“If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not bring it forth, what you do not have within you will destroy you.” Gospel of Thomas

Feelings come up, no matter who you are or where you stand. There is a simple and effective way of becoming a willing conduit for these surges, and you can do it on your own. Let anger be anger, sadness be sadness, fear be fear…just long enough to feel what that is in your body. Let go of the label anger, fear, or sadness (whatever it seems to feel like), and observe what’s left. Drop into the sensation in the body. Experience that, fully. Let it be there. Don’t try to get rid of it. Don’t give up before it’s experienced to completion. Notice that if story lines come up, there might even be more contraction, more intensity. Drop the story, the reason or circumstance you attribute to this “emotion,” and just sit with the pure physical sensation, whatever it wants to do, wherever it wants to go.

This is not a way to get rid of feelings, or to hurry them through so that you can get on with the more pleasant aspects of life. This is a way of completely and totally honoring the moment as it presents itself. In the end, you see that it is just energy. Not a drama, not the end of the world, not suffering, just energy. Could be a very powerful energy, or could just be a wimpy little energy that was hanging around till it was noticed.

It’s in the air; it’s buried deep under layers of defense mechanisms. It will come up. It’s been coming up all your life. You can let it remain buried, with intermittent outbursts occurring for the rest of your life, or you can expose it to the light of day, transmute it, and thereby release it into the circulating creative force of energy that upholds life. Let it move through the body. And in the process, you will come to see, and free up, the colossal amount of effort and energy required to keep these energies down. Repression commands an inordinate amount of energy, and takes its toll on the body/mind. One has only to look in the mirror to see the results of this futile but constant exertion.

Who knows if this is true, what this thing called energy really is, or if there is an actual process of moving through and releasing? Nothing is certain. But it does seem to be the case that these things we call feelings arise, that they appear to make us want to cry or punch a wall, or get drunk, or let ourselves be loved. It is an act of love to let them pass through.