Ever been kicked in the guts by life? Whether it’s because you lost your job, or broke up with a partner. Feeling like the world is a pressure cooker and things are feeling bad?
You are not alone! It seems as human beings, we are bound to experience feeling bad. Subject to life and its endless assaults.
Or are we?
What if everything that is happening to us, is happening for our highest good? What if it was our belief systems judged the worldly happenings as either good or bad? Too often things that appear “bad”, have resulted to be the best things for us. To illustrate this example, I will use the story of the old farmer and his son:-
There was an old humble farmer who owned a horse. One day his horse broke out of its enclosure and ran free. The villagers were aghast, and exclaimed to the old farmer “Oh what bad luck!”, to which the old man simply replied “Maybe”.
The next day, the the horse returned with three other wild horses. “How wonderful” the villagers exclaimed, to which to old man merely replied “Maybe”.
The following day, the farmers son broke his leg when he was thrown while trying to tame the wild horses. The villagers came and exclaimed “What misfortune!”. Once again the old farmer replied “Maybe”.
The day after, military officials came to draft young men into the army. Upon seeing that the sons leg was broken, they passed him by. The villagers exclaimed “How fortunate!”. Once again the old man replied “Maybe”.
The moral of this story is that we are trained to only perceive our immediate surroundings, and based on that we decide whether the situation is good or bad for us. Using this way of thinking leads us to emotional turmoil, as we become subject to the ebb bad flow of life.
The Hermetics were well aware of this, and they talked about it in the 7 Universal Laws. Specifically, this relates to the law of polarity, and the law of rhythm.
The Law of Polarity states that that everything is on a continuum, and has an opposite. For instance you can not have hot without cold. The truth being that they are both temperature, but just varying degrees of the same thing.
Whether something is good or bad then, ultimately is a perception of the same continuum. Like the story of the old farmer, good appeared bad, while bad appeared good.
The Law of Rhythm states that everything in our reality must swing or pulse. Like a pendulum that moves to the right, must eventually move to the left. We see this in nature as the tides which come in and flow out rhythmically. The seasons must cycle, day become night and so on.
In 3D reality, we as humans are also subject to this. In our example though, our emotions must cycle from one to another. For instance, we can not stay forever in a state of extreme anger, or joy, or even sadness. These feelings must cycle too.
The crafty human knows how to transcend these cycles!
At some point, through life’s experiences, we want to transcend being subject to the throws and punches of life and want to master our thoughts and emotions. Extreme emotions and feelings only exist in the physical manifest world as opposed to the mental or spiritual world.
Emotions are usually a result of thoughts and beliefs. The two go hand in hand. For instance, something reminds you about a person that you have had an argument with, and you feel a surge of injustice or anger. Your thought precipitated that emotion!
Unfortunately, our thoughts never end and often are running rampant. If our thoughts could be heard as sound, it might sound quite cacophonous leading to a rush of emotions, quite often jammed in at the same time.
Many traditions have recognised this and have developed techniques to temper the raging emotions. Most of them require the “taming of the monkey mind”. That is why meditation is such a useful tool.
When the mind slows down, we have the ability to become clearer in our thinking. Clearer thinking means that the pendulum of changing emotions starts to lose its wild swing. The oscillations become less evident leading eventually to equanimity.
Technique to Quieten the Mind:
Sit in s comfortable spot with your back straight. A chair is fine, or cross legged, so long as you feel comfortable.
Take 3 deep breaths. On the exhale, just let go and relax.
Let your mind observe your breath. A first you may feel like you need to control your breathing, but as time progresses, you will notice that the you will control it less.
Let the breathing be natural, and soft.
Every time your mind wanders, bring it gently back to focus in the breathing.
After a few minutes, bring yourself into greater stillness, by gently holding the breath at the end of an inhale, and and the end of an exhale. You only have to hold for a second, but in that second just bring your awareness to the absolute stillness between the breath.
If your feeling more advanced, then start to bring that stillness between the breath and to bring it into the actual act of breathing in and out. Your mind and breathing will have to be very calm to hold this state.
Taming the mind is not an easy thing, but a thousand mile journey begins with the first step. Life is bound to throw curveballs at us that make us feel totally unbalanced. It is through the states of being unbalanced that we often clarify exactly what it is that we really want.
The above article is mainly to introduce you to techniques to start your journey to abate being on a roller coaster of emotions. If you want to learn more, I suggest that you study the 7 Universal Laws of the Hermetic tradition, or read Dr Joe Dispenza’s book “Becoming Supernatural”.
