Pick an Emotion!

There are many times that I found myself with anger arisen over a particular unwanted thing happening. I guess the body has some energy that needs to be released and it is often very unskillful. With a little bit of wisdom, I can see the anger, but I notice my ego will quickly find a new angle to access a different emotion all based on the original incident. Feeling like an unlocked backdoor, it is at first... enticing. At least now after seeing this happen again and again, my awareness is slowly stopping these forays into sideline emotions. I am now trying to ease the original displeasure with noting what is happening and with the awareness of breath and where it might take me... which is always away from peace. This might help— with a monkey mind you can flip between now and future outcome (i.e. often more trouble than the original complaint). I can usually access humor when I repeat to myself, Pick an emotion, and just run with it. Seeing it spinning out of control, trying to hold tight to your original emotion and how fast it can move quickly in the opposite direction of peace. At times, I have to beeline to the cushion, to just sit and observe... if at home. I certainly do not carry a cushion with the words embroidered on it, In Case of Anger, but at least this will give you all some idea of my intention.

I know intellectually why anger can be easily accessed for me, but outlining why would only put this further from your own experiences. It can be used with sadness and depression, if this is what you have frequent flier miles in. Those two often appear when one has anger towards yourself. Whatever emotion, just watch what you are doing, even if you can’t stop it immediately… the awareness of how much further you cast peace out of your range will be enlightening.    

Do Waves of Emotion Define your Existence?

I am in a strange place, mostly internally, and can exist all day without anyone speaking to me. You might think it my fault, but you don't have a speech disability which makes it hard to even speak my own tongue. Most of the time it is fine, but every so often some emotion burps out me in the form of goosebumps, and desire for recognition, I guess.  For instance, I could feel the prayers and wishes when I took these photos. I am not disconnected. Not sure if I create it out of existential validation or just habit of conditioned learned responses from childhood. 


Certainly, where I am now, only makes it more pronounced. Going “home” will not make it right, so that is not an option, as long as this where love is. If I at anytime do meditation I can easily relax out of with the real physical awareness that there is no “I” to please. In fact those waves subside quickly, amazingly so, even not being quenched and it all feels like a natural process. If I, in fact, can bring this into daily existence, knowing that I can never really arrange life to suit my emotions…I will arrive totally into my being(or be present). Talking to myself, “Let’s Evolve,” by not needing to bend my day around my emotions….eating, exercising, doing, not doing, ignoring, avoiding, etc. Dive in and examine each emotion as it appears and I think I will be surprised that there is nothing to them, besides natural bodily occurrences.

“Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not. As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also believe that in their absence we must be miserable. Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs. Hence the importance of convincing oneself that one need not be prodded into happiness; that, on the contrary, pleasure is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have and do things to be happy, when in reality it is just the opposite. But why talk of happiness at all? You do not think of happiness except when you are unhappy. A man who says "Now I am happy" is between two sorrows, past and future. This happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain. Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious. It is best expressed negatively as: "there is nothing wrong with me, I have nothing to worry about".” 

— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

What is Your Trigger?

After I saw this talk, “Photographing the Hidden Story” it brought up several questions in my mind. As a photographer can you access other peoples emotion, really? Sure, in some cases, but I feel that if the said audience has never had a emotion that involved someone that they are not personally connected to before…how will they now? At what point does one access heart felt emotion to apply to an unrelated person? Do we have to play emotional music to emphasize? We all share the range of emotions of human existence, and sometimes totally unrelated to the specific image or incidence we can reassign deep pain we have felt in the past to them. What is your trigger? Are we just a bundle of stored emotions waiting to be unleashed? I know that sometimes in my meditations I can find where I take a worry and turn into displeasure or disgust in another human being...stopping this trigger right in motion. What do you access? Loneliness, a breakup,or perhaps a death. Share with other readers below. You can post anonymously.