Transforming Feelings

This first step in dealing with feelings is to recognize each feeling as it arises. The agent that does this is mindfulness.  In the case of fear, for example, you bring out your mindfulness, look at your fear, and recognize it as fear.  You know that fear springs from yourself and that mindfulness also springs from yourself.  They are both in you, not fighting, but one taking care of the other.

The second step is to become one with the feeling.  Say, "Hello, Fear.  How are you today?"  Then you can invite the two aspects of yourself, mindfulness and fear, to shake hands as friends and become one.  Doing this may seem frightening, but because you know that you are more than your fear, you need not be afraid.  As long as mindfulness is there, it can chaperone your fear.  The fundamental practice is to nourish your mindfulness with conscious breathing, to keep it there, alive and strong.  As long as mindfulness is present, you will not drown in your fear.  In fact you begin transforming it the very moment you give birth to awareness in yourself.


The third step is to calm the feeling.  As mindfulness is taking good care of your fear, you begin to calm it down.  "Breathing in, I calm the activities of body and mind."  You calm your feeling just by being with it.


The fourth step is to release the feeling, to let it go.  Because of your calm, you feel at ease, even in the midst of fear, and you know that your fear will not grow into something that will overwhelm you.  Calming and releasing are just medicines for the symptoms.  You now have an opportunity to go deeper and work on transforming the source of your fear.


The fifth step is to look deeply.  You look deeply into your baby--your feeling of fear--to see what is wrong, even after the baby has already stopped crying, after the fear is gone.  You cannot hold your baby all the time, and therefore you have to look into him to see the cause of what is wrong.  By looking, you will see what will help you begin to transform the feeling.  You will  realize, for example, that his suffering has many causes, inside and outside of his body.  Looking into your baby, you see the elements that are causing him to cry, and when you see them, you will know what to do and what not to do to transform the feeling and be free.


After recognizing the feeling, becoming one with it, calming it down, and releasing it, we can look deeply into its cause, which are often based on inaccurate perceptions.  As soon as we understand the causes and nature of our feelings, they begin to transform themselves.