Being present …even with difficult emotions

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In meditation …. meet what arises in the mind. First meet it and include it,  whether you like it or should be experiencing it or not. While stepping back, be curious, be more fully conscious. How is this anger, how does it feel? How am I with it? What’s it like when I don’t stiffen against it, lecture it? What’s it like when I don’t believe in the stories it tells me about them and me and how it should be, but distill all that down to one reference point: anger, simmering, burning? Can I see it as a trapped energy that needs some generous handling? Visualize it – what does it look like? Above all prioritize present engagement, feel it in your body, breathe into it. Abandon the idea of getting through it, or that you should be some other way. Then, when I’m not superior or inferior to my anger; when I am neither denying not justifying it – then I’m not overwhelmed and the anger is held with mindfulness. Deprived of further food, it reconnects to bodily vitality. So the mind becomes calm and bright.

Ajahn Sucitto, Spiritual work is Play

2 thoughts on “Being present …even with difficult emotions

  1. Not superior, or inferior to our anger, not superior or inferior to anything.

    The ego is the one judging, filing away in memory bank.

    Thoughtful quote, thank you

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