Have you ever watched one emotion transform into another inside of you? It is a little bit like trying to watch the movement of the sun as it sets at dusk. Or watching the pot of water on your stove turn to steam when it boils. We know intellectually what will happen. We see evidence of the facts of what is happening over the course of minutes. But in the actual moment itself the transformation seems illusive, mysterious and even magical.
We know this because each evening when it is clear, somewhere in the world someone is gazing out at the horizon as the sun goes down, and is saying nearly out loud with a sigh, "wow!" even though the sun does this every single night.
Well, our emotions do too. Multiple times a day actually our emotions will set on the horizon. And I have become more aware of those magical moments through the practice of meditation.
Not because I necessarily try to alter my emotions in any way in meditation. In fact it is the opposite, I try to just observe my feelings and let them be- which is of course very hard, especially with the painful emotions. But I've noticed, some feeling states evolve on their own when you just let them be. And for me, there is a certain relief to that. Just like external nature, just like the water boiling and the sun setting, my internal world will also transform on its own, even if I can't quite see it with my own naked eye.
I remember the first time I noticed this transcendent experience. I was sitting in meditation and a medium-sized wave of sadness came over me. Not totally uncommon, but in this case had to do specifically with missing the dear friends I had just visited. Goodbyes have always been tough for me, and the feelings that tend to accompany them like sadness, but also loss, loneliness and sometimes fear. In the past I have coped with these emerging feelings following a goodbye by distracting myself. Keeping busy. Moving on to the next thing. Which is fine- there is nothing inherently wrong with that approach- sometimes distraction may be exactly what we need to do. But for me, I realized when I do distract from the painful emotions, I may be missing the opportunity to watch, for example, sadness evolve into a deep feeling of love as it did in meditation after visiting my friends.
I was reminded of this exquisite fruit of meditation recently when I re-listened to a radio interview from my favorite podcast "On Being" with Krista Tippett. She was talking with a woman named Joanna Macy who is, among other things, an environmental activist.
Ms. Macy described how she watches grief transform into love in respect to the catastrophic damage we humans perpetrate against the earth. She suggested that sometimes the grief can be so intense when we watch news about an oil spill or a nuclear explosion that we want to turn our attention away because it is too much, overwhelming. But, if we choose not to turn away, if we stay with the grief, over time, we will notice a transcendence occur where grief will evolve into love. Ms. Macy used the analogy of a parent who chooses to not turn away from their child who has leukemia. Though it would be understandable for the parent to react to their feelings of loss and sadness with avoidance, they don't. Instead, the parent moves toward their child in a loving manner.
I love this idea of transformation as a possibility if you stick with something, and in the case of meditation, you are sticking with yourself. But what I love more is the brief instruction to just be with the difficult emotion. That's it. The rest will take care of itself if "I" don't get in the way. So simple. So elegant. So difficult to practice for a do-er like me.
I will try though. Because the gifts to be received like compassion, love and forgiveness are too great to miss out on.
What about you? Can you try to stay with your difficult emotion long enough today to watch it transform into something else?
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