My question is, even being aware of your brewing reaction to an impending arguement… how do you disfuse your emotion when you are being verbally attacked? Remaining compassionate during a tirade of what seems to be an unprovoked assult is not something i seem to be able to remain consciously calm through. Although i suppose the famous saying goes “nobody does nothing for nothing..” correct…?

It’s good to see someone delving into these articles — they are definitely a bit more ‘deep’ and radical than my usual writings. It’s fun to be able to dialog with someone about these! =)

Sometimes, as we develop more awareness, things can seem even more tortuous in our lives. Instead of being totally ‘lost’ in our emotions, we feel like we can watch them arise, but are helpless to control them.

Usually, if we look carefully, we’ll find that this feeling arises because we are actually still trying to apply control to the situation. A person yells, we observe our response, and see (with some amount of displeasure) that it’s anger brewing inside us. On some level we feel this is inappropriate (perhaps inappropriate for someone of our level of awareness), and thus we resist the brewing emotion.

If we can truly observe, we’ll not only be able to see our emotions brewing, but will be able to also see our subsequent reaction to the process — and eventually we’ll be able to observe how this resistance (however subtle it is), is actually fueling the emotional response.

In other words, we don’t need to rationalize another person’s behavior (or our own), but simply to turn our awareness to it. The first thing we see is the basic emotions. Then we’ll see the resistance to those emotions. The result is that we come to understand the very process by which our ‘negative’ emotions are created.

It’s really all about ourselves. If we’re trying to understand the other person, we’ll never really be able to. But if we can see our own emotions/reactions/etc. with perfect clarity, we’ll no longer be ‘lost’ in them, and that will allow us to see both ourselves and others with perfect compassion. Nothing is expected of anyone, and the miracle is that we then find ourselves able to see everyone ‘just as they are’. When someone is yelling at us, we can just see the four-limbed creature waving its arms and making all sorts of loud noises, and we can understand, first-hand, the non-dualistic nature of that person. We could say we understand their suffering, or we could say that we understand their perfect ‘god-nature’. Because when someone is yelling at us, they are displaying both and neither.

Situations like these are perfect learning opportunities for us. The yeller is a great teacher. They’re giving us a chance to see our reactions, and to see how we want to alter the person or the situation. And all we have to do is watch, and notice when we start to rationalize instead of just observe.

It’s difficult to believe that observation can be so powerful, but this is simply because even when we think we’re observing, we’re actually just doing more ‘framing’ of the world. It’s that pure observing where awakening lies, and where the magic really happens. =)

Hope this helps!

Sweetwater,
Kenton

Thanks very much for the response! You are right. I”m afraid i’m going to have to trust in the powers of observation on this one and see where it leads me. It is true that i have only been onserving to a certain point. Makes sense that this would be the reason that i have hit a brick wall.

Will keep your comments in mind the next time something arises. Will keep you posted.

Thanks heaps,
Darkwyntr