SUTRA: Moksha (MOKE-shah)
I am emotionally free.
ONCE WE UNDERSTAND that external reality can’t be separated from internal reality, once we understand that the universe really is our extended body, it becomes very clear that negative energy within ourselves is destructive. Emotional turbulence is a major barrier to the spontaneous fulfillment of desire, but it is possible to transform negative energy into a higher level of awareness.
The word moksha means “freedom.” As this sutra resonates within you, it expresses “I am emotionally free. My soul is disengaged from melodrama. I am free from resentment, grievances, hostility, and guilt. I am free of self-importance. I am free of self-concern. I’m free of self-pity. I can laugh at myself. I see the humor in life.” These are all contained in that freedom; if I’m not emotionally free, then I overshadow and cloud the experience of the spirit with the ego, and my best intentions cannot be fulfilled.
Ultimately emotional freedom leads to psychological and spiritual freedom as well. There are really only two emotions: pleasure and pain—either it feels good or it hurts. Most people believe that the two fundamental emotions are love and fear, but these are really just the ways we respond to the potential for pleasure and pain. Love means we want to get closer to it because we think it will bring us pleasure. Fear means we want to move away because we think it will bring pain.
We spend our lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The things that bring pleasure or pain are different for each of us. Pleasure and pain flow from the needs that you have. If I have a craving for chocolate ice cream, and you bring me chocolate ice cream, then I interpret that as being pleasurable. If you have an allergy to chocolate and someone brings you chocolate ice cream, that gift is associated with pain. It’s all about perception and interpretation. It’s the ego that interprets things as being pleasurable or painful, and the ego experiences any crossing of the boundary of ego without permission as being painful.
The optimal and truest condition is one of balance. Any time we have emotional turbulence, we upset our natural internal balance, which can block our spiritual evolution and may even disconnect us from synchronicity. This is not to say that emotions are, in themselves, harmful or to be avoided. As human beings we will always have emotions; these are part of the human condition. But extremes of emotion will set us off course for our true life purpose. There will always be events or relationships in our lives that trigger strong emotions in us. There will always be things in this world that cause great pain or anxiety. But we need to avoid getting stuck on one emotion.
Think of life as a river with two banks—pleasure on one side, pain on the other. The best way to float down that river is to stay in the middle, moving evenly between the two banks. If you stray too close to either side, your passage slows, and you run the risk of running aground. Too much pleasure leads to addiction. Too much pain can eclipse your enjoyment of life.
It is important to note that pain does not have to be physical. It can be emotional pain, or even the memory of a past pain. Although our natural instinct is to avoid pain, we must deal with it when it occurs; otherwise, it will resurface later in life in some form of emotional turbulence. The form it takes may be different from what you expect, but it will resurface, perhaps as insomnia, or illness, or anxiety, or depression.
Perhaps the most destructive emotion is anger. The ultimate goal of spiritual transformation is enlightenment, the perpetual state of unity consciousness, the constant awareness that you and I and all the rest of the universe are patterns of the same fabric, woven of nonlocal intelligence. Anger motivates us to harm others, moving us in the opposite direction from enlightenment and unity consciousness. Anger clouds any perception of unity. Anger is about only the ego. Rather than moving you forward toward synchronicity and enlightenment, anger pushes you backward, closing you down to the transformative messages of the universe.
It is therefore critically important to control this form of emotional turbulence. Venting anger really does not help. Venting simply gives fuel to the anger and allows it to grow. Angry feelings need to be dealt with in a positive way as soon as possible after they arise. The goal is not to fuel the anger, or to try to smother it by burying it. Instead, we must convert the anger, or any other destructive emotion, within ourselves.
The first step to converting emotions is to take responsibility for what you are feeling. In order to take responsibility, you must recognize the emotion. What are you feeling? Where do you feel it in your body? Once you can identify the feeling, witness it. Experience it as objectively as possible, as though you are another person looking in. Anger is triggered by pain. Describe the pain from this objective point of view.
After the pain is identified in these ways, you can begin to express, release, and share the pain. Transform the painful experience into new awareness. Eventually you may even be able to celebrate the pain as another step on your road to spiritual enlightenment. When you embrace the pain in this way, emotional turbulence will disappear and the path to synchronicity again becomes clear.
This exercise will require about ten minutes of quiet time in a place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Begin by meditating for a few moments.
With your eyes closed, recall some event or situation in the past that was very upsetting to you. It may have been an argument, or some time when your feelings were hurt, or some random encounter that made you angry. Once you’ve settled on an upsetting situation, try to recall as many details about it as possible. Create a mental movie of exactly what happened.
The first step to dealing with the pain of this situation is to identify exactly what you are feeling. What word best describes how you feel because of this event or situation? Try to come up with a single word that encompasses as many of the feelings as possible, your best description. Now, focus on that word for a few seconds.
Let your attention gradually shift from that word to your body. What physical sensations are you feeling as a result of reliving that emotion? Every emotion has both mental and physical aspects that cannot be separated. Our feelings occur both in our minds and in our bodies at the same instant. Feel the sensations that this incident you are thinking about has created. Have your hands automatically clenched into fists? Do you feel a tightening of your stomach? A pain in your gut? Notice the physical experience of the emotion, and localize it to a specific spot on your body.
The next step is to express the feeling. Place your hand on the part of your body where you sense that the feeling is located. Out loud, say, “It hurts here.” If there is more than one location for the pain, touch each place and repeat the phrase, “It hurts here.”
For every emotional hurt, we have the power within us to make the pain disappear. Our reactions to external events localize in our bodies. We create emotions, which create physical pain. When we understand that simple fact, we can learn to change the way we respond to outside events. We can choose the way we react to incidents in the world. If we react with anger, hostility, depression, anxiety, or another intense emotion, our bodies follow along and create the necessary hormones and muscle contractions and other physical manifestations that eventually cause us actual pain. Therefore, we must always remember that these effects are our responsibility in the sense that we can change our reactions in ways that are less personally harmful. We can become free of emotional drama and turbulence. Meditate for a moment on the concept of personal responsibility for emotional reactions.
Once the pain has been located and acknowledged, and after you’ve taken responsibility for it, you can release the pain. Place your attention on the part of your body where you are holding the pain. With every exhalation of breath, have the intention of releasing that tension that you are holding. For half a minute, focus on releasing tension and pain with every breath. Let it go. Breathe it out.
The next step is to share the pain. Imagine that you could speak to the person who was involved in the incident that you have recalled for this exercise. What would you say to that person? As you consider this, remember that the person was not the true cause of your pain. You had the emotional reaction that manifested in physical pain. You have taken responsibility. Knowing this, what would you say to that person? What you choose to say will be personal to you and your situation. Whatever you say to share the pain you experienced will help to cleanse the experience from your consciousness forever. Share what you felt, share how you feel now, and share how you intend to deal with such feelings in the future.
This exercise can be used whenever you feel emotional turbulence in your life. When you have completed the exercise, take a moment to celebrate that you have used this painful experience to transcend to a higher level of consciousness. If you use this exercise consistently, you will eventually be able to entirely free yourself of emotional turbulence and pain, freeing your way to experience synchronicity.
There will always be situations and circumstances in your life when someone will cross some personal boundary, triggering strong emotional responses. This exercise is derived from Marshall Rosenberg’s excellent book Nonviolent Communication.
There are four basic steps to nonviolent communication, which involve four questions you ask yourself whenever you find yourself becoming defensive. When someone pushes your buttons, it’s tempting to want to push back. But that is not an optimal response—it is not productive, it wastes valuable personal energy, and it creates more turbulence in the world. For this exercise, think of a recent situation when something irritated or upset you in some way. Keeping that experience in mind, follow these four steps.
Define what actually happened, instead of relying on your interpretation of what happened. Be as objective as possible when describing the event. Ask yourself: What are you actually responding to? What actually occurred? What did you see and hear?
For example, you may be driving along in the car, wondering whether you need anything for dinner tonight when your spouse notices your silence and asks, “What are you upset about?” You say, “I’m not upset about anything, I was just thinking about dinner.” Your spouse responded to your silence with an evaluation, not an observation. Any time you attach meaning to an action, that is an interpretation or evaluation. For the following sets of sentences, see if you can figure out which is the evaluation and which is the observation:
In all three sets, the first statement is the interpretation or evaluation.
Whenever you find yourself responding with an emotional reaction, stop for a moment and try to discern the difference between your interpretation of the event and the objective observation of the event. Observations are empowering because they allow us to recognize how much of our response to others is based on interpretation, which in turn allows us to change our patterns of responding to the actions of others.
Think to yourself, What feelings arose as a result of the situation? What am I feeling? As you describe your feelings, use language that reflects only the feelings that you are responsible for and avoid words that victimize you. For example, you might feel appreciated, angry, antagonistic, anxious, afraid, bold, beautiful, confident, blissful, bewildered, glad, free, exhilarated, calm, astonished, cheerful, eager, hopeful, joyful, optimistic, proud, radiant, relaxed, sensitive, ashamed, bored, confused, dejected, disgruntled, displeased, dull, fatigued, guilty, hostile, irate, jealous, lazy, or lonely.
Avoid words that require another person to “make” you feel a certain way. For example, you cannot feel “attacked” by yourself—that emotion does not arise from you but from your response to another. Other words to avoid: abandoned, abused, betrayed, cheated, coerced, diminished, manipulated, misunderstood, overworked, rejected, unheard, unseen, unsupported. When you use these words to identify your feelings, this means that you are giving others too much power over your emotions. If so, you’ll tend to attract people who evoke these feelings, and get caught in a vicious cycle. It’s very difficult to be happy until you start owning your own emotions.
Ask yourself, What do I need in this situation? You wouldn’t be having strong feelings if all your needs were being met. Identify the need as specifically as possible. Start with your gut reaction, then work your way down the chain of desires until you find some specific examples of things to ask for. For example, “1 need to feel loved. Why?” “I feel lonely—I need to feel less alone. Why?” “I don’t have close friends—I need to find some friends and develop relationships.” This line of thought eventually leads to something you can ask of another person. You cannot ask another person to make you feel loved; that is beyond anyone’s capability. But you can ask another person to go out to a movie with you, to come to a party, to have a cup of coffee.
Once we identify a need and are ready to make a request, we often demand rather than request that our needs be met. Demands are less likely to be fulfilled because people inherently respond poorly to demands. Most people, however, are happy to fulfill a request.
For example, instead of demanding, “Pick up the dry cleaning,” you’ll be more likely to get a positive response if you ask, “Would you please pick up the dry cleaning?”
In addition, as in step 3, you’ll want to ask for a particular specific behavior. The more specific the behavior, the more likely it is that your request will be answered. For example, instead of saying, “Love me forever,” you might ask, “Will you marry me?” Instead of asking the general question, “Can we spend more time together?” you might ask, “Can we go to the park this afternoon?”
These steps are helpful in all situations, but they are especially helpful if there’s a conflict. Whenever you are part of a tense situation, allow yourself to take a step back from the emotions of the moment and choose conscious communication. What do you observe? How does it make you feel? Determine your need. Make a request. This should help short-circuit a potentially volatile situation and allow you to maintain your equanimity—or at least regain it.
For this exercise, you will need approximately ten minutes of uninterrupted time.
Think back to yesterday. Imagine that your memory is a videocassette that you can rewind to any time you choose. Right now, take it back just twenty-four hours. What were some of the things you did during the day? Did anything frighten you or make you angry? It doesn’t have to be anything especially important or dramatic—you may have felt impatient waiting in line, or you might have witnessed someone being rude or inconsiderate. For the next minute or so, try to remember the events of the day in as much detail as you can. Focus on a moment of anger, becoming aware of the sensations in your body as well as the emotions in your mind.
Next, rewind that videotape back even farther. Think back exactly one year. Try to recall what you were doing a year ago on this date, or as close to it as you can remember. What was on your mind at that time? Do you recall being worried or angry about something? Try to feel the emotions of that time in your mind and in your body. Are the feelings the same as the feelings you remember feeling yesterday?
Rewind the tape even farther back to when you were a teenager. Again, focus on a situation that made you angry or frightened. Relive the feelings, mentally and physically. Notice how the anger that you experienced yesterday has been built on emotions from so long ago.
Try now to remember an incident from childhood. What is the earliest time in your life that you can recall being really angry? Bring that experience into your awareness. Where were you when it happened? Who else was there? Who or what was it that made you so angry? Feel all the sensations created by that anger.
Notice how the fear and anger have accumulated over the years. Although you cannot remember it, there was a time in your life before you ever felt anger or fear, a time of total peace and tranquillity. Try to imagine what that experience of utter bliss might have been like. Focus on a time before fear or anger. Rewind that imaginary tape of your life until the screen goes black, and feel the boundaries evaporate between yourself and your surroundings. For the next minute, feel the total loss of all your accumulated anger, fear, and ego.
With that feeling of total bliss still in your awareness, begin to move that imaginary videotape forward again. Visit the same points in your life that you stopped at earlier—those angry or fearful moments from your childhood, your teenage years, a year ago, yesterday. As you envision these scenes again, introduce the experience of bliss back into the setting. Instead of allowing one moment of anger to build upon another, begin to erase these moments one by one, from earliest childhood to just yesterday. Spend a minute or so feeling the anger and fear being erased by this memory of bliss. And as those feelings are erased, allow the toxic buildup of years of anger and fear to be erased from your spirit.
You can use this exercise at any time to attack the anger problem at its roots. Many people find it especially useful at night, just before they go to sleep, so they wake up blissful and without residual anger.
Sutra Statements for the Fifth Principle
Imagine that you are without physical form, afield of awareness everywhere at all times.
(moksha)
Imagine that you have left behind forever any sense of anger or resentment.
(moksha)
Imagine that you are free from blaming, free from feeling blame and guilt.
(moksha)
Imagine that you are never drawn into melodrama or hysteria.
(moksha)
Imagine that you can choose any emotional feeling you want to experience.
(moksha)
Imagine that you can set any goal you want to achieve and actually achieve it.
(moksha)
Imagine that you are free of your habitual compulsions and patterns of behavior.
(moksha)
Imagine that you are free of any addictions.
(moksha)
Imagine that you never participate in any gossip.
(moksha)
Imagine that you are free to respond at the highest level, no matter what the situation is or how anyone else behaves.
(moksha)
Imagine that there are no limitations to what you can manifest.
(moksha)
Imagine that you can see infinite possibilities at all times.
(moksha)