We are not – Daily Reflection – January 19, 2017

Sky and hillsideLast fall I took a 10-week meditation course at the Earth and Spirit Center. It was all about mindfulness meditation. Fr. Joe Mitchell was an excellent teacher. One of the building blocks to mindfulness is being able to detach from the clutter, chatter, and sometimes boredom of our minds. When attempting to meditate we need to have a grasp on the idea that we are not our thoughts and our feelings. That thoughts and feelings are impermanent, they will come and go. We need to learn how to stop attaching ourselves to our thoughts and feelings.

 

This was a difficult concept to understand. In our culture we say, “I am mad or I am happy” in other cultures people say, “I have joy or I have anger.” That person doesn’t consider the feeling to be a part of him/her. The feeling is a fleeting emotion that will come and go. Think about it for a moment can you go from extremely sad to laughing if the right person calls you? Has an emotion felt like it has taken control of you before and you just rode that wave uncontrollably? We are not our feelings. Our feelings are emotions that we feel sometimes to the core of who we are as a person but the feelings do not define our person.

 

We become obsessed with our thoughts. How often do we tell ourselves the same story time and time again? We console ourselves that we were right and that other person was wrong. We think about others in a certain way and our perception is perceived as our reality. When in reality our thoughts can and do change from one moment to the next.

Allow yourself to be freed from the attachment to thoughts and feelings. Allow yourself to feel and think them and then let them go. Stop repeating the story in your head. When you can step back and watch them fade (which they will) you will realize they are not forever and cannot control you. When you can step back and see them from a distance you will gain a sense of clarity you have likely never before experienced. Try it today.

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