Profound Thought for the Day

"Emotions are just emotions. They are not you, they are not facts, and you can just let them go...

"The first part, "Emotions are just emotions," may seem obvious, yet this is not how most of us live. We live in a culture that mainly deals with emotions on either end of a broad spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, we deny our emotions and the effect they have on our rational thinking processes, on our health or on our experience of life. On the other end, we deify our emotions, investing way too much importance on the supposed messages that they are here to deliver and what they mean about who we are.

"There are grains of truth in the perspectives of both acting rationally and of not denying our emotions. However, most of us lose ourselves, and our ability to choose, in each perspective. Depending on how our rational mind is interpreting our sensory input in the moment, we can often swing wildly between the two.

"Most of us tend to identify with our emotions as though they are who we are... We talk about "being angry" as opposed to "feeling angry." It is our identificationwith feelings that often makes it more difficult than it needs to be to let them go. We often cling to our identification with a feeling because we think, "It is who I am." We believe, "I feel, therefore I am."

"...I recommend that you examine this idea for yourself. See whether it is more accurate to notice that emotions come and go, while who you truly are always remains.

"... When you find yourself lost in identification with an emotion, you can ask yourself, "Am I this feeling, or am I just having a feeling?" This simple question can help you separate yourself from a false identification. ...

"As we explore the statement further, we come to: "They are not facts." Have you ever been sure of what you thought was a fact -- such as that someone you knew liked you -- only to find the opposite was true? Or have you ever been sure that something was about to go wrong only to have it go very right? These are just two examples of how we relate to the input that we get from our feelings. We live in a world of assumptions, thinking we are relating to facts. In some ways, our feelings are just stories that we have made up about a particular set of sensations. These stories often, if not always, come after the feeling has already arisen in our consciousness. We then use them to explain why we feel the way we feel.

"Treating emotions like facts can be a problem, because we often don't realize that we have made an assumption until it is too late. By then we have made what we thought was a rational decision, only to find out later that it was just based on an automatic emotional reaction.

"The final part of the statement focuses on what this whole book is about: 'You can let them go.' The more you accept and employ your natural ability to release [as in easing your grip on emotions or having them release their grip on you -- CG], the more every part of your experience of life will be transformed."

[Quoted from pages 102-104 The Sedona Method by Hale Dwoskin]