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Following Your Present Emotions
Everything you think and feel reflects who you are. If you think and feel from a superficial level of awareness, that is who you are. To dive deeper into yourself and, hopefully, to get to that place where you are love, compassion, trust, and truth, you have to follow the path of your present responses.
Someone who feels unloved can still find love in its purest form, but he will have to work through the layers of resistance that block the feeling of pure love. Your present emotions reflect the present state of your nervous system with all its past imprints. Whenever you have an experience, these imprints enter into your response, which means that most of your reactions are echoes from the past. You do not really live in the present.
However, at least you are reacting in the present, and that is where the search for your true self begins. Your emotions are the most present-centered thing you have. An emotion is a thought linked to a sensation. The thought is usually about the past or the future, but the sensation is in the present.
Your mind quickly links sensations with thoughts, but when we were infants, our first experiences and emotions were much closer to physical sensations. To feel an emotion fully and completely, to experience it and then release it, is to be in the present, the only moment that never ages.
Stripped to the basics, emotions arouse only two sensations – pain and pleasure. We all want to avoid pain and pursue pleasure; therefore, all the complicated emotional states we find ourselves in are the result of not being able to obey those basic drives.
There is no purpose in suffering except as a guide to your truth. In and of itself, pain has no worth except as a signal pull you out of pain. Coming to the moment by putting your attention on the pain allows you to release the pain as soon as it occurs. This release occurs naturally – it is what the body wants to do – and attention is the healing power that triggers it.
Adapted from Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press, 1998).
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47 comments
add your comment »Janine, no way are you alone in that feeling. I am completely in agreement. It amazes me that others don't like exercise. I just started going to the gym after a 2 yr gap because of illness and I can feel the difference after only two weeks. I feel great today because I went last night. Hiking, yoga and the gym are my favorites. I forgot until you said that how much I love hiking. I will have to go for one this weekend! Thanks for startling that memory out of me!
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Janeen I believe you are completely right in this. Exercise gets us out of our minds into our bodies where the consciousness is rooted in the present. It grounds us and thus stops all the second guessing, the "would- have, could-have, should -have" traps for our energy. The present is our home page from which all possibilities proceed. Our capacity for abstract thought comes with this challenge; to stay centered here in this moment because it is this unique ability that leaves us prey for neurosis.
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I feel alone in my opinion that exercise greatly improves emotional response.
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Okay.Sorry if I offended.
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Okay. Sorry if I offended.
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Kat I agree with you; it is your tone and attitude that rubs me the wrong way and that I respond to . If you feel that you have to whip yourself to forward what are indeed most of our aims you should know that your manner towards yourself leaks out towards everyone else and it feels as if you are presumptuously castigating us in general without knowing anything about us in particular. Rayed it is wonderful hearing your voice here,pouring light and stilling the troubled waters of our minds and communication. If I was an otter I would be blissfully rolling in that healing balm. What I was trying to say in perhaps a roundabout way is that this world is a raw gaping wound and has always been so on that level. Atrocity is and ingrained condition at this moment in space and it is only by living the healing light that it does spread out from us touching all consciousness.
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No, Uma, I do not feel contempt towards New age philosophy, only towards those who peddle it to the needy for profit.
There is NO reason, in a country as rich as this one, why ANYONE should be living from paycheck to paycheck.
Rayed Kury, Good to hear from you! What has and is happening to the Palestinians is beyond belief. I might point out that being angry about injustice is not the same as being prejudice and hateful.
The rich and well born have no interest in New Age philosophy only in as much as it serves their interests. Cash will always be king with them. And it serves them very well by turning people inward who would do better by taking action against the injustices of the system.
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All in all, the moneyed interests have us convinced through the different forms of media, that they are watching out for OUR best interests when in fact, they are not. The war on terror is a perfect example. 9/11 was an attack at the infrastructure of our government, not against the regular citizens shopping in the market as happens in the East.
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Uma, no I haven't sacrificed anyone of my family. But instead of watching them grow up lacking basic needs because of a system that rewards the greedy, we ought to be talking about solutions. Instead of allowing the owning class to continue to create conflicts among the lower classes by 1)shipping jobs overseas,2) cutting social programs,3) Funding only parts of education that benefit THEIR interests,4) throwing people in jail for small infractions for ridiculously long sentences,5) using our tax money to bail out crooked banks.......The list goes on!!
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Each of us is like a drop of water and the world is the ocean. We all react when the ocean produces a big wave and crashes onto the shore. It's such a big catastrophe, we blame God or others, yet we don't realize that we are a part of that wave and in order to calm the waters, we must calm ourselves. Anger and rage only breed more thunderous, crashing waves. I was there I know. It is self defeating and can cause disease and suffering in your own soul. A little doubt and contemplation is fine, but there has to be balance. That is the key to a lasting happiness. Try to see the big picture and it will make more sense.
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