Science tells us that everything is energy and that it is impossible to destroy. We also find this concept in spirituality. When you accept that each of us are just energy, you can begin to shed the fear of anger, loss, death, and the unknown.
If we think we can have peace and harmony all the time, we will be disappointed. The quest for unshakable happiness leads only to sadness when that happiness proves to be transient. While pain and happiness are both part of our experience, there are ways to move through the emotions that drain our energy, so we can return to balance and well-being.
1. Anger
Don’t fear anger – face it and feel it, and then let it go. Anger is a messenger that can tell you a lot about yourself and how you are controlling your reactions towards events in life. When anger arises, it’s a signal and reminder that you need to shift your energy. Stop, breathe, and think.
In your daily life, you can work though the steps of listening to anger, allowing yourself to feel it, deeply, then accept it and shift your energy. Anger will no longer be an enemy, but instead, an opportunity to focus your feelings and lead you down the path of peace and harmony. You will come to see that that anger is spontaneous energy, but so is love. If you realize that everything is energy, enlightenment is going to happen. Perhaps even in spite of yourself!
2. Depression
Anger may not look like depression, but they are different manifestations of the same thing. Anger is energy projected outwards and depression is energy projected inwards. With depression, you shut down and suppress the issues that are bothering you. You have to deal with anger and depression by surrendering and realizing that everything is a lesson. You are only here to experience life. The fact that you are not getting what you want can be simply healed by wanting what you get. You many not have had the kind of parents you think you should have had; that they screwed you up in a way that keeps you from living a full and happy life. You turn the anger in on yourself and it turns into depression.
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is accepting and cherishing what you get.”
Love is inherent in the universe, no matter how much pain and suffering there is. What you have to do is find the compassion in your own heart to love yourself, and even the parents or other people in your life, that you feel anger toward. This shift – from anger to love, acceptance and self-preservation – is a big step in changing the pattern of depression. Instead of blaming the world when you are having a hard time, stop and look inside. Take the energy of blame and shift it back into dealing with your own life.
3. Inability To Forgive
When we cannot forgive, we can become preoccupied with what happened and what we feel the person who caused it deserves. We spend a lot of time thinking about how it could have gone differently, what we could do to seek retribution, or how we wish the universe would serve our wishes for “payback.” The mental energy used to sustain this keeps so many of the more important aspects of our own lives from moving forward.
Forgiveness brings us back to the present as bitterness falls away. It is this moment, the “now” that matters, and if we live in the present everything in our life improves. Forgiveness is very much a partner of mindfulness. It puts things that have happened into the larger picture and creates an active decision – to forgive – into your hands, instead of feeling like a victim.
4. Attachment
If we trace where desires come from, we find fear. We are scared that we will not have love, or money, or status. We can even become attached to anger and resentment, sadness, or other emotions. Attachment exaggerates and distorts what we think we must have, and creates even more desire. More desire creates more attachments. It is a cycle that manifests into suffering.
In order to break the pattern we must begin to learn how to let desires go. When there is less desire, there’s less attachment and more room for growth and joy. Empty desire makes your world very small. Freeing yourself of desire expands every part of your life. It takes time and commitment, however, and a lot of patience. If you chase after a result, the energy of desire pushes away what you are looking for. When you desire something very badly, you can be absolutely assured it’s never going to arrive.
5. Grief
Loss shifts our daily lives, changes our perspective, and brings about questions that confront the very meaning of existence. The most profound grief is evoked when someone we care about dies, but grief can be a significant element of divorce, job loss, selling a home, losing a relationship, a pet dying, and more. Over the course of our existence, we will lose many people and things. Learning how to process grief with self-compassion and acceptance has a positive affect on our overall experience of life.
Grief is not an experience that lies outside of “the way life is supposed to be.” The only “way” that life is meant to be is a mix of joy and sorrow, achievement and disappointment, enlightenment and confusion, and every other kind of ebb and flow. Our western cultures tend to build a well-fortified denial of loss – especially death – that stands in the way of productive, healing grief. To repress grief is just as dangerous as misunderstanding it and allowing it to take over our psyche. Both denying grief and becoming obsessed with it will have adverse affects on the quality of life.
There’s A Book For That!
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