Get your feelings out!

Not so fast!   If you feel like murdering someone, kicking your dog, running from challenge, eating til you can't breathe....do you do it?

No.  right?  you don't, right?  

Feelings are not facts, but they make our beliefs seem like facts. When you meditate, you start to notice that feelings trigger judgments and commands to action, and then those actions intensity the emotion and solidify the judgment. Stuck in an endless and exhausting loop.  Acting out this stuff is not getting out anything.  It just makes a mess that you have to clean up.

So, what do we do with our feelings?  I recommend you begin by experiencing the emotion as sensation before you obey the thought that is produced by the emotion.   Let's say, you are thinking: He's a jerk.  If you tell the jerk 'the truth,' he might actually beat you up, or worse, prove you wrong.   But if you can create space between sensation and thought, your whole universe will change.   You are no longer dependent on changing him (or murdering him) in order to feel better.   

What are you feeling now? Don't try to change it.  Encourage your breath to move through your body like a sensor.  You may notice different sensations throughout your body.  Relate to the tension, the blood flow, the movement of the breath with curiosity and compassion.  Don't go to war with it.  You won't win.  If you partner with your feelings, they will change on their own.

As you become more intimate with your body, pay special attention to your gut.  Using it as your center, you can incorporate information from your brain, your heart, your feet, and so on.   In the heat of emotion, our focus becomes narrow and our judgement is poort.  As we incorporate more information, we shift into a broader focus and can make wise decisions about actions.  There may be something that you can do about this jerk after all.   Maybe you can get him to hear what you need.   Maybe you can get out of the situation.  And, if you can take no action, you can take care of yourself.