Dallas Bragg compares emotions to waves that rise, crest, and recede. Instead of suppressing negative feelings or forcing happiness, he says to pause and ask the emotion what it's trying to teach you. This reflective practice is central to emotional transmutation and recovery.
Emotions, just like cravings, just like sexual urges, are waves. So if you can imagine it coming up like a wave, it comes up and it crests, just like in the ocean, and then it goes back. That's exactly how it moves. What we do though is when that emotion starts coming up, we find ways to suppress it. We don't want to feel it. We find ways to immediately be happy. We think to ourselves that we shouldn't feel this way, or we We do everything we can if it's a negative emotion to get rid of it, or we don't try to ask it, why are you here? What are you showing me? What am I to learn from you? All that kind of thing.
