To Heal, Feel What's Real

Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.

If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion or feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.

Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion… it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be best to... simply call it “pain.”

I am talking here primarily of emotional pain, which is also the main cause of physical pain, guilt, anger, depression, jealously, and so on — even the slightest irritation — are all forms of pain.

One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.

Some spiritual teachings state that all pain is ultimately an illusion, and this is true. The question is: is it true for you? A mere belief doesn't make it true. Do you want to experience pain for the rest of your life and keep saying that it is an illusion? Does that free you from the pain? What we are concerned with here is how you can realize this truth — that is, make it real in your own experience.

 

 

I began the process of helping him to focus on his feelings and regain a grasp on reality...

Dan Kiley, The Peter Pan Syndrome