From an early age, many of our physical-emotional responses to life's events have been placed under control. The process of social molding starts the moment we are born, perhaps before. As babies and children, our raw physical-emotional expressions are often regulated by the expectations of those around us.
We've all heard lines like,
"Don't' be sad."
"Stop crying."
"You'd better stop that tantrum or I'll give you something to cry about."
The older and larger unknowingly press the younger and smaller to conform to social norms.
This causes a back up of unexpressed emotions and a sense that it is wrong to feel.
The process continues until the individual has fully internalized the top-down control mechanism. Then, it is our own conditioned gatekeeping mind that tries to keep everything under control.
Body, emotions, children, viruses, nature itself.
Yet, none of these can actually be controlled.
Life is wild.
Take emotions, for example.
There is no such thing as a negative emotion.
Emotions are currents of energy that arise through contact with sensory experience. Emotions, like all appearances, are part of life's great river of change. They come in every size, shape, and color. Some are intense, others subtle. Some enduring, others fleeting. Emotions can be heavy, light, hot, cold, explosive, stifling, ecstatic. There might be as many shades of emotion as there are people who feel them.
Emotions themselves know of no hierarchy, no segregation. They don't need to be corrected, reformed or exorcised.
Emotions need to be felt. They need our genuine attention and presence.
All of them.
When emotions are felt, they are completed. Once completed, they self-resolve. Yet, when emotions get labeled as "negative," they get suppressed and trapped in the body. A heaviness ensues; the back-log of unresolved life experience carried in the flesh.
It is our collective habit of dualistic fixation that artificially imposes the labels of "positive" and "negative" onto our emotional experience. All too often, we carve life up into little pieces, set the parts against each other, and invent conflict where none exists. All of this is an act of rejection of life, ourselves, and each other.
And it causes us great suffering.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
Each emotion is equally valid and self-liberating. Like clouds in the sky, emotions arise and dissolve of their own accord. We can simply drop the compulsive habit of labeling emotions, and take up the practice of befriending and feeling them. When we do this, something radical happens. We return to our humanity. There is more space inside. We are infused with the energy of emotions without being overcome by them. It's as if a rushing current is moving through us.
Nothing gets stuck.
Each new moment is fresh and rich.
We can come out from under the tyranny of control.
It's a matter of recognizing habituated ways of being. Then, choosing to return to the primal wisdom of our own nature and Nature itself.
Under Control