Our goal is not to just be happy all the time. Our goal is to be whole. To live from wholeness. To experience every emotion with depth and curiosity for the way it moves in us, shapes us, and reveals to us the authentic, vulnerable, and complete beings we are and have always been. From this space, we move forward into our lives connected to our self, with more space to breathe and witness life, and with more clarity of vision.
Making Choices Aligned with Purpose
We make choices that are aligned with a deeper sense of purpose, we access compassion for ourselves and others.
The Illusion of Happiness
Unfortunately, we live in a society that stresses the illusion of happiness at all costs. We’ve been taught that to feel sadness or grief, fear or anger, is negative and therefore a bad emotion that we want to avoid, when really these emotions are simply indicators, tools that we get to use to deepen our awareness of ourselves.
The Impact of Suppressed Emotions
The goodness or badness that they contain within them is only attributed to the meaning we give it.
We are taught, however, that if we feel sad, we are somehow inadequate. Big Pharma wants us to believe we need a magic pill to feel happy, certain spiritual teachers want us to transcend our emotions, and the multi-billion-dollar consumer world sells us material things to distract us from any suffering. Everyone is preying on this goal of happiness.
Numbing and Escaping from Reality
And so our world numbs out: drugs, alcohol, television, sex, shopping and even meditation can be used to try to escape ourselves when what we are feeling doesn’t feel good enough.
However, these suppressed emotions will continue to show up over and over again in your relationship with yourself (the way you see and speak to yourself, what you believe about yourself), with others, and with the world. They will manifest as addictions, radical behaviors that don’t really feel like you. And, at times, these buried emotions and this level of suffering can actually lead to violence.
The Courage to Feel
The way to experience true joy, connection and wholeness is to move through it, to give yourself permission to feel everything. Until you allow yourself to be present with what is honestly alive inside of you, you will never truly know yourself. And this takes great courage.
Lessons from Pema Chödrön
Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chödrön says, “Let the hard things in life break you. Let them affect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don’t cop out on that. Don’t run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it.”
The Joy Beyond Circumstances
There is, indeed, a joy that is untouched by circumstances. When we live in this space of joy, we can hold our grief, sadness, pain, fear, in a way just as holy as our happiness.
Our emotions are allies.
Honoring All Parts of the Experience
It is all here for us. It is all part of our experience, to be honored and welcomed in and finally, fully received with the gift of awareness and freedom that it brings.
Do not deny yourself anything. Do not run away or bliss it away or transform it too quickly. Savor it. For life is not only a creative process, it is also a destructive one, and both of these energies are here in service to your growth and evolution.
Allowing Your Heart to Break Open
So be willing to allow your heart to break open, if this is what is here for you. Be grateful and feel this deeply. When you open your door and give yourself fully to every experience, you will find yourself on the path of authentic joy and profound love. And with this love, our roots grow deeper, our branches grow stronger and we blossom into the fullness of who we are meant to be.
Written by:
Val Silidker
Co-Founder & Director of Psychospiritual Institute
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