Emotions are appearances of awareness. There is no way to experience an emotion without awareness. This is why we say that awareness and emotions are not separate.
Like all appearances, emotions come and go temporarily. The emotions that are appearing today are different than those that appeared ten days or ten years ago. If emotions stick around, that means they are being “carried over” in time. To suffer is to carry something over in time, to make it part of the time-bound story of self. Awareness is our primary identity. Suffering happens when there is personal identification with whatever emotion is appearing and when the emotion is not allowed to follow its natural course. Its natural course is to appear and disappear fully, openly, uninterruptedly, and naturally within present awareness. This natural flow is seemingly disrupted as awareness contracts around the emotion, creating and maintaining the sense of a separate self (i.e., the “simulated self”) that is suffering in time.
We tend to hold onto or focus on emotions that we perceive as “good” and resist those that we deem to be “bad.” We spend a lot of time and energy trying to recreate the emotions we want and trying to get rid of the ones we don’t want. This constant movement towards good and comfortable feelings, and away from bad and uncomfortable feelings, is the spiritual search itself. In Living Realization, we define the spiritual search, very simply, as wanting something to happen other than what is happening now. This constant resistance to what is solidifies the simulated self that lives in time and believes its salvation or freedom is in the future rather than here and now.
In the story of the simulated self on a spiritual search, emotions are turned into a problem — something to eradicate, analyze, get rid of, or manipulate in some way. It may be helpful to see that emotions arise in conjunction with thoughts within one of the three bundles discussed earlier in the Triangle of the False Self. For example, the past bundle of thoughts may carry corresponding emotions of resentment, shame, guilt or some other movement or emotion. The present resistance bundle may carry anger or frustration. And the future bundle may carry fear or anxiety. But seeing that emotions arise in conjunction with thoughts is enough. No further analysis or manipulation is needed. That which sees each emotion is awareness and awareness is our real identity. That simple recognition is sufficient.
Insight arises from seeing that emotions are appearances within what we are. They are not what we are. For example, in the moment fear arises, you can bet that some future threatening thought is appearing. That seeing is enough. Don’t move to analyze the thought or manipulate the emotion. Just notice the thought and recognize that what is looking is spacious awareness. In recognizing awareness, the raw energy of the feeling can be felt directly without the mental label “fear,” “anger,” or “shame.” Awareness is the space from which the emotion seamlessly appears and disappears. Awareness has no agenda to get rid of or manipulate the emotion. Only a thought would seek to get rid of or manipulate an emotion. The emotion is not separate from awareness. The emotion is not happening to a “me.” The sense of “me” is just another appearance of awareness. It is the time-bound, thoughtbased simulated self we discussed earlier in this text. The thought “me” is a temporary appearance. Emotions happen within awareness. Stated another way, emotions arise and fall to no one. There is no person there to carry the emotion over “in time” and therefore to suffer. There is only space. Space naturally allows everything to be just as it is.
In Living Realization, the invitation is not to reach a state where nothing comes through or where all emotions, good or bad, are gone. Again, emotions are none other than the movement of awareness itself. Just as with thoughts, there is nothing to analyze, get rid of, manipulate or do with any of the emotions that appear and disappear. Everything is allowed to be exactly as it is. Everything is seen to be a seamless appearance of awareness. In fact, even when there is a movement to analyze, get rid of, manipulate, or do something with an emotion, that movement is also seen to be a seamless appearance of awareness. It is allowed to be completely. The “person,” which is the time-bound, thought-based self, cannot truly allow or accept emotions. Spacious awareness naturally allows and accepts emotions because space is inseparable from the emotion itself. Emotion has no separate existence from space itself. Therefore, in the deepest sense, everything just is. That recognition ends the need to do something with emotions. It reveals that the person who is on a spiritual search is not a real entity. The simulated self is just that . . . a simulation that arises from a misperception of what we really are.
Remember, keep it simple! Above all else, recognize present awareness right now. Don’t move to manipulate emotions. See that emotions are not separate from awareness.