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Can We Have a Choice in How Our Emotions Play Out?

Notes & Transcript

SUNDAY 9, MAY 2021 – CAN WE HAVE A CHOICE IN HOW OUR EMOTIONS PLAY OUT?

Good morning everyone, hello, welcome to our Sunday meditation session.

Just to let you know the format, if I haven’t met you before, first we go straight into our guided meditation, then I’ll give a short talk on our topic of the week, and then after that we go into our discussion question and answer, just a chance to share our own experience of meditation, share our experience of what’s happened for us in this week. So please find a comfortable position for this meditation. You can be either seated or lying down, as you prefer. The main thing is that your spine is naturally straight so if you’re seated, be seated upright, be at attention but not rigid, and if you’re lying down, you want to be lying pretty much flat in the savasana, if you know that posture in yoga,  pretty much flat, with a small cushion behind your neck where your spine can be straight. So please find a comfortable position and let’s go into our meditation.

(Bell rings)

So we begin our meditation by allowing our awareness to descend into the body, right down to this space which is non-conceptual, non-verbal. And in a mode of simply witnessing, we allow our awareness to fill the entire space of the body, but not thinking about the body or visualising the body, but simply being aware of it, what it is like to be embodied from the inside out. As you do attend to the body, when you come across any areas of tightness, tension, invite yourself to relax and release that tension. Insofar as you are comfortable, it should be easy for you to remain still for this meditation, except for the gentle movements of the breath.

Give yourself permission, for now, to do nothing. To embrace this moment of stillness, in which there is nothing at all that needs to be done, other than staying here, relatively still, watching the sensations in the body. And I invite you to release all control of the breathing, let it flow, effortlessly, sit in such a way that the belly can fully expand so that you don’t hold any breath in reserve. Allow the belly to be soft and with every out-breath, relax more and more from your core in the body and let the shoulders drop, and let the muscles of the face become relaxed, especially the forehead, eyebrows, round the eyes and the jaw. Like a mountain that cannot be moved, rest in stillness, watching the sensations come and go, in the body and take special note of those sensations, those movements, tingling vibrations, all of the sensations, very obvious and very subtle, that seem to be associated with the rhythmic flow of the in and the out-breath. You might notice it, not just in the belly and in the chest and in the nostrils where we feel the flow of the air itself, but you might notice subtle energies in the arms, the legs, even into the head, that correlate with the in and the out-flow of the breath. 

Spend some time watching these sensations with an easy, relaxed, spacious mind and keep deepening that sense of relaxation, moment to moment, relaxing more, as we give ourselves permission to just embrace this moment of stillness with nothing to do except for watching the breath. And as you rest here in simplicity watching the breath, place a small amount of attention on what else the mind or the body is feeling. Notice perhaps your own discomfort in simply being present doing nothing. Notice if the mind would rather run off towards the future to-do list, planning. Or notice if the mind would busy itself going over the past while thinking, and each time you notice, acknowledge the pull of movement of distraction and then with the loving patience of a compassionate elder, give your mind permission to rest. Help the mind settle, be at peace, be still, by gently guiding it towards awareness of the breath, not forcing our attention, not tightening, clenching down, but again and again, gently guiding our awareness back to the breath. Immerse yourself in the sensation of the breathing as you let the mind rest and allow the mind to feel spacious, open and at ease and seek the comfort, the joy, of no longer needing to do, the enjoyment of simply being.

This not-doing includes no longer fighting against the movements of the mind or the rising thoughts. Allow these two to simply be. Chase nothing. Distraction will arise but there’s nothing to do. Notice, acknowledge, let go, and you’ll find yourself again in the spaciousness of presence with the breath. Feel into the preciousness of this moment, of this relative quiet, relative stillness. Recognise its beauty with your whole body, the freedom of just resting in stillness, observing the motions of the breath and if any feeling or thoughts of restlessness, boredom arise, give yourself permission to stay right here. There’s nothing that needs to be done. Nowhere to go. Acknowledge that this calm, quiet is always here with you. It is the true nature of your mind. You get lost and carried away in this world but we can always come back to this relative stillness, calm and quiet.

And as we do bring this meditation to a close, make that determination to bring more calm and stillness into your daily life, whether it’s through a regular practice, or the odd ten, twenty seconds of coming back to the breath that you sprinkle about your day. 

(Bell rings)

I’m feeling very grateful and inspired by the way we all come together every week to practise together, share together. I think it’s so important that we do take this time to look within, to make the most of this opportunity to become very well, in body and in mind, to cultivate our mental wellbeing, our emotional health. Because this pandemic, these restrictions, although it feels like, you know, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, now it seems to be becoming easier, it has shown us very clearly something that’s always been the truth. And that is that we cannot control the external world. The world is by and large, out of our control, other people are out of our control. 

And for many of us, that’s why we suffer day to day, because things just keep going wrong. It seems to be one thing after another. We have to experience the things we don’t like, perhaps deal with people that we don’t get along with. We want nice things, but we can’t always have them. The things we do have we hold onto so dearly, but they break, fall apart, or we grow bored or tired of them. 

Perhaps we’re worried about what’s going to happen, stressed about things outside of us. And so it seems, well it can seem by and large like life is happening to us. You know, life, the world, the universe seems to be doing this to us, imposing pain on us.

And so, you know, we distract ourselves from the hurt, the stress, the boredom that we feel inside, you know, distraction. But it kind of perpetuates the problem, distracting ourselves. It doesn’t get to the root cause. And it can kind of make it worse. You just sort of suppress it and hide it and it doesn’t really get to the root of the issue. And we’re unable to be really still and quiet, be content. But here together you know at least once a week, we come together to collectively cultivate stillness and calm. We come to recognise that suffering isn’t imposed on us by the universe, by life. But we actually have some role to play in it and that’s quite liberating. Yes, this pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional (if that is the saying. I can’t remember now, it seems like it is). 

Things can, things do go wrong in life, don’t they, but how it plays out for us in life is actually up to us. It can be a source of really great difficulty, hurt. Or with some inner strength that we can cultivate through meditation, living mindfully, we can actually turn it into a constructive experience. In the contemplative and psychological study of emotions, they’ve devised this emotional episode timeline, this model of how our emotions play out, and it comprises of, essentially, 5 parts. There’s the ‘before the episode’, the ‘trigger for the emotional episode’, the sort of ‘physical and psychological changes’, and then the ‘behaviour that comes out’. And then the ‘post-episode’, the fifth, so there’s some sort of trigger event, you know, for example, somebody says something that hurts us. That leads to the physical, the psychological changes, perhaps some knot in the stomach, perhaps some adrenaline-increased heart rate. The rapid-thinking negative cycle. And then that leads to behaviour, for example, shouting at someone, slamming a door. And if we haven’t cultivated much self awareness, some inner strength, then nine times out of ten, that behaviour comes out as an automatic reaction and we have no say in it. And this process from, you know, ‘trigger’ to ‘physical/mental changes’ to ‘behaviour’ just happens like that, in an instant. But if we’re quite aware of our emotions, if we’re quite aware of our mind, we’re really in touch with a calmer state of mind, we take the time to look at our emotions. Then we can actually be quite aware of our hot triggers and quite aware of any bubbling of emotion in the body and mind. We can notice an increased heart rate, sweaty palms,  we can notice when we’ve sort of started a negative thinking loop, aware of that emotion in the body and mind, aware of the increased heart rate, aware of the negative thinking as it happens. And then ‘automatic reaction’ can actually be changed to a response, a response that we’ve calculated, thought about carefully.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and Holocaust survivor, he said that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So the point of me saying this today is a reminder that one, difficulties will come in life. Difficulties do happen, but they are not the primary cause of our suffering. It’s internally from ‘trigger’ onwards that that difficulty becomes suffering. Two, we do have an influence there. In that process, we can cultivate choice in how it turns out. We have habits, yes. We have triggers, yes, but these are not set in stone. The way they play out are not set in stone, and we can cultivate and emotional resilience. We can cultivate new responses. And as I always say, this is not something to just believe, but that’s something that we can find out for ourselves. 

Transcript by: Laura Maisey

david

David is an experienced Buddhist contemplative and meditation guide who has studied and taught internationally for several years. He is the Co-Founder of Samadhi and a qualified mindfulness teacher, Mental Health First Aider, and an active member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity. His teaching style is clear and practical, and his warm and humorous approach makes him a popular mindfulness teacher. In his own practise and teachings, David focusses on the core themes of Early Buddhism and emphasises the practices of Shamatha (meditative quiescence), and its union with Vipassana on the Four Applications of Mindfulness and the Four Immeasurables – which presents a direct path leading to the realisation of our deepest nature and the potentials of consciousness, and closely follows how the Buddha himself attained enlightenment. He considers himself to be the fortunate student of many teachers, including his root lama, Lama Alan Wallace.

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david

david

David is an experienced Buddhist contemplative and meditation guide who has studied and taught internationally for several years. He is the Co-Founder of Samadhi and a qualified mindfulness teacher, Mental Health First Aider, and an active member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity. His teaching style is clear and practical, and his warm and humorous approach makes him a popular mindfulness teacher. In his own practise and teachings, David focusses on the core themes of Early Buddhism and emphasises the practices of Shamatha (meditative quiescence), and its union with Vipassana on the Four Applications of Mindfulness and the Four Immeasurables – which presents a direct path leading to the realisation of our deepest nature and the potentials of consciousness, and closely follows how the Buddha himself attained enlightenment. He considers himself to be the fortunate student of many teachers, including his root lama, Lama Alan Wallace.

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