Tuesday, June 24, 2008

handling emotions

"What I'm doing now, " he continued, his eyes still closed, "is detaching myself from the experience."

Detaching yourself?

"Yes, Detaching myself. And this is important--not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach."
He opened his eyes. He exhaled. "You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling onto things, because everything is impermanent."

But wait, I said. Aren't you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotion, all the bad ones?

"Yes."

Well, how can you do that if you're detached?

"Ah. You're thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it."

I'm lost.

"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that love entails.
"By throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognise that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment' "
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Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from. These were horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he recognised the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain--then he was able to say, "Okay. This is fear. Step away from it. Step away."

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be true to your emotions, and if they are not desired, just feel them, 'their texture, their moisture'. know how they feel like, and only then you'll be able to step away from it.

just as before or during a competition,
don't be afraid to feel anxious, nervous, scared or even excited
feel them, know how they feel like, how your heart beats, how you start to get breathless...
and only then you step away from these feelings, and truly detach from them.
when you do so, allow your concentration, your focus, your true and original actions to come into your mind.
that's all you need to do, and do it right. nothing else matters.

singhui



|boo(:| 9:52 PM|

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