Peace and love underlie all of our emotional responses, even if we’re angry. You wouldn’t feel angry about something if you didn’t care about it. Peace, love, and clarity is our natural condition.
-Adyashanti
We make it so hard for ourselves to process our experience when we shame ourselves for our “less desirable” emotions. We tell ourselves that love and kindness are acceptable, but anger and jealousy definitely are not!
But we can’t deal with our feelings unless we accept the present moment and we can’t accept the present moment if we can’t accept our emotions.
So what do we do?
We start by reminding ourselves of what Adyashanti calls our “natural condition”, which is “peace, love and clarity”. This is our true nature, not something we acquire through hours of meditation or memorization of mantras. It is already who we are. And when we are not outwardly expressing love, peace or clarity, it is simply because we are in pain, and this pain causes us to see ourselves as separate from our true state.
But we are never separate from our true state. And by reminding ourselves of our true state, we can be present with our experience and observe without shame or judgment a range of emotions—emotions that sometimes trickle gently in and at other times swoop in like a tidal wave.
So let’s be loving and gentle with ourselves. Let’s remind ourselves who we really are, and maybe then this will help us to be fully present—with all that is—right now.
-Tara
Tara Zafft, Ph.D. 