Awareness is essential in noticing that even the ‘good’ thoughts can easily lead you down a path to suffering, masquerading themselves as pleasure or ambition. Try treating your thoughts and emotions equally for a change. Make friends with them and allow them to be, because they aren’t going anywhere.
This essay will be featured in The Desire Issue of Ordinary Zine. I am so excited to share it, Ella and I have been working very hard on getting it ready. It will be available to buy on the Autumn Equinox via our website
This really resonates. It takes a lot of conscious compassion to see the good/bad 'tightrope' not as something to be broken, but to be observed. It's fun sometimes, watching your own mental gymnastics as a third party!