Joy and emotions

In Monday night's meditation group we explored emotions and joy.

Joy is our natural state. It actually takes effort NOT to be joyful.

Yet so many of us have been told to pipe down, curtail our enthusiasm and dampen our joy, that as adults we don't even remember that joy exists!

Emotions

When it comes emotions, it's important to know they are a very natural and healthy part of being human also.

We connect as a community through emotions, they form a language and glue that binds us together so we may achieve more as a group than we can on our own.

On Monday evening, I helped the group to develop a new-found relationship with their emotions, one where emotions are allowed to speak to us, share their wisdom and their vibrancy, so that we might experience more joy.

Bliss

It is an absolutely blissful feeling allowing emotions to be there, rather than repressing them. I encourage you to try it.

Here's what we did:

1) sit comfortably and close your eyes. Bring yourself into your body and the present moment 2) allow yourself to notice any emotion that is present 3) observe it without judging, labelling or analysing 4) notice if there is a commentary behind the emotion or a reason why it's there 5) compassionately observe any reason for the emotion without being sucked into the story 6) let go of any resistance to the emotion, just allow it to be there however it wants 7) notice what it is like to let peace and the emotion to exist simultaneously, noticing that peace is permanent, but that the emotion no matter how long it sticks around, is temporary 8) continue to observe and allow the emotion to be there.

You can do this exercise with your eyes open or your eyes closed. For best effect however, set aside some time (20 minutes is good) to do the exercise with your eyes closed and notice how different you feel after.

Let me know how you get on!