Mi'sen

I don't trust people who pretend to not get angry or sad or whatever else - but I also have tremendous trust in the fact that all emotional experience, no matter how positive/negative, pleasant/painful,can be experienced as the vibrant dance of spaciousness....

....which means absolutely any emotional experience can be taken as the path: and present a remarkable opportunity to look at our conditioned way of experiencing and conceptualising emotions. Seeing how we attach to, repress, act out & distort the emotional energies of the body.

Most of the time, practicing with a little anger can be good fun. I've learnt however, that when it gets very intense the smart thing is to completely stop, sit down, and practice. Because if you act it out or repress it, the cost can be high.

expanding on what I said yesterday, here's a small thread from @euvieivanova which I appreciate, and mirrors a lot of how I've been taught to practice with emotions:https://twitter.com/euvieivanova/status/1043087043004383233 …

I'm a bit of a dullard and I don't pretend to be awake by any measure, but if you accept the inevitable limitations of any contemplative practice, keep a sensible, cynical head on, and apply yourself diligently, this stuff can work surprisingly well.

This is how I practiced to get over a valium addiction and cut through the steel chords pulling me towards suicide. I'm not suggesting they'll work for everyone that way, but they sure did help me (and those around me).

fantastic thread & thanks so much for sharing your experience. You've articulated what i've felt super well. The more difficult it is, the more I should remove everything else from life to just sit with it.