For some reason, 2/3 of 's meditation technique in the Cutting Machinery app works perfectly for me, but the third seldom works.
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Alternating between focus and open awareness works perfectly well - I mean, as an exercise - but often there's no emotion to process!
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Which leaves me feeling moderately awkward that I just can't conjure up anything to feel upset about, at least in the moment.
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The only thing that seems to work consistently is to spend a lot of time invoking some particularly horrible thing about the world, but...
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... even then, the whole thing becomes rather contrived, turns into more of an exercise in imagination than processing emotion as such.
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Sounds a bit like several practices in the Tibetan models - which can easily be very contrived and mental masturbation, they can also be very powerful and/or liberating, when the conditions are right.
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I have had massive payoff from meditating on difficult emotions -as they arise-, but I seldom manage to invoce them mid-sitting.
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I'd say I had some lingering neuroticism that released with an awakening. Since then, I've been very emotionally stable. Things don't stick.