Emotions in the Spectrum of Living Experience (R007)

• ¶ Polarized Fabric of Life — The Buddha on the Path ↴
• ¶ Acknowledge the Impact — No Reaction Necessary ↴
• ¶ Dynamic Fields of Consciousness — Witnessing vs. Immersion ↴
• ¶ In Conclusion: Necessary Encounters for Our Evolution ↴

So. We exist to experience the full spectrum of life, exposure, experience, reconciliation and consummation, basically. And that includes things like emotions, mental states.

There is the idea that enlightenment is a type of transcendence where all of that ceases to be. If that were so, then all of your negative emotions would vanish — but also all of your positive emotions would vanish.

And again, all of your subtle mental states would vanish. You would no longer be an embodiment of living reality. You would absolve, dissolve and vanish, right? And that sort of enlightenment, ascension, is as good as death. It is terminal. So, some do go for that at the wee end of their lives — but we need not go there while we are still living.

Polarized Fabric of Life — The Buddha on the Path ¶

The very fabric of life is polarized into pleasant and painful, positive and negative. That is simply the way things are. And our problem is simply in our value assertions. We take the positive as desirable. We attach to it. We take the negative as undesirable. We feel a repulsion toward it, right?

Attachment and aversion rooted in our subjective evaluation is the problem, right? And suppose you transcend this tendency to evaluate your mental conditioning — then do all those negative emotions cease to exist? For that matter, do all physical sensations cease to exist? The pleasant and the painful, right?

Suppose I walk down the road and on the roadside, under a tree, there is a Buddha meditating — absorbed in a contemplative trance. His mind and awareness established in the sphere of infinite nothingness or infinite liminality — entirely dissociated from the physical body. Awareness otherwise tuned. Will he be aware if I say naughty things about him, if I slander him? No, he will not — because he is elsewhere.

But suppose, when he returns from his concentrative absorption, from his dimensional trance, I go up to him and I twist his nose. Do you think the Buddha will feel it? Certainly he will, because at that point his consciousness is in a state of living embodiment and that necessitates, that necessitates the full spectrum of positive and negative experiences. All we need to do is let them happen — instead of attaching our evaluations to them.

Acknowledge the Impact — No Reaction Necessary ¶

Suppose in here, I'm recording a video and doggy dog is whining, getting impatient. Am I annoyed? Well it is certainly a disturbance to what I'm trying to do — but if I begin to resent that, I bring about suffering for myself, and I bring about resentment toward an innocent being, acting simply in wake of their emotions, their feelings, their instincts, right?

So I have no need to do that, I simply welcome it as a part of the necessary show, the drama of life. And likewise, if someone slanders me, someone says things that are unpleasant — even I have honestly and sincerely done something, made effort towards something, then it is not recognized, even the very opposite is recognized.

Is there an impact? There is certainly an impact, right? Just as my nose has nerves, pain receptors, just as my tongue has taste receptors, so does my emotional body, the emotional planes of my conscious experience, have receptors. And there is an underlying sense of what would be harmonic, in terms of actuality — and that is infringed upon, so there is a natural reaction, certainly.

Then what do I do about it? There is nothing to do about it. It is simply an experience that comes into being, that I undergo as one of the many polarities and flavors of life. I have no reason to disconnect, dissociate, try to get rid of it. If I do that, then I simply compound the problem — and I increase my suffering.

"I have attached to an idea of not feeling a particular emotion — and I am averse to the texture, the flavor of that emotion being tasted, being experienced." Instead, let me simply taste it in its raw nature, for whatever that it is, and in that, there is innate knowledge, there is innate knowledge, there is innate wisdom — and there is also a resolution.

Something that we try to manipulate tends to rebel. Something that we allow for, acknowledge, and let it be — that thing will be at ease, and it will dissipate of its own accord. So, that is a more wholesome, well-rounded, harmonic approach.

And with that the edgy patterns in your mind, colliding from all directions — and the more you battle them, the more they collide and compound — they begin to ease out. Into a smoother waveform of consciousness, into a more peaceful sphere of consciousness. And, so there — let it all happen.

Dynamic Fields of Consciousness — Witnessing vs. Immersion ¶

We have the concrete manifest emotional states following from our so many interactions. There may be fear — for reason or for no reason — anger, resentment, surprise, joy, affection. All of these come into being, and all of these go.

And likewise there are more subtle states of mind. We have a certain sense of stable self-establishment. We have a sense of flow, flux, adaptive presence. We have a mental state of magnetic dynamic interaction. And we have a mental state of expansion, dispersion — from the broadest to the most concentrated. From the adaptive and fluid, to the angular and catalytic mental states. And they come and go in their season — just as emotions come and go, each in their term and in their turn.

So let that happen. Observe, recall. There is a witness, there is a prime awareness, undifferentiated luminous mind, that is beyond all of these phenomena. Now, I'm not saying you should identify and assert your ego into that luminous field of undifferentiated consciousness suffusing all the phenomenal polarities.

No, but by all means, turn your eyes backwards, upwards, inwards — to the behind of the behind of all things. There you will find an untriggerable, non-reactionary state of consciousness. A certain blank slate, a canvas. And for that canvas, also allow for an infinity of space. To ensure that no impact will ever lead into its assuming perverse formations, as in...

That field itself is what it is. But when the inflows from the world make an impact in our field of awareness, we sometimes fall from the high plane and we incarnate — we embody a lower, more concrete plane, and we become that, rather than remaining the full spectrum. And from there, our problems literally begin to compound.

In Conclusion: Necessary Encounters for Our Evolution ¶

So let us give to God what is God's, and give to the Emperor what is the Emperor's, and give to the Immortals what is unto the Immortals, and so on. All things necessarily unfold on their respective planes of existence as a part of our living experience — and so we evolve.

Do not shy away from the evolution. Things that arrive are necessarily as they must be, in the sum total of the causes and conditions that you carry. Welcome it. Your choices in the moment, and your approach, are the seeds of a new, hopefully more harmonic becoming. And so we are, so we become, continue our journeys in life.

Free of worry. Abiding in peace. Because there is nothing to be rattled of. There is nothing to be triggered by. There is simply what is — and we deal with that, and we live with that, and we are okay. Okay? Concluding there.