Psychologist Dr. Bruce P. from Los Angeles, California helps relate the works of Eckhart Tolle with the world of 12-Step recovery. Negative emotions are problems for many people but perhaps especially for addicts. AA co-founder Bill Wilson struggled with depression for many years after getting sober. His letter sharing his experience on the subject is in the Show Notes. Dr. Bruce explores the troubling world of emotions offering us a solution to our pain through accessing the Power of Now.

Show Notes:

Bill Wilson’s 1953 letter on Emotional Sobriety

Eckhart Tolle Key Quotes on Emotions:

Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind. I am talking here primarily of emotional pain…Resentment, hatred, self-pity guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest irritation, are all forms of pain.

There are two levels to your pain: the pain you create now and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.

As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of past pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born. This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your mind and body.

The emotional pain-body has two modes of being: dormant and active. It may be dormant 90 percent of the time. In a deeply unhappy person it can be active 10 percent of the time. Some people only experience it in certain situations such as intimate relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional hurt, and so on.

Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern from your past…even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.

Some pain bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, like a child who won’t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters. Some are physically violent, many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host.

Thoughts and feelings you have about your life then become deeply negative and self-destructive.

The pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe the pain-body, feel its energy within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in, I call it Presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. You have found your innermost strength.

Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in whatever form---it may be the awakening pain body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, a need to have some drama in your relationship and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.

Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that is there. Don’t think about it--don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Stay present and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Allow the pain to be transmuted into peace.

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