Step 7:
Freedom from the Emotional Self
You have to just stand by the side and watch whatsoever is passing,
with no judgment, with no evaluation. Just a silent mirror reflecting
whatsoever is passing by … without any commentary, just watching …
just a little patience, sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching as it comes.
And when it comes it opens a totally new dimension.
—osho rajneesh
Your journey moves down the road of discovery as you continue to detach from the illusionary hold of your constricted self. The constricted self’s personal identity is being released by the dismantling strength of the practice of forgiveness. Next your controlling mind is being released by the powerful energy of awareness while practicing gratitude. In repeating these two practices, you will notice a release of tightness and tension held in you by the constricted self. You will begin to relax and become more unbiased and nonconceptual as you experience the world. The practice of gratitude revealed that you are not the “doer” of the self-centered constricted self.
Your new awareness begins to shed light on anything and everything on which you place your attention. This is the beginning of letting go of the constricted self’s need to be someone. Your perceptions of the world will change as you continue the practice of living in this greater context of awareness, rather than in the content of your constricted self. The gift of openness and expansion begins to make this new awareness your home base. You continue now with this expansion by taking the journey of detaching from your emotional self.
For this chapter, your focus is how to detach from your emotional self. We will consider the emotional drivers in your life that are at the heart of your emotional fear. This fear is, of course, all of our fears of confronting our death. This fear of death is what shapes your emotional future. What needs to be learned to escape this emotional future is how to surrender your fear. The healing of fear is to develop the practice of presence or mindfulness in your daily life and to discover the power of appreciation that changes your perception of your world. Appreciation gives you “new eyes” and the power to a new awareness in you. Both of these practices of presence and appreciation will open your emotional self to a potential place of new expansion in you. We will conclude the chapter with a heart-filled meditation of presence and appreciation.
Your Emotional Drivers
The first thing as you awake in the morning is to get your emotional, hectic, and clock-driven life in gear. Your schedule is filled with appointments, activities, and meetings. On top of that, as you move through your day, your mind is busy with the inner dialogue that keeps you racing in fear, anger, judgment, confusion, pleasure, uncertainty, and so on as you process your own thoughts, sensations, feelings, and emotions as well as from the people and situations around you. As you focus on where all those thoughts and emotional feelings come from, they just seem to be there, no matter what is happening in your life. What you notice is that they never stop. Because they never stop, your external world and internal world keep you emotionally strung out and at the edge of exhaustion most of the time.
The mental and the emotional world is conditioned by whatever awful or wonderful thing is going to happen in the future or by what awful or wonderful thing that happened in your past. You live in a conditional world where one thing leads to another. This past and hopeful future makes your world seemingly predictable and somewhat known, but basically unconsciously unsteady and uncertain. You hear yourself say “When is the next shoe going to drop?” or “What can I expect from my next encounter with so and so?” Thus you live with an unconscious, underlying anxiety of what is going to happen next to you. This underlying fear is part of the constant clock-driven busyness you face daily. If you stop your activities for a while, you may begin to feel the emotions that are driving you.
As I described in the first half of the book, you are most likely unconsciously driven by fear of the possibility of death, but it is unspoken and you avoid the fear mentally and emotionally. You do not know the time of your death, so you keep your time filled up so as not to face it. Meanwhile, you spend your thoughts, feelings, and energies working, playing, hoping, worrying, evaluating, judging, criticizing, gossiping, and planning about everything in your life until death arrives suddenly at your door.
Fear of Death: Will I Survive?
The constricted self has you in an emotional turmoil of anxiety and fear most of the time. This turmoil keeps the unconscious question churning in you, “Will I survive?” No matter what the outer questions of survival are, the unconscious question is “Will I die?” This question of survival/death is a dance between past and future to the point that you can’t be here right now. The biggest terror of the future is trying to avoid the possibility of death. You avoid it for yourself but focus the concern on your partner, family, and friends. This concern keeps your emotions raw and your mind tense. It does not have to be this way, but the constricted self says, “This is the only way you can live.” It is your fear that unconsciously overwhelms you and sustains your personal constricted self in continual avoidance. It gets to a point that you have to surrender the state of wanting it to be the way you want it to be. You are not aware that you can change this feeling. Many of us long for a life without judgment and evaluation of self and others. Living in that way means “simply” observing the movements and the changes that constantly move through your life.
Learning to Surrender the Fear
What would your life be like if you lived in a state of awareness and observing what is going on right here, right now, instead of living with the fear of the past and future?
Without this fear, you would be free. From your expanded background, the context of your life, you as the observer would more easily surrender to the process of your death. As you die, letting go of all the activity in the foreground—the content of your life—is the heart of the surrender process. Surrender of the past and future, whether now in this instant or at your death, brings you to what is going on in the present moment. The present moment is not governed by the past or the future or by trying to change others, so life will appear perfect to you. Living right here in the moment is the greatest gift you can give yourself. It is called presence.
Presence and Appreciation
Presence is what the Buddhists call mindfulness. Mindfulness is being attentive to just what is in front of you, and not letting the mind emotionally worry or wander to past or future people, situations, or events. With mindfulness, you don’t let your mind react to outer or inner experience. You stay focused right here in the moment. The practice of appreciation trains your reactive mind to stay focused in the present moment. The motivational writer and speaker Alan Cohen says, “Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.”
Appreciation releases the attachment to your emotional reactions of fear and being a prisoner of time. Appreciation is another energy component of love that is connected to your perception of time and releases the reaction of push or pull in you. Appreciation changes the focal length of the depth of perception.
Perception gives us our ability to recognize, to have conscious awareness of, and to grasp an understanding of life. If appreciation changes the focal length of perception or your awareness, then you are again releasing tension and expanding even more. This means that when you wake in the morning, awareness is that consciousness that wakes you up. It is the awareness that opens you to observe what life is going to offer you today. This awareness does not react to the world nor is it controlled by time. As thoughts come and thoughts go, the background of awareness is stable and remains continuous during all your waking hours.
Awareness is conscious observation—watching, looking, seeing, and concentrating. Your awareness, just your awareness, is looking through your eyes right now. As you extend your perception inward, it allows you to contact an inner awareness that is looking through your eyes at what you are aware of in the outside world. When you are both aware of your inner and outer awareness at the same time, you are living in the moment. To appreciate whatever is in your experience is to connect both the inner and outer awareness. When you make this connection, you are truly right here right now.
Appreciation and Awareness
Appreciation both changes and charges your energy field pattern. You have more energy because you are connected directly to the expanded self. The more you are aware from this inner vantage point of appreciation you will see the good and the beautiful and consciously look at the essence of the person, situation, or encounter. Appreciation opens the doorway of awareness of the awareness. The contact with this awareness essence creates a field of energy and of light through connection. This field of energy “bridges” and creates an enfolding field between you and the other that “strikes a bell” of a positive energy. This field charges both your energy field and that of the other. The result is that, in this moment of appreciation, you open to a higher frequency.
The Power of Appreciation
As you begin to be in the appreciation field, your focal point shifts from inner awareness to being aware in the outer world and then back to awareness of what is real inside you. The energy charge of appreciation activates the feeling state within you, and shifts your moods, attitudes, and beliefs. In the moment of appreciation, you perceive the reality of love that directly eliminates judgment or preconception. At this point, things are as they are and there is no need to react. You have accessed an energy that lets you penetrate directly to the essence of your awareness. As you rest in your awareness through appreciation, you can be fully present with others. You can see in the other what is actually present, unique, expressive, and expansive. In the same way, you can also be appreciative of the qualities and capabilities in you. With this focused attention, we transcend time by entering the present.
When we lose appreciation, the focal length of our seeing becomes short, close to us, and broken up by our beliefs, judgments, fears, and conditioning. Thus, when we judge people, animals, and situations, we close down our focal length of appreciative perception. Practicing appreciation daily releases your close-in perception of self-protection and brings you into the present moment of joy, freedom, and lightness of being.
Appreciation Practices
The following appreciation practice and meditation are incredibly important for your preparation of death and your freedom now. They give you a focus to recognize that you are always aware right now. When you are aware of your awareness, you are integrated in both inner and outer worlds. You are also integrated in the power of presence.
On some level, these practices are not really necessary because awareness is already within you. At the same time, these exercises are necessary to create an environment in which your perception shifts, dropping you into the depth of expanded higher consciousness and enabling you to experience your inner awareness. The presence of awareness is a moment of exhilaration in being fully alive, of being a true living organism. Relaxation and expansion deepen you to experience and reveal this energy of life. This is the same energy of grace that is felt as you draw closer to dying.
Remember, do these practices with a sense of curiosity and wonder but with nothing to achieve, only to appreciate what is happening right here, right now. As you continue your practice of appreciation and presence, a unity of feeling emerges in you with the capacity to be present. This is the next step in the journey into the freedom of the expanded self.
Exercise: Appreciation Practice
• Every day, look for people and situations to express your appreciation. Simply see who or what they are or what they are doing and acknowledge what you see. For example, I see a cat stretched out on a windowsill and I say, “You look beautiful in your relaxation,” or I am in the office and observe someone working late and speak my appreciation to his or her effort. Or I hear a beautiful piece of music with a string solo and appreciate the talent playing the violin. As you see the element in a person or situation, appreciate it by speaking out loud; don’t think about it or evaluate it.
• As you speak your appreciation, feel the energy speaking from your heart. The awareness of your awareness builds an energy charge between you and the other.
• If you find you are focused on judging someone or something, shift your focus and look for something that you can appreciate in the person or situation you are judging. By interrupting the cycle of judging with appreciation, you generate a strong awareness and build your energy rather than contract it.
• Keep the appreciation going throughout the day. The more you appreciate consistently throughout the day the more the energy will increase the clarity of your awareness. Practice this for two to three weeks and you will find your perception and awareness has changed.
Exercise: Presence and Appreciation Meditation
As with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this meditation in order to listen to it or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Let yourself relax into a safe, quiet, comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat.
• Close your eyes and imagine an orange color filling your lower spine area. Notice the sounds in your environment. (pause)
• Recall the depth of your last meditation and take several deep breaths and relax into all parts of your body. (pause)
• What does the relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember the feeling of deep relaxation when using your marker. Recall how you created your marker as a symbol, an image, or a word and you felt your marker at a particular place on your body. Return to that inner feeling of relaxation spreading through your body. (pause)
• As you move deeper into recalling the symbol, image, or word of your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go.
• Now, take three deep breaths. As you take them, observe your breath. Is it shallow? Labored? What is the quality of your inhale and exhale? Does one seem easier or fuller? Is there a natural pause when your breath is full or empty? Feel the sensations of the belly, as well as the cool and warmth of your nostrils. (pause)
• If your inhale is pronounced are you holding your energy in too much? If you are, then lengthen the exhale. If the exhale is pronounced, you need to give away some of your energy. Don’t push yourself for not letting yourself receive. Sink deeper into your body, notice sensations. Move down into your inner ground of sensations. (pause)
• Put your hand over your belly, feel your breath move in and out. From your belly or womb, notice that breath and heartbeat never stops. Allow thoughts, feelings, or outside disturbances to float through you without holding on to them.
• Again with your marker, let yourself relax and move down and in, down deep into your heart as if falling down like a leaf to the ground. Go down and in, down and in deep inside yourself, moving toward your belly. (pause)
• Place your attention deep inside, back near your spinal cord as you observe your breath.
• Notice as you inhale you take in air from the outside air and it mixes with the air in the space of your lungs inside of you.
• As the air merges between inside and outside of you, become even more relaxed. Let yourself fall down deeper inside you like a falling leaf. With this feeling of gliding down like a leaf, your mind begins to move downward as the space and air on the outside and the space and air on the inside come together, allowing the boundaries of the body to dissolve and the movement of the breath flows easefully and naturally back and forth within you. (pause)
• You are moving deeper into a space where there is a softness and warmth.
• Now as you rest your mind back into this soft, warm space, feel a gentle movement continue downward as if you are on an escalator gently sliding downward softly, slowly, and gently.
• As you feel yourself coming to rest near the bottom of your spine, let yourself be held in this place and appreciate yourself just being held for who you are. Let yourself feel that deep appreciation for yourself. (pause)
• Be aware of being appreciated right here in the present moment.
• Let the focus of your awareness be on whatever arises as you imagine the color orange. Let your awareness not rush after the various appearances of thoughts, sensations, or memories. As they appear, just appreciate them as they are appearing and then disappearing. Let your awareness become still, unattached, and nonreactive to what is arising within you. (pause)
• Stay engaged with your awareness and don’t space out but be still with the comings and goings of the mind.
• Now, turn your awareness inward away from the comings and goings of the mind and notice what is there in the space of stillness. What is the quality of this space? Is there movement, is there life, is there some type of feeling, or is there nothing at all in the space of silence? (pause)
• Observe the comings and goings of your mind and the stillness itself from within this space. Do you notice a difference?
• Relax more deeply with what appears in the mind but don’t get carried away by grasping or reacting to the stream of thoughts, images, and memories. Just be present within this expanded space that is beyond your mind. In this space you are the observer.
• Continue to stay in the warmth of being held in this awareness that is beyond time.
• The power of awareness itself catalyzes the difference between life and death.
• Appreciate these precious moments of being present in awareness.
• Now use your breath to bring presence in to your entire body and being.
• Allow yourself to inhale and exhale, feeling the sensations of your breath in your belly and your nostrils. Feel grounded in your body, just resting in this place of appreciation and presence for yourself. (pause)
• Place your attention now on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments. Let yourself integrate what you learned from letting forgiveness release your identity patterns.
• Notice your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath, come back into the room.
• As you relax and feel the experience of this meditation, trust that as you continue to attune to the belly energy of gratitude, you will dissolve your constricted identity more and more, opening to your natural awakening.
• Be gentle and loving to yourself and know that a higher energy source is guiding you.
• Trust also that there is your unique timing that brings you to a full state of appreciation and presence.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.