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Spirit To The Rescue!
What if the pain that seems to be yours is really not yours? And here I do not mean to belittle personal suffering, but only to offer a larger perspective that may help alleviate it.) The truth if that fear and anger exist outside ourselves. They are not yours or mine, unless we attract them.
Negativity is an invisible parasite. It needs a host to feed off of, and the host is the ego. When you learned as a young child to cling to my toy, my candy, my pleasure, my happiness, at the same time your ego started clinging to the opposite: my scraped knee, my broken doll, my sadness, my pain.
Absorbing an experience as “mine” was how you built your self up, developed a sense of individual identity. As we grew, we learned to see this self in a larger perspective, in the context of humanity. But when tragedy strikes, we often regress to this early state.
To counteract this, we need to find the spirit. For spirit can do one thing that your ego craves very deeply and can’t accomplish on its own. Spirit can help the ego escape that painful trap of I, me, and mine. It is strange but true that the very mechanism that builds the isolated self also wants to escape it.
The ego wants the best for “me,” yet there is another, subtler force that wants the best for all (which ends up best for me, in the end). Allow this force to express itself, and you will discover that the walls of isolation are not as solid as your suffering makes them seem.
Compassion comes from the root words “to suffer with,” and for that reason many people actually fear it. Compassion is one of the most honored and saintly feelings because it marches up to the front lines of suffering and says, “Take me.” In this giving of oneself there is a direct experience of pain, yet in the giving there is love.
Thus compassion has the power to dissolve pain by not avoiding it, but by trusting that love affords the greatest protection. By discovering that there is a reality – love – stronger than any pain, you mount your strongest defense.
Adapted from The Deeper Wound: Recovering the Soul from Fear and Suffering, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2001).
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add your comment »My dear Dixon, perhaps you are misinterpreting what I meant. For instance: if the emotion is rage you can choose to channel it towards the good, for instance in demanding justice, but not control the flood which was set off by something ,perhaps, outside of you. Emotions are reactions, for instance if you're around someone and you can tell that their affect is off;that their emotion does not seem to be an honest response to something and it looks strange?If you can't step back from the feeling and honestly put it where it will do most good then the emotion will dominate the situation and allot of ill can come from it; no attempt to bottle it up, ignore it, or pretend it's not there will make it disappear, in fact like that pressure cooker it will explode or it will leak out of the seams leaving a bad smell. You can't choose to be happy or sad, angry or content, these are responses of your being to what is going on around you and if your being interprets it as threatening or destructive thats how your feelings will follow. Our only choice is to decide how to respond to situations, to remember that whatever is going on we are not that and allow ourselves not to be overwhelmed. Thank you for having me in your prayers, I appreciate it. Same here.
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UMA - your comment are as contradictory as many od Deepak's. When the thinking directs the flood, you ARE choosing your emotions. Many are not changing their emotions because of a lack of knowledge or practice.
You are still in my prayers -- blessings!
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Dixon: as many have found to their disappointment emotions cannot be ruled by the will. We cannot choose to FEEL one way or another but only in acknowledging the feelings for what they are may we choose how to act and react to them. If we pretend to ourselves that we feel differently than we do, successfully enough that we believe our own lies, we create the same effect as damming up a river after a storm or leaving the valves closed on a pressure cooker.If there are no leaks in the dam and the cooker the explosion will be devastating, if the valves are open the contents will leak out, totally visible and off-putting to everyone else and unknown to the self. These are the situations where we meet someone and can't quite tell why we don't like him, the nastiness that he is denying is leaking out. Even as intellect is the air of the psyche, touching everything and making connections, and will is the fire devouring everything in it's path, emotions are fluid; they nourish the banks through which they flow and must be acknowledged and put in perspective to do their proper work without causing harm.You might say that the will digs the channel and the intellect shows where it should go and when a great storm is brewing caused by sadness and fear for any reason it would be wise to channel those flood-waters where the most good will be done. Otherwise the fight/flight mechanism, created by terror of whatever the psyche perceives as devastating, has us paralyzed in it's jaws.
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In my philosophy of life to which I live, teachings have been put forth from Divine intervention that all folks are not WIRED UP the same way. In the community of those that share my philosophy some are:
Messengers, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, gifts of healings, helps, governments, divine interpretations of messages from the Divine receiving the putting forth as an oracle for all to understand. I Corinthians 12: 27------31
As Deepak was clear in Stating some folks bear the burdens of others as being filled and consumed with empathy for others well being.
In my philosophy we all share:
We revere the living God whom we serve.
We respect all men in our Creators Creation of mankind.
We fear no man for the presents of our God is in us to protect us at all times in all ways.
We fear our God for we believe lies often that retards our work for others benefit.
Dbaker007@stx.rr.com
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Fear results from a lack of love. Anger is a secondary emotion which means there is at least one other emotion under it. The underlying emotion is usually fear, sometimes sadness. Contrary to what Deepak says today, fear and anger come from INSIDE us. We choose our emotions, no one can cause us to feel any certain way.
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To know that the host negativity feeds from is ego: so obvious and such a relief to hear at the same time. I pray to release all the pettiness and be free from suffering; all pleasure is waiting for me to put down this burden. A concept is a handle for thoughts, ideas,thanks Deepak for this one in this moment.
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