Judging our Feelings

THE MYTH OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

We are born into the world with a brain that first operates from instinct and feeling to promote survival during a relatively long vulnerable period, as the young child's body and mind develop together.  Young children unconsciously adopt thoughts and attitudes about their emotions in order to adapt to their environments and situations.  In many ways the mind sets preferences for some feeling states being more desirable (positive) than others, seeking behaviors (by self and others) that are somehow "rewarding" in this respect.  Although necessary in childhood, this system of labeling and reactively chasing or avoiding feeling states becomes subconsciously incorporated into our personal identities and carried forward into adolescence and adulthood.  It is then that we experience their limiting effects through work and relationship challenges and a wide variety of unfulfilling behaviors and life choices.  

So how can we unlearn the preferences and aversions adopted long ago?  By establishing a regular practice of compassionately sensing into the body and welcoming each element that appears, we can begin to observe the complex interplay of the mind's thoughts and judgments with bodily feeling and sensation. Grounded in the security of present time reality it is possible to unravel deep seated entanglements that trap, limit, deny, or control the flow of  life energy within us.  Courageously acknowledging sources of early childhood longing or fear that attached to ways of feeling or not feeling opens a doorway to deep self acceptance, as the innocence of childhood survival strategies are recognized and appreciated.  From this perspective, feelings now can be sensed freshly and, free of limiting judgment, their energy allowed to arise, move through the body, and pass.