Talks - Emotional Healing

Negative emotions tend to swallow up the energy of attention
- Attention becomes “depressed”
If we can increase the energy of the attention, then the energy of the emotion decreases
Working with emotions, we develop:
- Capacity to hold and embrace what’s difficult (important aspect of healing)
- Confidence
- Courage
- Openness
It’s not an easy process, it needs, kindness, compassion, patience
- We also need to take a lot of rest from working with emotions

Assumptions About Emotions

We assume that finding the underlying cause of a trauma will bring healing
- We also assume that the negative emotions that come up are related to past experiences
- Rob had a lot of catarthic experiences, crying etc… but it didn’t bring lasting changes
- A lot of creating the difficult, just to heal it
  - But he would still go through all that
  - The process also brought a lot of heart opening
    - Rob is hesitant to discourage people from this kind of work
This view misses the dependent arising in the present
- There are causes and conditions in the present that make those emotions come up

We assume that just Feeling Through Emotions is healing, but that may not always be enough
- **Sometimes attending to the difficult (giving attention to the problem) may feed it **
- There’s a case to be made for skillful not attending (and instead focus on metta, nature, breath)
Rather, healing depends on the relationship we have with emotions in the present
- Nurturing a healthy, beautiful, balanced relationship with what’s there
- Even when there’s something difficult, we can bring sweetness and kindness to our attention
Kindness is key
- Can I meet myself and the emotions with kindness?
- Let go of any wish for it to go away

Mindfulness is one wing of practice, the other wing is Cultivation
- Cultivating beauty, kindness, metta, Samadhi, wonder
  - These qualities are builders of happiness
- Am I looking at these two as two balanced processes (mindfulness and cultivation)?

Emptiness practice
”Whatever’s happening is not mine, not me, not myself”
- Not even the awareness is me or mine
- Eventually experiences start to dissolve
- Can healing occur if no difficulty is arising?
- The amount of stuff that comes up is in relation to how much Self I am fabricating
Even the past is empty, we are co-creating our emotions in the moment with our views
- The views we have on Self, on others, on the past etc…