A favorite piece of wisdom I’ve gathered from American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron is the idea of, as she says it, learning to “stay with the raw feelings.” It sounds scary, and at some levels it is, but at the easiest level for me to get to this practice of staying with the raw feelings is natural, human, basic.
Photo by Benny Jackson (website)
In her book, Start Where You Are, Pema also talks about the two things we often do when we’re met with a negative feeling: the things we do often rather than staying with the raw feelings: we act out, or we repress. We either search blindly for an outlet – anger, blame – or we bury those feelings deep inside the caverns of ourselves where we promise never to venture again. And when we view it through that light, the process of staying with the raw feelings is actually the process of staying still, and we’re already physically equipped to do that; we’re already there, we just have to stay.
The fact is, so often these feelings that we’re experiencing – namely fear – are natural, healthy components of ourselves. Vigilance is what moves us in the direction of goodness and honesty. Fear helps us make smart choices and avoid everyday dangers. Rather, it’s our reactions to these feelings that ultimately breeds suffering – things like shame and disconnect with ourselves.
Oddly, as much as the visual of staying with the raw feelings seems like the most human, common thing to do…it isn’t. Acting out or repressing – letting ourselves be moved by these feelings in one direction or the other – is, for some reason, the thing we do instantly. We learn it somewhere along the way, and it’s almost as though we never learn the process of standing still. We learn how to run and how to fight, yet not, it would seem, how to simply plant our feet and be. That’s a process worth learning, no matter how late we come to it.
Ultimately, my goal – and, I think, one many people have – is to coexist compassionately with fear. It’s much more sensible than trying to eliminate it because that would mean to eliminate all aspects of it, including the ones that keep us safe. The really effective work, I’ve learned, is to eliminate the behaviors that aren’t serving you, the ones that involve acting our or repressing, the ones that keep us blind to the small cause at the base of them that could just use some reassurance.
