04 January 2006

Emotions

Emotions and moods can be utilized in the work to train the heart to connect and focus. For example the emotion that accompanies the freeing and opening out of your energy by heart (your own or others) is joy. So, to free your energy simply induce a feeling of joy – be joyful. It's the difference between being a victim of your moods & feelings or the master of them. Think of it as putting on a new costume (the word induce is related to the Latin induere which means to put on clothes). Of course to change the way you feel (are) just like that isn't so easy, especially if for whatever reason you're riddled with worry or anger or doubt (fear). What it requires firstly is the realization that most of what you appear to be is not the real you at all. The real you is the essential sparkle deep down (in the heart) that appears in glints and glimmers regularly but fitfully. When you're working well and correctly this sparkle ignites and informs your energy which flows unimpeded through and into whatever you are doing. Everything else (thoughts, ideas, opinions, habits, assumptions, etc.), which we lump together in the term self, tend to constrain or redirect this process. The self always thinks it knows best. The hegemony of self. It's like a strict parent directing a child – over-riding the child's heart with alien and unnatural impositions. Eventually, the child's heart becomes so plastered over that she loses touch with it and becomes instead her conditioning, or her resentful reaction to it. The job of the teacher is to break through this shell and reconnect the student to their heart. It is the most difficult job on earth, for both the teacher and the student. The problem is that the cultural environment we have created for ourselves is generally of the self and conspires in every way possible (especially through distraction and over-stimulation of the mind and senses) to prevent our heart succeeding in its revolutionary overthrow of its overbearing oppressor, even to the point of convincing the heart that it should naturally take second place to the ego. The outcome of this is that a stupendous effort is required to even begin to burst through. Courage. Cor (heart) and rage. The word gives a clear indication of the intensity and fury with which the student must redirect their energies, and where that energy must come from, if they wish to realize their humanity.

Emotional strength is the attaining of some degree of mastery over them. Not letting them run away with themselves or with you (indulgence), understanding how they layer, transform and oscillate (yin/yang – realizing that they are all in essence the same – just intensity of feeling – and so readily transformable), and putting them to use for you in the work. They are essential because without them you are not operating from heart. The heart feels – deeply. It laughs, it weeps. It can be gentle or fierce. It can love and it can hate. But above all it is vulnerable. It is very easy to knock and hurt an open heart. In a way you could say that this is the problem with the human race – that so much seeming success is attendant upon a closed, hard and even empty heart. The only healthy way around this is to train as a warrior – to always head into the fray with no possibility of retreat. When forwards is natural to you then your heart is safe and you will eventually accumulate enough energy and power to slip through heart to deeper realms. The training begins with encouraging heart, which is naturally unselfish and connective, to leap into the activity. To do things with heart. Forgetting self. For this joy is essential.

3 comments

Karen Puerta and Tim Walker said...

To feel with the heart is to live in heaven and hell for some. My son is appalled at each incident of animal cruelty that he comes across when we visit his home country, Spain. Generally the Spanish love children but put little worth on animals. We recently came across some half starving dogs that were caged. The animal suffering is everywhere and I try to explain to him that with the odd exception (a plate of food, supporting animal sancturies) there's little or nothing that he can do to help each individual animal and that he is better at trying to campaign to improve the overall situation and learn to accept what he cannot change. However, I don't think he can do that. I don't want him to lose that sense of feeling but I don't want him to go through life suffering because he has no way of dealing with the cruelty of this world. Do you have a view on helping a young person who feels very strongly to get through life without losing that feeling and yet not be damaged by the world.

taiji heartwork said...

Hi Tim

I suspect you simply need to encourage some positive action from him. That way his heart can become more active and confident and will be less likely to be knocked back by suffering, either his own or that of others.

What I would suggest is for him to become vegetarian or vegan - I get sickened by people who claim to love animals and yet still eat them - and for him to keep and care for pets. He has to begin to realize that to alleviate suffering in others will require him to suffer. So to make his pets comfortable he will have to be prepared to tend and care for them in ways he may find tedious and unpleasant: muck out their cages, walk the dog, spend valuable pocket money on their food, and above all handle them (TOUCH). If he is not prepared for this then his feelings may simply be sentimental. If he is prepared then he will begin to develop the power to make a difference when he comes across suffering in his daily life. He has to begin to understand that what is important is not the suffering or its alleviation, but the connexion.



I hate giving advice. It always sounds so damned reasonable. A cheap morality.

Karen Puerta and Tim Walker said...
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