All these emotions are based on feeling a certain way in reaction to life. And we all have experienced these emotions at one time or another. And I bet we can even re experience these feelings just by bringing up the story of the past experience. But here is the key; the emotion is felt inside us. It comes from within. Life is happening out there. It continues to happen within the nature of life. I could have another teaching on the nature of life but let me give you a perfect example; it is snowing again in Minnesota in April, everyone is mad because that have had enough. Nature happens, you only thing you can change about the fact that it is snowing in April is your attitude. So the mind reacts to something happening that is out there and we feel this anguish inside us. Let’s go back to the good news I was talking about earlier: Woo hoo, we have the ability and the power to control what is happening inside our mind. And we will get to that, but lets first talk about where we want to go from these emotions felt in our body. We want to move that energy to a feeling state. What is a feeling state?

 

A feeling state is a state of pure awareness and non-compulsory consciousness. It comes from a balanced state of consciousness that originates within our intuitive center. It evolves by just being; not by thinking or doing. It comes when we can quiet the mind long enough (through mindfulness or meditation, for example) to a state of pure conscious awareness. When I was totally in a deep listening presence with my brother before he passed from his physical body, I had a feeling state of bliss, ananda; santosha. I wasn’t reacting to the fact that he was dying, I moved into the immediate present moment with him in his state of being, for a very long time. It was beautiful!

 

What is emotionality? Emotionality is letting your emotions drive your thoughts, words, and actions. As stated earlier, emotions are inside you, not out there. Emotions are your reaction to something happening out there. But it’s not what’s going out there that is the problem, it is what is happening in your mind that cause’s problems. Injustices will always be happening in the world. If you really want to do something about them then do some critical thinking on how you can help, but getting emotional will not let you see what is really happening in order to do your critical thinking. You will just be reacting to your inner state of consciousness. And everyone’s inner state of consciousness is different. No wonder most people disagree! We are emoting from our own past experiences and karma. So what can you do: Neutralize your emotions before you go out into the world. Stop the momentum of the hurt, diffuse the anger, and be responsible for your reactions about life experiences. Aham Brahmasmi- you are the creator of your life.

 

The following are Kriya Yoga techniques to neutralize emotions and move up to a feeling state of pure balanced awareness:

• In the moment when you realize you are feeling some big emotions, take a moment to do some 6:3:6 breathing. This technique is described in the techniques section of the website but we also do this practice in our SR meetings. Ground down through your feet and/or your sit bones. This brings you into the present moment and this in itself can neutralize and stop the momentum of an emotion. You could also do a few Kriya breaths to mystically and symbolically move inward and upward.

• Some traumatic or deep seated emotions stay with us until we find the time to sit and let them dissolve. This is called processing an emotion. Santosha Recovery gives us many practices to process our emotions. Our Loving Awareness Practice is exactly intended to help you feel comfortable in your body with all its sorrows, joys, fears and sensations. There are some guided Loving Awareness Practices on the SR website. Just click on the link above. To go deeper than the guided Loving Awareness Practices: Sit comfortably with an upright spine, become quiet and inward by doing a few 6:3:6 Breaths, and then do a few Kriya Breaths. From this quieted mind, move your awareness to where you feel the emotion. All emotions are felt in the body. Move right into that space where you feel the emotion, see if you can drop the story behind the emotion and become intimate with the feeling it is creating in your body. Eventually if you can really drop the story line and just sit with attentive loving awareness with the feeling in your body, the emotion will dissolve. If it doesn’t, it may be that you are not giving yourself that full Loving Awareness. Drop the story, be with yourself as if you were listening gently and compassionately to a close friend.

• As you move into that attentive awareness, where there is no longer a compulsory force of the emotion, you move upward to your Ajna chakra or your intuitive center. From here see thought forms come in and out of your awareness as if you were watching clouds pass by in the sky. Don’t cause anything to happen. Let yourself be. Let yourself be in this state of ‘its ok, I am me, the world around me is just being itself and I am pure awareness. I am a feeling state of compassion and bliss.

• Some emotions are still within us today from past experiences, trauma or from past lifetimes. You may not even remember them or know that they are there for sure. For example when you are around a certain person, your throat starts to hurt and react. Use the same method. Breathe, ground and then move to the sensation in the body and listen. The experience already happened, you survived the experience! The emotion is what is left over. Can you neutralize it? Can you bring it to your place of attentive loving self awareness?

 

A story of my personal experience with this method:

When I was about eight years old, I found out that my brother had told his girlfriend that I was fat, I was so hurt that my brother would do that. And I was also so embarrassed because I wanted his girlfriend to like me, and to fit in. And of course because I did not believe in myself I felt shame because I was a bit chubby. So all those emotions that I did not process became a part of my personality of being shy, resentful, not willing to be vulnerable with others, and seeing myself as Kevin’s fat sister. And then one day 40 years later (yes, 40 years later), that memory of the event came up while doing Hatha Yoga. At this point I was beginning to evolve spiritually, so I sat on the cushion (meditation cushion) and felt the hurt in my heart. Then I dropped the story and moved up beyond the heart of hurt into the intuitive center (we move into the intuitive center when we are quiet and just being) and a huge wave of compassion came. First compassion as an emotion, compassion for my brother that he so desperately needed to make fun of everyone else to make himself feel better, then an emotion of compassion for myself for being so hurt all those years by someone I really loved, but then something else happened, I moved into a feeling state of compassion for all of it! For everybody! For the animals, for the trees, for every moment! No conditions, no stories, no logic, no reason, just compassion, then Love. And in that moment I felt totally content and happy. In that instant, the doing was done and the underneath feeling, or the inner essence, was a feeling state of compassion for the predicaments that we all get ourselves in. I also felt extremely re-leaved that this heavy burden of hurt and shame was made aware of and lifted and I could forgive my brother and myself and all that needed to be forgiven. We as humanity, are here on this earth plane to experience, to heal and to find unconditional love and contentment. But we must have the strong foundation and courage to be able to sit with ourselves in the hurt and the pain long enough to see the light of the experience, so that we can grow into our most authentic selves. There is a fabulous Forgiveness Ritual that is also on the website to help find forgiveness for others and yourself. What may come up for you can surprise you. Keep in mind that these surprises are being carried around in your psyche and your body if they have not been processed and forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift that is capable of bringing your consciousness to one of contentment in this very lifetime.

 

Feeling States rather than emotion: Maybe this balanced state of consciousness seems kind of boring; no drama, nothing to feed our sense of ego. And, we live in an emotional world. Yes, we live in a highly emotional world that is creating more and more emotionality and inharmonious karma. Actually that is putting it mildly. Humanity is reactionary and almost explosive right now. Nobody was taught in school how to process and live consciously with their emotional feelings! That may be changing now and I sure hope it is. But mostly we are taught and programmed to live in our logical mind and ego mind. We have lost our ability to move into and move from our intuitive mind. Intuition as shared by my teacher Goswami Kriyananda is “the innate ability in everyone to perceive truth directly- not by reason, logic or analysis, but by simple knowing within from one’s own self, and from the heart of whatever one is trying to understand. Intuition is the inner ability to see behind the outer forms of things to their inner essence.” Without this intuition we respond from the lens our past experiences and from our emotions of this past experience. With intuition and balanced state or awareness we respond to life from compassion and a deep sense of spiritual maturity, also called wisdom.

 

I am not saying that emotions are bad. I am not saying to be indifferent.

But what I am suggesting is that if we are moving through life with an underlying feeling state of compassion and understanding which is a balanced state of consciousness, then we are apt to emote less. When we emote less, we can see the true nature of life from an aware state or panoramic view rather than through the eyes of a limited compulsive force and from the lens of our past experiences. Then from this balanced state, you can go out and meet the world with happiness, contentedness and bliss!! But if you go out and meet the world when you are emoting, you are going to do and say a bunch of regretful things. Another way to put it: If you go out into the world emoting, you will be producing more and more negative karma. You will be adding more regretful experiences into your chakras. You will be adding more stories to your list of negative past experiences. Remember attitude is all in this force field of karma.

 

What if the emotion is a positive emotion such as extreme joy from watching the sun set in the evenings? It is a blessing to be able to enjoy the beauty of the world. But try not to let it become so extreme that when you move and do not have access to the sunsets anymore you find yourself depressed. Or I have actually heard of people cutting down trees so that they can see the sunset every night from their back patio. This is a true story!! People do that!! You can have eternal bliss while watching a sunset, if you take it upward to the intuitive center and it becomes a feeling state maybe of genuine gratitude for the divine beauty of creation! That is Ananda! Spiritual Bliss!! When you have Ananda, you can be happy and blissful even on a cloudy day!

 

Emotions are happening all the time. These emotions are happening and felt in the lower 4 chakras and relate to our connection with the material world or the world in which we live. And that is perfect because we are incarnated and living in this material world at this time to experience, to connect, to mature spiritually and to find happiness. But this material world is not happy, it is not compassionate and kind, it is not based on unconditional love, and guess what, it is not content! It really is reactive! Why is there so much inharmonious and tough karma around us? Because everyone is emoting. A quote from my teacher Goswami Kriyananda: “Emotion is a compulsive force of the mind. It is mind-energy that forces one to think or do something. However, the word feeling refers to a state of awareness in which there is only awareness. It has no compulsion. Feeling is pure awareness. It is awareness without any compulsive force within or behind it.” So begin to see your emotions as your egos way of expressing your karma and your past experiences. When you see this then you can heal your experiences of the past and soften your karma. And you can then move from your ego self to your spiritual being and find that feeling state of happiness and santosha. You will then be doing what you came here to do; heal, love and evolve. You can be a spiritual being living in this world of ego. It just takes practice and self-awareness. Aham Brahmasmi: You are the creator of your life. My deepest Shanti on your path!! Let the hurt be healed. Let the karma be dissolved!!

What has been said: Free yourself from emotionality and you free yourself from karma. When you stop reacting to life, then those around don't have to react also. Free yourself and free others. Om shanti. In our SR weekly meeting we came up with what we called Game Changer Skills. These skills can help us become aware of our feelings as emotions that are happening on the inside of us but met with an external object as Thich Nhat Hanh would state. They allow us to see that we are hurt or angry so that we are able to neutralize them before they are acted upon. Game Changer Skills stop the momentum of our stories and emotions so that we can act consciously. You can use any or all of these techniques to bring yourself into the present moment where healing can take place. :) But always remember that deep healing comes from processing the emotion. Which is described in the content of this teaching.
 

Here are some Game Changer Skills:

• Resurrection Breath (exhale 2 quick breaths over left shoulder)

• Breathe (6:3:6)

• 3 Breath Meditation (3 mindful breaths with pauses in between the breaths)

• Ground (feel your feet on the floor)

• Kriya Rotation (move inward and upward)

• Mantra (lift your vibration to a healing vibration, Om Shanti, Shanti)

• ​

These techniques are called skills because as a skill they give us the ability to use our knowledge and practices effectively and readily when we most need them. And the more we use these skills, the more they become part of our personality rather and day to day coping skills.

 

If you have a particular skill that helps bring you into a state of the present moment of awareness rather than emoting and reacting, please share with the SR Sangha or on FB.

 

Shanti my fellow seekers, Shanti, Shanti, Shantih!