Lately, I’ve noticed a major change in how emotions play out in my body. If I start to experience an intense, negative emotion, like despair or rage or panic, it quickly transmutes into energy, which soon becomes indescribably pleasurable and loving, like divine love nectar. What begins as agonizing quickly feels so good, I can barely contain myself. I go about my business, and all I can think is, “Why? Why do I feel good?”
Suffering is a wellspring of raw energy. When I allow it to open up inside of me and follow the channels carved into my body by past meditation through suffering, the pain disappears and soon there is just the energy, and it gets redeployed to love and bliss. I use those two words so often now, it almost annoys me, but they are truest words. It makes absolutely no sense, and I am not doing anything!
I’ve stumbled across numerous moments during these past few weeks in which some view of things starts to fill me with despair. Almost out of habit, I watch as the perspective coils itself into the shape of suffering. But then something happens. It just looses its curl. It starts to look like that suffering that used to sweep me into a hell realm, but then it doesn’t, and I go about my merry way just not suffering at all.
What was once a canyon has become a crevice and not even my foot will fit into it. This dark hole I once fell into periodically seems to have closed up. I can’t say that it would never open again, but I watch things come into my life which would normally push me right in, and I start to fall towards it. Within seconds, however, I stop in midair, and I hover. Then I float back up. No effort. No worries. No trouble at all.
For example, yesterday afternoon, a memory of rejection and exile surfaced, and I felt tremendous pain for about two seconds. I remembered what it was like to respond to that pain with thoughts of leaving the earth, but that seed had nowhere to take root. It fell to the side and disintegrated. I didn’t do anything.
I did not need to do anything, because it was my being that prevented it from taking root.
I created a table to record my observations about what emotions have changed and the practices that seem to have transmuted them. Although, I don’t actually contemplate these things anymore. I mean, I don’t go out of my way to change how I see things. I would not say I have any particular way of “seeing” things. Instead, it seems to be the very shape of who I am that has changed, the contours of my being.
| EMOTION | TRANSMUTING CONTEMPLATION OR PRACTICE |
| Feeling cut off, exiled, rejected, alienated, estranged | The only thing I am ever estranged from is my conceptual puppet of others, the one I play with in my mental replica of the world. In reality, there is only being. |
| Rumination | Enter “the cloud of unknowing.” Let go of the need to construct and maintain the most accurate or relieving mental picture of the world, and rather than settling on a mental image of disengagement, move into being, into the knowing that the senses, even my mental senses, cannot enter. |
| Longing, loneliness | Let love be untouched by constraints on its expression. Give the love that does not care about the form it takes. Consider how others feel. Bring to mind their well being and care about what happens to them. Commit to being present in whatever ways they need and for all else, relax. |
| Jealousy, envy | With my whole heart, I wish others well with this sentiment: It’s okay, the universe will take good care of me. |
| Feeling left out | I am always precisely where I need to be. My belonging is centered in me, not outside of me. There is no real circle. The circle I ever feel outside of is just a mental construction. |
| Despair, angst, irritation | Everything I have in this moment is always enough. Look at everything this universe has given me! Always enough. Always enough. Thank you, universe. |
| The wish for resolution or understanding, a longing for forgiveness, grieving those who want separation | No one is ever lost. Never give up on anyone, but at the same time, let them be who they are. It’s okay to keep loving people even after they’ve walked away, even if they’ve pushed me away, I can still love them. I can still nurture a living, breathing desire for their well being. Love is never an imposition. |
| Repulsion to or fear of the suffering of another, feeling overwhelmed by demands | Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” There but for the grace of God go I. Or in Buddhism: There go I. Everyone has a Buddha nature, and what I see is only transient. Suffering does not define us. Finally, the practice of tonglen: Imagine (with intention) breathing in the pain of others and breathing out compassion and joy. Imagine trading places with them. |
| Resentment, anger, frustration | Absolutely everything that happens in my world is determined from within. I am fully responsible for everything I manifest. The universe is always taking care of me. I will always receive everything I need. I will always receive everything I desire, everything I would ask for if I knew enough to understand what would really bring me the greatest bliss. |
