Handling Negative Emotions

We are always afraid of our emotions, especially our negative emotions, we never give full play to our emotions. Suppressing an emotion cannot free us of it, whatever we suppress will be waiting just below the surface of our consciousness, ready to jump on us at the right moment!

A great master said “When you give an emotion a chance to explode and exhaust itself completely inside you, you will see it will lose its power over you. If you can maintain total awareness at such a moment, witnessing the emotion without getting caught in its play, you will be liberated from your fear of it.”

This is a powerful cathartic technique that can be used to handle any negative emotion.

Duration: 21 minutes

Instructions: Sit upright with your eyes closed. Bring to mind the image of someone who fills you with some negative emotion. The moment you recall the person, naturally you will experience a deep hatred or resentment for him. So many words will bubble up in your mind – words which you wanted to say to him but didn’t have a chance to, or which you were never courageous enough to say aloud! Sometimes, even when you have the chance, you have so many words you want to say, but you forget half of them in the heat of the moment. So now, recall the person, and when these words and feelings swell up inside you, just breathe deeply, settle down and relax. Continue to hold the image in your inner space. Let your mind shout whatever it wants to shout. Let all the anger come up silently, let all the violence and vengeance inside come out. As this happens, witness your inner space in silence. Watch the emotion rise to its peak. Let the volcano explode! After a few minutes you will see, slowly the emotion is dying down. It is getting exhausted. Suddenly, you will see there is no longer any violence left inside you! When you recall the person again, or even if you see him or her directly, that anger or fear stroke will not happen again. Not only that, you will have more clarity to handle a similar emotion in another situation.

Whenever anger comes up in you, just witness and relax, Again and again come back to your center. Relax into your center, you will see so many new dimensions open in you, and you will be able to carry a deep silence throughout the day.