Mind over Moods

Author: Gary Ratson

February 19, 2010

Gary Ratson`s E-Take is sponsored by Immunocal, the elite athlete nutritional supplement for muscular performance since 1996.

Everyone wants to be happy.  Each of us however has our own ideas of what that means.  Most seek happiness outside as tentative attachments to achievements, accumulations, and relationships hoping to God they don’t fall apart.  This insecure happiness requires a vigilant defence.  Genuine happiness as described by wisdom traditions and sages of every culture is experienced within as a way of being.  But to actually experience this inherent happy outlook requires us to realize that all our negativity is also sourced from within.

Stress, anger, pessimism and depression seem to be caused by everything else with a lot of blame to go around.  The filter that we interpret life through also acts to project the painful truth that lives within onto everyone else.  It all works very well so that the anger, revenge and excuses seem very justified.  It takes an uncommon wisdom to willingly face the demons we innocently created with the help from parents, teachers, and television commercials.  Luckily, negative attitudes and emotions manifest in the body as various tensions and sensations that provide a tangible way of getting our hands around the problem.

We know unhappiness is very physical because food, drugs, and drinks serve to alleviate it, at least temporarily.  If anger hormones and nerves were blocked we would be unable to experience anger merely as thought.  Physical sensations from lust to hate unknowingly push us toward all our desperate choices, behaviour and lifestyles.  The damn emotions themselves create the painful emptiness that we seek to alleviate.  In a crazy twist of fate, we inadvertently enslave ourselves with habitual reactions to childhood beliefs and misunderstandings.  Then in the name of happiness we further punish ourselves with subsequent vices and mortgages that pile on the grief.

The power to defuse emotional habits resides in the clear light of pure awareness.  Take a moment to examine yourself in the midst of resentment, greed, or despair. Instead of immediately indulging the feeling, quiet yourself to go directly into the physical experience.  Put all your attention on the body sensation triggered by the upset.  The muscle tension, the rapid heart rate, the upset stomach, dry mouth etc.  Objective observation gives you some distance, detachment and real picture of what is happening inside yourself. Begin with a few minutes and work up to half an hour.

Let go of labelling the sensations, stop the resisting and hating the experience, surrender any meaning of the discomfort.  Willingly accept, tolerate, even invite whatever the actual reality of the moment presents.  Without emotional hysteria of past memory the sensations are indeed tolerable.  Release the fear and resistance of previous experiences and drop into the physicality.  Realize that merely watching allows you to be separate and distinct from your feelings.  Painful experiences take place inside your mind and the light of awareness allows them release.

Physical sensations are energetic phenomena with limited supply.  Like a good bout of crying, the emotional surge eventually runs out.  Realize for yourself that concentrated focusing on literal feelings has a tangible healing effect.  Clear awareness is more powerful than physical symptoms when they have no emotion behind them.  This is the everyday miracle of realizing pure subjective consciousness is not all ‘in your mind.  You will gladly take responsibility for healing your pain with the certainty that lasting happiness always already exists as a physical peacefulness when all the stress and tension is burned away.

Think of symptoms as energetic symbols of innocent childhood programming that multiplies throughout life as ingrained adult behaviour.  Then add the infinite mystery and complexity of genetic predisposition, nutrition, environment, and culture.  Subtle physical energy builds up until it bubbles into awareness as psychosomatic pain and suffering.  Now all therapy, medication, and vices can be used wisely as temporary relief rather than suppressing a growing fear and resistance that eventually demands release.

Surrendering only feels like giving up, weakness, and cowardess when running from an external fight.  Now with radical honesty we admit to fighting ourselves and surrendering only to truth.  When the source of suffering is owned then the source of happiness is simultaneously revealed.  The truisms of psychology are then known legitimately within your own experience.

The whole project of seeking happiness is now in an authentic direction.  Empowerment leads to confidence, forgiveness leads to compassion, and humility leads to gratitude.  Blame becomes responsibility that reinforces personal power for a positive cycle of healing.  The world begins to look beautiful and benevolent through the clear eyes of a pure heart and mind. Inner growth is a lifetime journey but with integrity, willingness, and courage it is one of discovery, amazement, and joy.  Cheers

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