Topics discussed include using emotions to dive into deeper parts of ourselves, ways to be with our emotions, the superego as our inner judge, the benefits of anxiety, anger, and sadness, and exploring the concept of doubt and its various manifestations.
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Quick takeaways
Develop the ability to be with emotions without clinging or pushing them away.
Cultivate mindfulness, compassion, and embrace doubt to dissolve illusions and embrace our innate wholeness.
Deep dives
Working with Emotions
Emotions, especially difficult and intense ones, are often the biggest challenge on the spiritual path. They can throw us off track and hinder our practice. The key is to develop the ability to be with our emotions without clinging or pushing them away. By cultivating mindfulness, we can observe our emotions without getting lost in the stories and judgments surrounding them. Emotions often arise in layers, starting with irritation or anger, then moving to sadness, fear, and ultimately love and forgiveness. By acknowledging and embracing these layers, we can gradually transform our relationship with emotions and use them as opportunities for growth and awakening.
Practical Steps for Working with Emotions
To effectively work with emotions, it is important to cultivate mindfulness and be fully present with the sensations and bodily experiences associated with emotions. Instead of getting caught up in the stories or triggers, bring attention to the physical sensations and explore what they feel like without judgment or resistance. This awareness allows you to create space and prevents automatic reactions. Alongside mindfulness, compassion plays a crucial role. By recognizing that others also experience similar emotions and suffering, you can cultivate empathy and extend loving-kindness to yourself and all beings. Finally, the Tantric approach involves seeing emotions as sacred and awakened energy, transcending the idea of good or bad emotions. Emotions are viewed as healing messages and opportunities for growth and transformation.
The Path of Love and God's Nature
Maharaji's simple advice to 'just love God' can be understood as resting in a state of love and openness. Loving God is more than a feeling or an emotion; it is a state of being and a recognition of the divine within ourselves and others. This complete and boundless love extends to everything and everyone, transcending ideation or judgment. Resting in the heart and approaching every experience, person, or situation with love and compassion is a path to spiritual awakening. Doubt often arises, challenging our ability to love unconditionally, but the spiritual journey involves dissolving this doubt and embracing our innate wholeness and connection to God's love.
Facing Doubt and Embracing Wholeness
Doubt is a significant obstacle on the spiritual path, particularly the doubt that we are whole and connected to divine love. This doubt arises from conditioned beliefs and judgments that we inherited from our upbringing and society. Spiritual practice involves addressing and questioning this doubt, gradually realizing that it is an illusion. Through mindfulness, compassion, and glimpses of our true nature, we can dissolve doubt and embrace the understanding that we are already whole and complete, and that everything we do, think, and say is beautiful in the eyes of the divine.
Using mindful awareness and compassion, RamDev walks listeners through the pathways to emotional freedom.
Check out Ram Dev’s new online course, A Practical Guide to Freedom: The Stages of Awakening, where you will come away with the wisdom and practices to integrate and embody the stages of the spiritual path so you can begin to surrender into the boundless nature of the heart.
This time on Healing at the Edge, Ram Dev looks into:
Using emotions to dive into deeper parts of ourselves
Peeling through the layers of emotions
Ways to be with our emotions
Being with our sensations without getting lost in the story
Love and the ability to forgive
I am afraid versus I have fear
Creating space between the emotion and the one who observes
The superego (our inner judge, jury, and executioner)
Embodied mindfulness and compassion
Having compassion for our emotional demons
Tantra and all emotions as awakened energy
Turning obstacles into practice and presence
The benefits of anxiety, anger, and sadness
The sacred nature of all experiences
“With attention, with being centered, we move from being reactive to a place where we can be with an emotion without either automatically pushing it away or automatically getting lost in that.” – RamDev