To Happiness and back – Precious, clinging to unreal 1/2

A simple mind is reflected by clean thoughts, like clear water that lets us see the bottom of the lake. Simplicity reveals the true nature of the mind behind restless thoughts.

So we know who we are. We know how to snap out of EGO-based stories and stay focused. But it’s not the end. Leaving behind our emotions won’t serve us in the long run. We have to know the origin of those feelings and make a pact with them, so they can serve instead of destroying us.

In this article, we will talk about the triumvirates; our body, mind, and emotions. As usual, there will be some theory, my thoughts on the topic, and some exercises so you can start practicing as well. It’s still not a study even if it’s long, just thoughts and my experiences. This part turned out a bit long, so this will be published in two parts.

You, the ocean

Imagine that you are a vast ocean. Calm at the bottom. Calm or stormy at the top. When the wind blows you turn into playful or angry. When a ship goes through, you make some waves, some small vortexes. You have cold and warm streams in the middle.

And somebody can drop a bomb into this ocean. Maybe maelstroms occur.

When our surroundings, the cold and warm streams, and our thoughts make the perfect alignment, then we are pretty capable of making emotional maelstroms. We feel pain in our bodies, running in thought circles. Sinking every ship that comes around to help and dig these negative feelings into the bottom of the ocean, so that they will stay with us forever.

If you think it through then you need so many ingredients to form this maelstrom. Missing just one and it’s just a small whirlpool. Minus one and it’s just a small wind. We can’t control some of these currents. But we can control our thoughts. We can embrace our feelings, pay attention to our bodies, and move out of our pain. Sometimes these currents are more like catalysts for a brighter future. But do you even see them?

Do you know how to turn your obstacles into catalysts? The same way you form the obstacle, through the triumvirates.

The triumvirates

Maybe you’ve heard about the triumvirates. Emotions, body, and thoughts. We can argue about which starts the negative loop engines.

Maybe our EGO-driven thoughts? The blabbering of the problem-solving mind makes every little detour a life-or-death fight. Maybe our emotions blended with our subconscious needs? That makes us feel and demands change. Maybe our body that gets sick, hurts, cries out, and betrays us. But we just keep moving, asking for more and more until we reach the end?

It doesn’t matter if the chicken or the egg was first because they make the big bang together. So if we want to have a solution we have to begin with the one that is more known and connected to us.

Everybody has a favorite route. Maybe you are depending on your mind. Everything runs in that hamster wheel and you channel these thoughts to your emotions and body. Maybe you feel every emotion around you, auras and energies. Maybe you are a body person, feeling everything in your gut.

There isn’t a right way. The only way is balance. Too much from either of them can take you to false gods.

Cheating suffering

To avoid something first, we have to befriend it. Know its ways, so that we can trick it.

Buddhism differentiates 3 types of suffering.

• Physical
  • Emotional and physical discomfort and pain
• Impermanence
  • The pain of change
• Mental
  • The suffering of existence

For now, our main goal will be avoiding physical suffering. It has a basic part like breaking our bones. We obviously want to avoid that. An unseen part, emotional suffering, and a part that can’t be recognized so easily because you’ve dug so deep into the ocean that you can’t really remember anymore.

To know these spots you have to learn the method of asking your body, mind, and emotions about the message they want to convey. When we know the answer, we can change that thought or emotion before it solidifies into our body.

Part of this can be executed at home, but if you feel the slightest discomfort, then please go to therapy. You had a reason to hide things deep, and let somebody support you while digging them out.

Change for happiness

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. – Haruki Murakami

I know it’s chic nowadays to accept oneself and it’s really important to accept the change and the core. But is that rage really you? Are you that envy and suffering? Accepting oneself isn’t the same as living in the trap of our habits. Don’t mistake trauma for your being. You don’t have to cling to suffering.

You know exactly who you are, so let’s learn how to throw out those sufferings before they solidify into your body.

I’m very thoughts based on this will be our starting point. If you’ve read the previous part then you will find some familiar parts.

As the saying goes: You hurt where you care and you care where you hurt

I’m sure that you know where you hurt the most.

Mind

Our mind is somewhat capable of creating suffering in places where there was peace before. It’s really crazy, that our mind stores parts of our previous experiences, and based on that it builds our personality. Like you barely can have trust in people because in nursery somebody destroyed your sandcastle. From this experience you start to build an armor, that you still wear even though you are over 40 now. Obviously, this armor grows, and some other memories are added to it but its base is that childhood memory. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Our mind sends us these negative automatic thoughts based on shards that are planted into our emotions and sometimes into our bodies. And these shards sometimes protect us. Hold us back and keep us safe in the cave. We get used to them and easily relearn them.

If you ever had a car crash, you know, that getting behind the wheel again can be pretty hard. The brain tries to save you, make you stay. Maybe you have been driving for years but from a small mistake, you relive the whole accident. So you have to relearn to be brave again and again.

Obviously, this feature is one of our most remarkable assets when it comes to our survival. But when our EGO starts the talk based on past experiences then lust, wrath, gluttony, greed, sloth, anxiety and skepticism join the party.

Suffering and EGO

Our EGO protects us by giving us nice things, feeling special, and being pampered. Like a wealthy guy. Sadly, the shitty part always gets hidden by these fancy stuff. Our EGO hides our core problems with righteousness, making us the center of the universe. Gives us flavored chewing gums that lose their taste. Instead of throwing it out it just molders in your mouth giving that unpleasant feeling, getting you a bit of nausea. I think you know what I’m talking about. And now imagine giving kisses with this mouth, with the moldering bubble gum in your mouth.

Our EGO is built on power, success, beauty, strength, and others’ opinions. But these factors constantly change. The self can be headstrong and push their needs forward. Protecting the shell with wrath and sloth, curing with lust. We can live our lives as the most important beings, making a fuss about every single difference with others or we can say no to suffering.

“As long as we remain prisoners of the dissatisfaction and frustration born from the chaos ruling our minds, repeating that ‘I am happy’ is as futile as repainting a crumbling wall.”

I feel your pain. Public humiliation can hurt for years. But it was just 5 minutes. 5 minutes from your life that you elongated for 5 years. Chewing on this gum, giving kisses to others day by day, building your intuition on these experiences.

Our EGO is our friend

I told so many shitty stories about EGO but it’s our beacon. It shows us the way, so we know that we still have some work to do. Instead of thinking of it as the shore, use it as a beacon that lights up when you have to work on something.

Your EGO can be your best ally if your values are on the spot. You just have to learn how to work with them.

We are part of the whole as the mind is part of the triumvirates.

Emotions

I’m sure that some people feel emotions sooner than catch the thought connected to them. Desire, hate, pride, and envy just pop up and we have to deal with them. Most of the time we try to hide them, make them disappear. (Like with the suggested exercises in the previous article.) But what happens if we don’t pay attention to them? We just push them onto the bottom of our ocean and sooner or later they form an island. An island of hate, envy, lust, desire, pride. Solidifies into our body, changes it, and presents it with pain. It kinda sounds terrible.

We are afraid of the ugly feelings, the rage, the sadness. We are afraid of the ones we can’t control. We never see them, we hide them, so we never learn how to feel them. As we grow up we see examples of how to keep your feelings, but just a few about how to live them and how to make peace with them. We like our feelings well done on a plate but they come very rare, kind of alive. Our job is to learn how to cook them, so we can digest them.

Terrible things can happen in your life. There are things that need time and need help to process the emotional turmoil, but is the above-mentioned one of them? Is that shitty talk with your boss worth to destroy your day?

Luckily we aren’t one with the pain.

Continuous stress weakens the immune system and slows down cell growth. Blocks our memory and slows down the learning process. Our body tries to survive and sends the bat signal, but we just push through with full force until we drop.

Body

If you freeze your emotions into your body, then it will muffle your senses. I believe that you have a history with the corner of the bed, door handles, porcelain, and other non-living creatures. And if you look closely then you will see that these are periodic.

We beat our bodies. It doesn’t do its duty. So useless. But how many times did you listen to its cries? How many times did you get some serious injury from overwork or a stomachache that made you believe you ate something spoiled? How many times did you listen to your body and take a rest when it pleaded before it fell? How many times did you think it let you down? And how many times did you think that you let your body down by not listening to it?

I know that commercials say that you have to reach your limit and go beyond to become somebody. But who talks about the minutes spent in the hospital or with the psychologist that comes from these moments?

Surely, you have to put that effort into it if you want to achieve something but like on the speedway, is that 10 minutes earlier worth the crash? Will this make the journey enjoyable?

(Sometimes an accident is just an accident and not a sign from your body. But when you broke the 10th plate in a row then maybe that’s not just an accident)

The body team

Your body is a great vessel for your stress and you had a whole life until now to find the best storage. I’m pretty sure you know where it is. If not then focus on your body, and think back to a stressful situation. What was hurting the most? Did you have an upset stomach, headache, or your shoulders pained you? Maybe your calf?

Be aware that a bad sleeping or working posture is not stress.

If you have found your storage then it’s time to develop some body-oriented strategies to run from these times.

According to the Body Wisdom book the seven strategies to help navigate in a stressful world

• Become aware
  • Don’t forget to subtract tension
• Change your mindset
  • Stress helps you learn, mature, and grow
• Don’t multitask
• Slow down
• Limit exposure
  • Honor your limits
• Enjoy life

How to fight with your EGO, Emotions and calm your body

The most important thing is that please don’t fight. Your blabbering brain, your wavering emotions, and your aching body are part of you. They are here to make you remember the good and bad things. Keep you safe and make you the human being you are right now. So start to listen to the triumvirates, so you can be safe, you can feel and think straight. The way you’d like to be.

For that, you have to

• See your thoughts with enough distance
• Notice your self-story
• Embrace your feelings
• Direct attention in an intentional way
• Choose where you want to evolve
• Create habits that support you

To do that I brought some tools from ACT, meditation, and some other mindfulness exercises. But first, let’s talk about meditation.

Meditation

Meditation is a practice, that’s developed especially for the brain… there are many mental exercises… like exercising the body.

And the good part is that you don’t have to join a cult. Don’t have to choose a guru or sit in uncomfortable poses. But you can. You don’t need a strict schedule or make an offering, like a goat. You can as well. (I think it’s a different genre. But you can if it works for you better. Please don’t.)

Meditation is just making yourself time to know yourself better. To look at things as they are, to practice loving kindness, to feel everything in the moment, and to focus. To feel your feelings, letting them dissolve into the ocean of your emotions.

You can think of anything that matters to you. You can have your technique, sit on the sofa, or lie down. It doesn’t matter. Just breathe and focus. Focus on your feelings, on your senses, or on a thought that’s bothering you.

Meditation is most fruitful when practiced with the aim of building flexibility skills, not as an escape from the pressures of life and a way to suppress feelings.

We tend to be afraid of negative emotions. We’d like to run from them but it makes us more engaged, more connected to life itself and ourselves. Help us strengthen our boundaries.

When a strong feeling comes your way, you can think about it like this according to Charles Jones

• Welcome the negative emotion
• Find this feeling in your body – it keeps you focused
• Name the emotion
• Decode this emotion and find the unmet need
• What should I change or learn to resolve this feeling, to meet this need?

There are many meditation techniques and if you find your way in meditation then there are countless opportunities to learn and practice. (If you need a teacher just send me a message and I’ll be happy to send you a recommendation.)

For a starter 10 minutes per day just sitting there and looking at your thoughts, letting them flow through you, welcoming and letting them go is enough. These 10 minutes will be enough to learn how to focus and get back to the present moment.

I know that you are here just for the exercises but I have to cut this somewhere so in the next part there will be some techniques to practice acceptance, presence and to start the action part as well. If you need some defusion techniques then you will find them in part 3 and values in part 2.