16 January 2013

Emotions: Strong, Negative and Positive--a Path to God


Negative Emotions, Powerful Emotions
Back in 1986 I wrote a Master’s Thesis entitled, “Enlightenment as a Defense Against Psychological Pain.”  I proposed that many spiritual practices, such as mantra and many forms of meditation were conscious techniques used to escape pain or mood disorders, such as depression.
Freud and other ego psychologists spoke about conscious and unconscious ego defenses such as repression, denial, projection, splitting, projective identification, sublimation, etc., to avoid conscious awareness of the libidinal impulses of the Id, or the crushing guilt and criticisms of the superego. Through these defense mechanisms, the conscious awareness was more peaceful as the ego moderated and modulated both the urges to love, have endless sex, or to destroy obstacles or people that got in the way, and the internalized controller and punisher, the internalized representative of societal repression and convention.
But I spoke of spirituality in many forms as being conscious mechanisms of finding peace and rest from these internal wars, and they were a mere parody of a “true spirituality” where a person sought their own core Self.
Instead, people found peace in teachings of peace.  People found peace by staying in meditation on the various voids or states of emptiness. People lived by concepts of positive thinking, lofty teachings, glad tidings, concepts of being a good person, etc.
Or they used mantra and japa to crowd out all thinking and emotions.  They tried mediation when sexual or murderous thoughts and impulses became too strong.
Eventually, either the methods failed and the person abandoned them, or perhaps they died to their emotional selves, and became sort of deadened. They lost their humanity and became permanent glad-sayers who found everything OK and just as it should be.  Everyone had the perfect teacher or practice for them.  There were no good and bad teachers, it was all relative.  The world and life was unfolding as it should.  All is preordained, no need to think or worry about anything.  Thus, they died to their humanity by means of a concept of peacekeeping.
THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!
When one practices “real” spirituality long enough, has wrestled with all of his or her demons, felt deeply and dealt with death, loss of loved ones, deep jealousy, deep frustration, rage, hatred, as well as love so deep that one becomes lost in ecstatic bliss, then one finds that ALL INTENSE EMOTIONS, once they are no longer feared or resisted, convert into moving bliss then ecstasy.
All those negative emotions when faced, accepted, and even loved, turn into life, love and ecstasy!
But to know this, to feel this, to own this truth you need to be able to experience everything, from the deepest humiliation and expose, to the most intense, ecstatic love of someone you must not love, of forbidden sexual impulses, such as the son for the mother, or daughter for the father.
One of the most powerful keys or methods is awakening ones sexuality.  This allows you to blossom as a human, to love and lust whether consummated or not. There is a rawness in deep romantic love and lust that causes the shakti to flow most powerfully, and which can awaken the Self from her imposed coma of mundane life, conventions and concepts.
To do these things, to awaken to the totality of yourself, requires complete openness, complete fearlessness of exposure before God or man. You life and actions are an open book with no fear of humiliation, retribution, condemnation, or loss of loved ones.
It is so incredible.  You become as strong as a mountain, more fearless than Achilles, more loving than Krishna or Christ, more blessed than Mary, more honored than Buddha, for you cannot be cut by words, hurt by exposure, tempted by money or the concept of peace.
When you have reached this state you no longer run from pain as does everyone else, but you run towards it, for those strong negative and positive emotions are the suppressed and feared you.  When you regain these lost elements of self, the buried, personal self, that integration explodes in you the power to access the True Self, the I Am, the Godhead!
No matter how easily or often you can access samadhis, or dip into Turiya via abiding in the I Am, until you have brought your unwashed, unclean, dishonest, rageful, jealous and extremely needy buried self into the open, and then, going further, showing it to the world, you will not be able to stay there.  As long as you have any fear of God or any man or woman seeing you other than your idea of how you think you should be, your tasting of the Self will be brief.
However, repeated tasting of the Self, the immense source of the I Am, aids immeasurably in giving you the courage and strength to own, appreciate and love everything that arises within you, and to equally prize, love and appreciate those who cause intense emotions in us, both negative and positive, because they are giving you the opportunity to experience God in the form of shakti.
All emotions lead to bliss, to ecstasy, to God if you let them.  Therefore run towards emotional pain, not from it!

27 comments:

  1. It depends if there is a "me" that runs to emotions. Only if there is no "me" you can washed and pushed by emotions.

    Kathy

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  2. "No matter how easily or often you can access samadhis, or dip into Turiya via abiding in the I Am, until you have brought your unwashed, unclean, dishonest, rageful, jealous and extremely needy buried self into the open, and then, going further, showing it to the world, you will not be able to stay there. As long as you have any fear of God or any man or woman seeing you other than your idea of how you think you should be, your tasting of the Self will be brief."

    What a fantastic humility and beautiful strong love for truth in that teaching !
    It makes so much difference with usual positive teachings .
    Yesterday i was seeing a movie called "Sunshine" from Ralph Fiennes, which speaks about all that buried or hided bad and enormous feelings and how they exploded sometimes in special situations .
    At a moment somebody says : we are afraid to watch clearly things because of by this way, to be seen as clearly by others
    Thank you Edj , you are incredible , maybe a little crazy too or completely but so much life in your words !!!
    With you i understand that absolute vulnerability and love are the key for freedom and real spirituality . It is what your life looks like !
    sylviane

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  3. This article completely resonates with a prescription I read for dealing with panic states & agoraphobia. The author(who himself suffered from the condition) didn't want to share the treatment he came up since he only wanted to profit from the remedy by selling a book on the subject(and so one had to find about it elsewhere)but he said that in the midst of the panic, one has to embrace it fully, encourage it to express itself fully AND recognize that it's just a temporary bodily sensation of fear and NOT any perceived feeling about one's imminent death.

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  4. Sometimes something in the gut grips and blocks from emotions going freely through... it is thoughtless gripping though.. thus it is difficult to untie

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    1. I agree Arvydas, but somehow it begins to untie itself and the gut begins to soften.

      Lila

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  5. Great post Edji, Thank you and very inspiring. My personal experience & learning is that emotions unresolved & incomplete cause constant hangover of low energy in ourselves. Handling those emotions directly or with help specific meditations makes the core spiritual practice effective.

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  6. What an incredible post!

    What I love most about your teaching is the depth and range of your experience with the human condition. I've always wondered if a psychologist were to analyze me and my infatuation with spirituality and think it was just a defense mechanism or a mind made game I'm playing with myself, yet through it, I've had the most real, raw, intense positive and negative emotional states through it. When everything felt "right", it was like magic...when everything felt wrong, I wondered if I had just made it all up. I sought spiritual teachings as a defense mechanism against the "bad" states. I haven't been doing that much as of late, but even the little tiny effort of trying to escape can be seen whenever I occasionally run into posts like this.

    It makes me feel a little less like I'm delusional reading through this, and it also makes me want to feel the sorrow and embarrassment I feel from others possibly viewing me as delusional.

    Thank you for your words, and your presence.

    -Kamran

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  7. Wonderful post, Ed.

    It was a courageous step for me to just be willing to 'love' another and so much of the intense emotions that arose initially kept me entirely focused on the object. But now, I am feeling more and more that these emotions are mine/me...and the object is also beginning to take on a sense of being mine/me at the same time.

    See, one does not realize this sense of 'oneness' at the beginning which is why it takes a lot of courage to let ones self become totally devoted and surrendered to another. What fool, perceiving him/herself to be a separate 'self' would allow such a thing to happen? And yet, deep within us, it's what we are all crying for...union with something. This is why I declare that we do not choose this. It is chosen for us...by us...and is not necessarily a path for the masses.

    The ones who are called to it will not be able to resist it no matter what they do. The ones who are not called to it will not be able to understand it no matter how hard they try.


    We are conditioned to pour out our love on another but only so far as we are getting back what we want from them.

    Who can continue to 'give' for the sake of the Love itself, and for no other reason? Who can be in Love with the Loving itself? It's a consistent fire and will consume you.

    With Great Love,

    Lila

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  8. What a load of garbage.

    Noone has to go through all these things if that one knows that the 'I' goes through these things. It is not the Self.

    Why spend time going through all this when you can turn within and know the truth about yourself immediately.

    You're going around in circles not knowing where to turn because you have not seen or experienced THAT. When you do then all of this searching will stop immediately.

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    1. Dear anonymous,

      Your comments gave me a good laugh, thank you. The whole image of garbage came to my mind as I read those words. Even garbage is teaming with life, organisms that break it down and IF managed properly can be converted to compost and other useful products that we have yet to tap the potential of because we simply bury it in land fills much the way we bury our fears and anxieties. Burying it does not make it go away, only intelligence can find a way and love can lead the way.

      Who is serching anyway?

      What is it that you are actually afraid of anononmous?

      Love, Mike

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    2. Anonymous.........

      You'd be right on the mark if indeed one simply had such a mind altering Awakening that after turning within and finding the truth of oneself that that then put a swift end to the machinations of the separate "I". Yet, how likely is that to happen? Has it happened with you?

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    3. This is a typical response of the neo advaitins. Their instant enlightenments last as long as their prior searches. No separate self. Sounds as clinical as text book philosophy, and notice, it is anonymous.

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    4. Great Mike if thats the way you feel. There's no burying when you realize the truth for yourself. All that goes with this realization. Since one understands that all of this occurs to the I and not to the Self and thus there is nothing to bury and nothing to get rid of.
      But as long as the fears and anxieties are still very real to you then you have to use spiritual methods to be free of them. You must remember also that you cannot solve a problem from the level of the problem. You must rise above it.
      Surrender to the Self, self inquiry and many methods of stilling the mind will do it with ease, all these fears and anxieties will dissolve into nothingness and these experiences(with perseverance) will show that they never existed as you thought they did.

      Anonymous stop thinking of "how likely it is to happen" and you will be surprised when you practice spiritual methods without any attachment you may be surprised how quick and easy it happens.

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    5. Arvydas Searching to me is reading of book after book, going from teacher to teacher, going from path to path, an ongoing cycle that never stops. It is very very difficult to find the Self this way.

      Once the practices of stilling the mind are learned then it is up to the student to start to go within using the methods that work best for them to find the Self.

      Until the search is over and one has confidence to practice spiritual methods the searcher disappears. This is where the spiritual path really begins.
      The realization comes or one understands that no amount of reading and studying will benefit them when one realizes that all of this searching must be given up eventually, like all other attachments.

      So ask yourself: Who is there who searches? Or to whom does the searcher come to? To me? Who is me? Who am I? Follow the I and your searching will be over.

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    6. You are telling me about practicing, about searcher disappearance, about asking myself 'who am I', but could you answer my question? Simply.

      Or are we not meeting anymore because there is no 'you'? only a program running these words and instructions from books... that would be too funny.

      I ask, because when Ed speaks, i feel power behind his words, it is tangible i don't know how to express it, there are times when some kind of power comes and visits, it shows feelings behind words and leave, but in your posts i don't feel it... i am not saying that you haven't realized Self or anything like this, leave that aside, Self has nothing to do with it, or has it? anyway, i feel some kind of wall and many other things... this deep question persists 'why he is here? what he is searching? maybe afraid of something?', but it is not my business so i won't ask it.

      For example, i am here because i like Eds teachings and fortunately (i think) i haven't looked around for other teachers besides getting acquainted with some dead teachers books, some yoga practices, pranayama, energy healing, since i am relatively young in this domain and in this world, i explored quite a bit. Though all the guidance regarding Freedom, which to me is different than just seeing 'I' as non existent entity, comes from Ed in various forms i could never imagine possible on this planet... i really get easily stuck in the 'spiritual powers' plane... it is marvelous, like looking at the sky with many clouds, then suddenly it stops, becomes violet and goes back 2 minutes... or astral world, did you see demons? Oh my god... they exist for real. Or visions, where Ed comes and does funny things to destroy attachments.... this is sometimes painful...
      Yes.. yes... many will say "deluded", "lost", "fast use 'who am i' while its not too late", but to me this is all part of the path and i am kinda inclusive, you know, since Self is expressing itself as all this, why not? I accept! When i fully realize Self, i will too stop using word 'I' and be afraid of it, because others may think that i am not realized if i use it too many times...
      I learned, that usually people, to my amazement, come to spirituality out of pain, but to me pain and suffering started actually when i unconsciously came to spirituality and not before... this is quite amazing... you know all this process of shattering beliefs is painful... many buried feelings suddenly get up... is kinda painful... 'stepping' over EGO is VERY painful... well to me, but i somehow feel this is general too... :)))))

      i tried to run into the 'world back' from all this pain and realizations of false, set a goal, try to drink, but it is not for me truly... even when drunk i feel conscious very much and cannot and won't forget anymore that i cannot run anywhere, this is who i am, world, spirituality and me actually and factually are one substance, so surrendering makes it perfect, accepting that sometimes we are thrust on the path and while we try to figure out what has happened it's already 5 years past...
      Do you know how i came 'on the path'? I was walking to school and suddenly something hit my brains very strongly, not physicaly, but it felt physical too and in the myriads of thoughts an electric strict voice arose "who thinks these thoughts?" and then everything started... falling apart... yet coming together. I do not know which anymore :DD
      Anyway, good luck to you my friend. The journey is the goal. HA HA HA... *puts on hat, and walks away like a cool guy in a movie*

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    7. *oh, i forgot to light up my cigarette, all cool guys smokes a cigarette when walking away*

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    8. Dear anonymous,

      One aspect I have little interest in is to believe that I am right about anything. I deeply love those souls who turn inward. That is the gateway to the self. No disrespect was intended in my earlier post. The magnitude of the self discovery is all, and yet, due to the beauty of Edji's teaching re: shakti and love, it is also clear that there is more, so much more. The evidence of this is there as I read Lila's and Silviane's comments as just two beautiful examples, and so many others discovering the same that contribute to these pages.

      It does not feel like searching. It feels more to me like a surrender and a watching. I deeply respect all spiritual endeavor and also see there is no one doing anything.

      Most of the time I feel like I am on the verge of a non-stop orgasm that has nothing to do with the physical body. I feel terribly responsible for all of the suffering in the world, and yet recognize that I am nothing. I feel as if everything is as it should be and yet, not always so. Even when I travel in a car I feel it is an illusion because I am always here, no matter where I appear to be travelling. It is as if the screen of the world is moving past, not the one witnessing. Then I also see that there is nothing but the Self. Nothing else is real. And then I see that there is included in that a separate self- consciousness. and Edji has been helping me to allow paying attention to that as well.

      Much of this I attribute to Edji's teaching.

      My personality has not gone away either. I am still an opinionated asshole just watching and very happy.

      Love and gratiude,

      Mike

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    9. I know what anonymous is afraid of, exposing his or her identity. Come on, put a name behind this load of crock that you just dumped out on us.

      Ed, you are fired as soon as we get the name of that wise one referred to as 'anonymous.'

      Lila

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  9. I wish to share with you a beautiful experience which happened to me this morning : i was meditating as usual on the Edj 's presence and suddenly all my body inside and my heart was embraced with his marvellous sweetness of
    love ! So i am discovering if you love sincerely somebody as your guru he will love you also , it is not necessary to live near him !!! The important thing is to stay near him by the heart .
    sylviane

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    1. Wonderful Sylviane. It is all a matter of surrender and love for some.

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    2. Beautiful Slyviane. Thanks for sharing.


      Love,

      Lila

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  10. Wonderful Edj ,"YOU" made this surrender possible !
    thank you for your answer !!!
    I was staying near different gurus during ten years and my heart was becoming frozen , with just a little thin streak in it because i practised what is saying "the Shin Jin Mei" : no choice and no reject , no love and no not love etc ... feeling love of the self only near gurus and when i was alone again that feeling was disappearing after some days.

    What i was feeling with you on your blog and with satsangs was different: it was human love with a so delicious sweetness and lightness in that love!!! i was also very touched by bajhans and your love for cats ! And also you were showing us all these great feelings , great sufferings going through you , not trying to dissimulate it like the usual gurus i knew to make him secure for their students and not disturb them . Now i have understood you are your teachings living !
    When you stop your satsangs i was feeling sick , with great sadness inside , feeling lost again ...
    But as you was saying in your teaching i didn't block , allowing these bad feelings to go across me and spread out . And after about ten days , i was feeling a strong flow of energy getting up in the back and a great feeling of love embracing my heart !!! After several hours he was going away and changed in that sweet and light love as your presence !
    So i know your teaching is working and now i am really less afraid by rough feelings !
    Edj , you look like a marvellous torrent which is carrying with him and changing it in infinite love all what life is pouring in his stream .
    What happiness to know you !
    much love
    sylviane


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  11. I'm drawn to you and repelled from you at the same time Edji.

    Kathy

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  12. Thanks Lila for your posts too !
    i like very much read you . You are not afraid to expose your vulnerability and i feel much sincerity in your words !
    It is a great pleasure to see all that beautiful sangha awaking with the Edj's book and sharing on this blog about his teaching .
    see you soon to satsang !!!
    much love
    sylviane

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