A question about how to work with emotional energy, particularly fear, and whether one should simultaneously rest in awareness while experiencing difficult sensations.
A question about how to work with emotional energy, particularly fear, and whether one should simultaneously rest in awareness while experiencing difficult sensations.
When emotional energy comes up, like fear, would you recommend experiencing that energy and at the same time straddling that experience with the awareness of your being, the presence aware of itself, while also going into the imprints that are coming up in the sensorial field? I experimented with that in the meditation today and it felt like I was going a little bit back and forth. Do you have a comment on that?
I'm not sure I really understand the second option you describe.
With fear, it really depends on the fear, because there are different levels of fear and different kinds of fear. The approach will be quite different depending on which it is. Some fears are just consequences of beliefs, attachments to certain ideas. In those cases, going into the energy of the emotion of fear might just feed into a loop. But there are other fears where that approach is appropriate, where it is the better way. That kind of fear has less of a narrative around it. It is going to be less of an emotion and more of an energy, a deeper energy versus an emotional energy.
Discerning the type of fear
Learning to discern what is activating matters more than having a general approach to fear. So the first step is to see what that fear is, what the narratives around it are. If it starts to feel like there isn't much of a narrative, then that is the deeper fear.
If it starts to feel like there isn't a narrative, that's the deeper fear?
Yes. If there isn't a narrative, that's the deeper fear.
Today, for instance, in the meditation, my mind thought of engaging with you on this call, and I felt a little nervous. I sat with that and recognized it. I didn't ask "why am I feeling this?" The energy just came up, and I thought, "Okay, that's obviously a fear. I don't need to think about it. I just feel it." I recognized that it was some shadow side of me that feels nervous. So I experienced the sensation, but then I was trying to be aware of my sense of being at the same time. It was interesting, but I wondered: should I just go fully into the emotional energy? Or am I seeing this in the wrong way? Maybe there actually is no way of separating the two, and I'm already straddling both in some sense.
If you turn that into a problem, if having that fear is interpreted as something wrong, then what you describe, going into the being or awareness: what is that for? Is it to remove the fear?
Yes.
So why is the fear a problem?
Well, it's a problem because it's false evidence appearing real. It's an uncomfortable sensation that's trying to stop me from doing something.
Questioning the interpretation
Pause. Let's go step by step. False evidence appearing real. Tell me about that. You said it's trying to stop you from doing something, but that is all interpretation. That is how you are interpreting it.
I guess because there's this uncomfortable sensation that appears, and I could look at it as though it's trying to control me in a certain way. But I guess it also has to do with how I relate to it.
Yes, that's an interpretation. "It's trying to control me," or "control me," or "get me to not do something": that is an interpretation.