Why You Should Let Your Emotions Flow in 2023 | Eckhart Tolle on Trapped Emotions

Emotions do not make their home in you. You could have, let's see, I don't remember the last time I was angry. Well, I have to think. It's not that when you, when you awaken that you no longer experience emotions, certain emotions will still arise less than the unawakened state. But certain emotions, such as when there's the death of a loved one, you will feel an emotion, you will weep, and you will experience that emotion. The Zen master who experienced probably the emotion that he experienced, that he detected through becoming aware of the palm of his hands becoming moist, was probably anxiety. But these are different things, different causal factors for these emotions. The Zen master was justified in saying that I'm not, I'm still. This shows me that I'm still in the conceptual mind and I'm not free of. I'm not free of role playing ultimately, because the person who came to him had a particular social role and he proved that to be a reality. On the whole, though emotions are to be accepted and recognized as emotions. Every emotion that arises in you is something that you are aware of. And then you say, well, there it is. And the strange thing is the more you live in acceptance of the present moment, the less will you experience negative emotions. Because most negative emotions arise through non acceptance of the isness of things of the present moment. Some emotions may still be there, but rarely would you experience negative emotions. You may still, but they will be short lived. Emotions do not make their home in you. You could have. Let's see. I don't remember the last time I was angry. I'll have to. I can't remember. It can't have been very long, but it can happen. But it's short lived because the mind does not keep it alive. The emotion is there and an emotion arises. It's certainly an emotion of deep sadness arose when my parents died within the space of five months. They both died in the same year, although they lived in different countries. And so I went to the funeral of my mother in the summer and in the fall, suddenly my dad died and I went to the funeral of my dad. And then I was able to experience this sadness. And I cried a few times. I sat with my mother's body and I sat with my dad's body. And it was very clear that there was an emotion of pain. There was emotional pain. And it was also clear that there was a deep peace behind the pain. And this is what I described yesterday or whenever it was as the. The transcendent dimension, like the Buddha, the hint of a smile of the Buddha being in the background, that is. And that comes through acceptance. Through acceptance that arises more quickly and more strongly. When you accept something, there's still the emotion on the surface, and you accept the emotion, and then there's a peace underneath it. It's two things that when I talk about them, they almost seem incompatible, but they are totally compatible now. Without the transcendent dimension, it's a devastating experience. And without awareness. There are people who carry the sadness of the mourning of when somebody calls them, dies. There are people who carry that for. Not for a few months. They can carry it for years because in the lack of awareness, it gets continuously revived. The emotion is fed again and again by mind activity. And then you think all those memories and all that's gone. All the times we spend together, three years after they die, you're still weeping at night because you remember all those times, and it's all gone, it's all dissolved. And you're continuously devastated. That becomes dysfunctional. And that arises because there is not enough awareness in you. So the emotion makes its home in you and starts to. It kind of says, oh, I like to be here. Actually becomes incorporated into your pain body. And then you continuously suffer the same emotion which in an aware person, the emotion has a certain lifespan. The sadness, and then it becomes transmuted, and then it becomes. I still. Sometimes I look at photos. My mom, my dad. I have a. My mother, when she died, I had to. Within a space of a couple of days, I had to get rid of all her belongings because she lived in Europe. I could only spend a few days there. So I just rescued a few small items that I could take back home. One is a rug, and one is a little clock that she had had for 30 years. So it's a little clock in a glass dome, and it's electric, but it has this revolving thing that goes. And I had that when I visited my mom once a year. I would hear the room where I slept at my mom's place. I could hear the ticking of that clock around Christmas time. And I was there. I heard this tick, tick, tick. And now I have this clock at home, and it's still working. And this clock, to me is the memory of my mother. I look at it and I listen to the ticking noise. It's the memory of my mother. It is also a symbol of impermanence of all life forms. And once you accept the impermanence of all life forms, that brings about a deepening in you because you see how fleeting all this is. And then Suddenly you become deeper. And also this little clock which goes tick, tick, tick, that symbolizes to me the ticking is time. But in between the ticking, there is silence. And that is the timeless dimension. So this clock is more than a clock to me. But when I look at this clock, I no longer experience any painful emotion that is gone. I don't experience a painful emotion. When I look at pictures of my mom or dad, I all experience a deep peace and a very strong awareness of the fleetingness of all life forms. And that's a beautiful, very deep and peaceful thing. So in the presence of awareness, certain emotions are natural and are actually fine, but they have a relatively short lifespan. They don't make their home in you. Similar is somebody makes you angry, somebody offends you, somebody does something to you or takes something away from you. You may feel an angry reaction. And that anger reaction has a lifespan if there's awareness. Suddenly you're aware that you are angry. But there it is, you are angry, and you might even shout something in your anger. And then you are aware, okay, there's the anger, and then you become aware of the anger directly, which means it cannot make its home in you. And then it becomes transmuted. It's not as quick as the duck that I describe in one of my books. When the duck gets into a fight with another duck, the fight doesn't last long, and the energy builds up, and every duck, after they separate, they stop fighting, gets up on the water a bit and flaps their wings vigorously, the duck. And then after that, the duck becomes completely peaceful again. So this humans are not quite that quick, even aware humans. But metaphorically speaking, that's through awareness you're able to. The emotion is released and then it leaves you. So certain emotions have their place, and that's fine. But there are many, many emotions that are produced, negative emotions that are produced by mental dysfunction, such as you wake up in the middle of the night and there's enormous anxiety, and you start thinking about all the things that are going to go wrong. Or you start thinking about the past, and you have terrible regret, and you have resentment, and you have sadness, and you're thinking and thinking, and you feel more and more the emotion that corresponds to your thinking. And every night it happens. That is not the kind of emotion that is natural to you. It's not the kind of emotion you need to recognize. Where does this come from? It's produced by my thoughts. I am producing this emotion every night when I can't sleep. And even during the daytime, I am producing this emotion. And then if there's enough awareness in the moment of thinking those anxious thoughts, you suddenly know what you're doing. You suddenly realize what you're doing. And then you say, okay, you suddenly remember, oh, Eckhart talked about the inner body. What happens if I stop thinking these thoughts that are totally useless and completely unnecessary and harmful? Actually, why do I not instead choose to place my awareness in the inner body right now instead of thinking? So there's enough awareness, then you no longer produce all those emotions that are part of dysfunctional misuse of the mind, or rather being used by your mind. So all those emotions, as you become aware, you don't produce them anymore. Certain emotions remain, but their lifespan is short and they are seen for what they are, and that's fine. So do not believe that you need to arrive at a state where you no longer experience any emotion whatsoever. So some emotions go with the human form. They're part of the human form. There's a story, I believe I quoted it in one of the books. One of the ancient Greek philosophers, he belonged to the school of Stoicism, which is a wonderful philosophy. But Marcus Aurelius book Meditations is one of my favorite books, written 2,000 years ago. If you haven't read it, Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, is a beautiful, beautiful book, but that's the school of Stoicism. There was one Stoic philosopher, I can't remember his name. People came to him and said, you son has just died in an accident. They were, my God, your son has died in an accident. He fell off the horse. And the historic philosopher said, I knew he was not immortal. Now the question is, we cannot judge what he said because we do not know what out of what state of consciousness these words arose. Perhaps there was an emotion, but he didn't express it. Perhaps he had already repressed all emotions. It's possible. I like to believe that he was aware and the emotion was in him, but he didn't express it. And the statement was a statement that came from a deeper consciousness, which is very true, because death can happen to any of us at any moment. And I knew he was, and I don't know in what way he said it. Did he say it in a facile way? Oh, I knew he was. No. Or did he say it? I knew he was not immortal. So you could. Perhaps there was an emotion, but there was also a deep awareness there. So, same time, I love the Stoics, so I like to believe that there was an awareness at the same time. Thank you.