I had an epiphany the other morning, or moved to the next level or something.
I was sort of irritated for some reason — lack of sleep, hungry, didn’t want to work, I’m not sure what. But while meditating I realized and truly grokked that experiencing any emotion is a choice. So you can just decide to not be angry!
And the other thing I realized is that you sort of want to experience the emotion when you’re feeling it, like it has a certain inertia. It’s hard to describe, but I felt like I was isolating the sensation of being irritated and just stopped it because I decided I didn’t want to be irritated anymore! It was pretty weird.
This sounds banal to me — I feel as if I’ve heard this idea before; bur how many times when you feel a certain way do you decide to continue feeling that emotion? I mean really. Typically the feeling just keeps going and you let it ride you until it peters out.
How many times when you are upset do you stop and think, “I don’t want to be upset anymore and I am going to try to not feel upset anymore”, and then you actually get off your ass and try? Alternately, how many times when you’re happy have you decided to try to not be happy? See, it just kind of happens to you automatically.
I’m still figuring this out, but it really was startling.
Try it!
Try to pay attention to the next time you have a strong emotion. Look at that emotion when it happens and see if you can make a conscious decision to keep feeling that or not.
Good luck!
