Dealing with negative thoughts and emotions

When we are in emotional turmoil thoughts can go around and around in our head. They become so persistent that we cannot sleep or concentrate on any other job. The emotions that accompany them threaten to overwhelm us. In the worst times we become quite dysfunctional and mentally unwell.

For example, perhaps we lost a job or broke up with our partner. Beliefs about ourselves that have their origins in childhood may arise, such as "I am not good enough", "there is something wrong with me", "I am stupid", or "I am unlovable". And with each of these beliefs comes wave after wave of emotion, such as sadness, anger, shame and guilt. The emotion reinforces the belief and the belief reinforces the emotion.

Not surprisingly we find these emotions and beliefs uncomfortable and we regard them as negative, and something to get rid of. So we resist them, try to push them away, suppress them. This might work for awhile, until something else happens, and those old beliefs are arising again and along with them come all of those "negative" emotions.

We want to know how can we deal with these negative thoughts and emotions and be rid of them forever?

Properly understood, all experiences are signposts to guide us back to our inherent wholeness. We take such emotions and beliefs to be "negative" only when we misunderstand their role and lack the skills to welcome them and receive their messages. 

When we truly welcome and observe all emotional experiences, all thoughts and beliefs, we cease to mistakenly identify with them and learn to recognise that they truly are just passing through. 

In so much as I am sad in this moment I can also be happy. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can observe my emotions pass through, and I can enquire into them, discover a belief that is accompanying them, explore the belief, discover all the messages they are bringing me. I can also invoke and welcome the opposite belief and emotion, so I know that none of it is permanent.

Be drawn to the practices and wisdom teachings that help you to learn to meet and greet whatever arises. Learn to be curious about the felt sense in the body of any emotion and to watch it pass through. Learn to recognise the temporary nature of all movements of the mind, and how to remain at ease in every situation. Recognise that no thought or emotion is truly a negative experience, they just are, and they all have a valuable message that will show you the way home to your inherent wholeness.

The practices we are given in iRest®, whether as Yoga Nidra or meditation, establish a safe place to practice and develop our skills in meeting all that arises. It nurtures us to be open and welcoming and always at ease in every situation. These are ancient teachings that cross many cultures as the poem by Rumi below attests. But in iRest they are packaged to be accessible to us in our modern world.

Translation by Coleman Barks. Image from www.yearofjoys.com

How to catch a monkey

• Take a coconut and drill a hole in it just big enough for a monkey's open hand to fit through.
• Tie the coconut down to the ground
• Put something inside the coconut that the monkey will find irresistible, such as peanuts or banana
• Wait

The monkey will soon come along and reach inside the coconut to grab the delight inside. But with his fist firmly around the treat he is unable to draw his hand back out. The monkey is most reluctant to let go of the treat and remains trapped!

This simple method of catching the monkey is a parable for our own suffering. Our attachment keeps us trapped in the condition of suffering.  Just as the monkey would only need to let go of the bait to be free, all we need to do is to release our attachment.

The Buddha gave the three causes of suffering to be attachment, anger and ignorance.

Patanjali, who wrote the "Yoga Sutras" lists five causes: ignorance (of our true nature); our ego, which defines us as many things, but blinds us to our true self; attachment, like the monkey; aversion or resistance, which is the flip side of attachment; and, fear of death. 

We are advised by the sages to still the mind. I suspect that this is even harder for modern people in the information age to do than it was before the endless barrage of electronically conveyed visual sand mental stimulation. 

I have noticed that when people come to meditation courses quietening the mind is often one of their motivations, yet when people sign up for asana classes relaxation, flexibility, strength and fitness are more often the reasons given. It doesn't matter really. 

If we learn the techniques of meditation we learn techniques to still the mind. It will however be challenging.

In a movement based asana practice, we may first engage in the outward sensations of the body, and the mind may be challenged initially to connect with the body, to discover a sense of its place in space. We may be confronted by limitations of the body. Yet the more we practice, the more we familiarise with the poses of yoga, the more we begin to turn inward, and the practice becomes a moving meditation. In the end we do begin to open to ourselves, to the possibility of discovering our true nature.