FindingPeace

I want to add something to my last comment about 'caring'. I was doing some deep introspection yesterday and I had an important realisation on this subject. So I've made the claim that we really only 'care' about people because those people in some way provide value to us. That our 'caring' is conditional upon that value. Actually, another word for 'care' would be 'value'. "I value you...", "I value your happiness or your health.." etc But whilst trying to resolve some inner feelings I was having yesterday I discovered another form of caring that contains a vital ingredient: empathy - 'the ability to understand and share the feelings of another'. Effectively empathy means that we can relate to and identify with the thoughts and feelings of another person. It's not something we really have a choice in. We either empathise or we don't. It is an in-built mechanise within our brains and many social animals share the ability. What's the relevence of this? I realised that it is possible to care about someone because you empathise with the way they think and feel. It's kinda like a 'mind-meld'. A form of psychological intimacy. Because if you empathise with someone then you feel and think as they do. You effectively experience what they are experiencing. You 'become' them. You have no choice but to care about them as if they were you, and to treat them as if they were you. To empathise is as close to selflessness as we can get as an egoic species. Think about the last time you tryully empathised with someone and how that felt. The beauty of empathy is that it isn't confined to specific situations. We can empathise with other people's positive as well as negative emotions. We can empathise with their daily thoughts and feelings. In fact this is the key ingredient missing from most relationships. With empathy there is no need to criticise, blame or argue because you know how and why the other person is thinking and feeling. To criticise and blame them would be to criticise and blame yourself. It seems to me that mutual empathy is the key ingredient of a healthy, functional relationship. To be able to identify with and relate to one another gives you no choice but to treat them with the respect and selfless care that you would give yourself. From this reasoning I believe that it is possible for unconditional caring and love, although for the most part within society this key ingredient is missing. I see very few, if any, relationships or human interractions where one or both people actually empathise with each other at all. Mostly what I see is self-agenda and selfishness. We're all guilty of this, myself included. Some people aren't capable of empathy. Narcissitic people in particular. This is why narcissistic parents are incable of showing genuine love or caring to their children or partners. But empthy is not a given thing. We can have it in some situations and not in others. We can share it with some people but not others, or not all the time. But we can practice it. By raising our awareness and placing ourselves in others' positions, making more effort to understand the 3rd person perspective. But sometimes it just happens, automatically, with certain people. I also realised that this concept of empathy has a connection with enlightenment. Enlightenment is effectively empathy for all of reality. To relate to and identify with reality itself and treat it as if it were you and you were it. That is empathy. I've spent a lot of time trying to work out what makes for healthy, selfless, human interractions and relationships and I think this is the answer. Mutual empathy. The one thing largely missing from society and intimate relationships. So perhaps if more people persued and attained enlightenment, the world truly would become a better and more selfless place.

Maybe it's the human hand that perfectly fits the banana.. Would certainly make more evolutionary sense that way around.

This is an interesting topic. It addresses a realisation I came to a few months ago. And this is it. When you really look in to it you discover that people only care about others because those others serve their agenda in some way. We all do this. Think about why you care about anyone - your parents, your siblings, your wife, husband, child, friend... If they left you how would you feel? Empty, invalid, unapreciated, lonely.. As living beings we only operate from our own selfish agendas. We don't care about anything that has no reward for us. It's the truth. Deep down. The only thing is, some people 'care' at the other's expense whereas others 'care' and actually give something too. But here's the thing - so why do we want people to care about us? Because we get something from them. We're all actually playing the same game, working from our own agendas of "what's in it for me?". We care for someone because they in some way give value to us. Likewise, we want to be cared for by someone because we get something from them. So what do we do with this? The question to ask is, why do you need to be cared for? It's easy money. We all want a freebie. It's easier to take something from others than to cultivate that thing for ourselves. Giving away responsibility rather than taking it. The reality is that we should all care for ourselves, independently from everyone else in our lives. Remove the need and dependence on others. Take responsibility. But this is harder and requires more emotional effort. However, when people do offer us their 'love' and 'caring', sure it serves them in some way, but if they are offering something that we can use, offering us some value, then we can take it and accept it, for as long as it lasts. There really is no such thing as unconditional caring or love. It's always great until it stops serving the 'giver' at which point they walk away to find someone else to provide whatever value it was they were seeking. I'm not saying this in any kind of negative "what's the point" way. It's just a fact of reality. A fact of life. There is no escaping the selfish agenda of humankind - the pursuit of comfort, security, validation and approval. Some people need these things more than others. Those that do will be more likely to pursue them at the expense of others and offer more conditional love and caring. Those that need those things less will be more genuine in what they are offering and less conditional. For me the moral of this realisation is to become independent of the 'value' that other's 'offer'. Value ourselves, care about ourselves and love ourselves. Then it no longer matters what anyone else says or does. We can accept what others give us and be ok when they take it away and leave us. In fact we will seek value from others much less if we take more responsibility for our own happiness and our own lives. What is value? I googled it: the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. All comes back to the same thing. Do we have 'value'? Only to someone who derives some value from us that suits their agenda. Value is in the eye of the beholder. The only value we need is to ourselves. Value yourself, for your own agenda. We're not here for the benefit of others or to serve others or to please others. We're here for our own benefit. To find our own value and most importantly to value life itself in whatever way works for us.

Pretty awsome...now my brain hurts..

Another way to reframe this is to say "Today I'm going to stop smoking, but I might smoke again tomorrow". And do it, for the day, knowing that you can start again the next day. Then, the next day, do the same again. The problem comes when people decide they are giving up forever. That is too hard a pill to swallow in the initial instances. Give up for a day at a time knowing that at any time you can come back to it. Yes, it sounds non-comittal, but it is less of a pill to swallow giving up on consistent short-term basis. After all, there is not failure in the occasional lapse provided you try and try again. It's too easy to think that if you lapse once or twice then it'll never work and it's not worth trying. Keep on picking yourself up and giving up smoking again for whatever time-period you want. I know someone who did this, gave up on a daily basis but left himself open to starting again the next day. He never smoked again...

@Philip Just sayin' is all.. When you get the "holy shit, I'm not watching the dream, I am the dream" moment, I guess that could be what enlightenment is like. When you realise you're not the dreamer but the dream itself, or not a character within reality but reality itself. Sounds pretty cool. Could be complete bs though. Either way, both lucid dreaming and enlightenment do require huge amounts of mindfulness to happen.

@shouldnt Leo has some really powerful life-changing videos. The first one I came across was the "How to stop being a victim". There was profound insight right there. Then I went on to watch "Responsiblity vs Blame". I think these are the two most fundamental and important personal-development videos. His other ones on happniess, judgement, stress, worry, depression etc all lay down the foundations for the inner work that has led me to where I am now. I often think that it is these fundmental psychological concepts that are more important than all the external action and creation of the 'extraordinary life'. The extraordinary life begins once we remove all the negative and limiting thinking patterns. From there on we can take more constructive external action based on more positive and healthy psychology. If only everyone took time out to do this in life. Sometimes I think that people spend so much time taking big external action, thinking they are self-developing, when in fact all they are doing is trying to distract themselves from their neuroses and insecurities and convince themselves of their apparent success. I guess this is what Leo was describing in his "Fake growth vs real growth" video. Taking time to focus on yourself, explore your passions whilst doing the cruicial inner work first seems like the healthy way around to do things. It is what I too am doing. I want to get the inner-work down first and then take a look out in to the world with a clear lens. I wish you the best

@Philip You could say that enlightenment is analogous to lucid dreaming, except you are becoming lucid within reality itself.

I think thoughts have a lot to do with conscious-awareness as it is this that actually observes them. Otherwise there is just brain activity with no observer or interpreter. I observe my thoughts when I meditate and have noticed how they generally provide commentaries on the the present moment, or reflections/recreations of past situations or concepts as well as simulations of future situations. So it seems to me that thoughts are about 'preparation' and reasoning out courses of actions and consequences. This process seems to occur continuously. There doesn't seem to be any way to control or influence the thoughts, however the one thing we do have control over, to a point, is our focus and attention. Although this comes with practice, which comes from meditation. I find that by consciously focussing my attention on, say, the present moment (sensory inputs) then my conscious-awareness observs that and not the thought stream. However the thought stream has an annoying habit of sneakily taking back your attention and awareness. So once I become conscious of this I re-focus my attention back on the present moment. For those short periods where I am focussed on the outside world I am not aware of the thought stream. To me the goal of meditation is to become better at maintaining attention on external stimuli rather then internal thought-stories thereby reducing monkey-mind. But to answer your question "What determines our thoughts", it would seem that they are a manifestion of the general brain activity, which itself is a manifestation of the current state of the body and the surrounding environment as well as the preceding states.

This is a good point. The problem with giving is that people will take. And the more you give and the more often you give, people will not think twice at coming to you for help. It's human nature, we can all do this without even realising it. People in society have an unhealthy habit of not taking repsonsibility for themselves and relying on others to do their work for them. Yet, as the same time it can be healthy and rewarding to offer to help one another. It's a tricky balance between selflessly contributing and not becomming a doormat. Good point. I think it is important that some people learn to take responsibility for themselves. There is a difference between people that need help verses those who just can't be bothered to help themselves (take responsibility).

This is a really good question and something I have thought about lately. Here's my take on it. I enjoy listening to music but have come to realise there is an unhealthy side-effect of the lyrics in just the same way that other media like movies and books portray unhealthy belief systems. As we do more personal development we start to learn about the dysfunctional and faulty beliefs that we are conditioned with by society, particularly surrounding topics like relationships and love, which is what most song lyrics describe. Now, when I hear song lyrics, I can hear the stories of co-dependency and selfish/misguided love within them. Which can spoil the songs a bit. The problem comes if we start to buy in to the lyrics and associate with them. If we believe their content and apply it to our own lives. And of course, when we are feeling down about something, or even good about something, what do we do? Put on a song that reinforces the feeling and that we can relate to. Make ourselves feel even more down when we've had a relationship problem, for example. Which may not necessarily be encouraging a healthy mindset. I think the key is to enjoy the music for what it is without buying in to the 'story' of the lyrics. Maintain a detachment from them. I can't speak for others but for me it is the tune that I get caught up with and not the lyrics anyway. But like any form of media (movies etc) it's important not to follow the examples set by the stories or lyrics, and to understand that they may be depicting unhealthy beliefs and behaviours. Don't copy what you see or hear and don't apply it to your life. However you can still enjoy the artform and entertainment value.

Upcoming travel plans: End of the week I'm getting away from the miserable weather of the UK to visit Australia, for three weeks. Heading over to Queensland to check out the rainforests and Great Barrier Reef, road trip south to the Whitsunday Islands, then a flight over to check out Sydney. Really looking forward to it. Hoping to keep up the mindfullness and make the most of taking in the scenery. I'll be taking a break from actualized.org and the forum until I get back.

I thought this forum was a place where we can share thoughts and ideas. Not somewhere where we get abused for doing so. It is a shame that people have to come here and mouth off in defensive and abusive ways. There is nothing healthy or productive about that nor is it conducive to personal development or helpful to anyone browsing this forum with curiosity and interest. I am only here to share ideas, not impose them. I make no claims to be any kind of expert or that my ideas have any basis in truth or reality. I just through them out there for people to decide for themselves or to spark thoughts and questions. I shall continue to share my ideas. Whether people find them interesting and engaging or consider them bullshit, is up to them. And likewise, I will use my own critical analysis of what I read here and anywhere else.

I agree with this. Many needs are thought-stories and beliefs, and a lack of understanding of the underlying motivations. Many of them are more closely related to 'fake growth' - patching over root causes like insecurities, than they are to genuine growth - getting to the root. This is fair enough. As Leo teaches in many of his videos, personal-development is about doing empirical investigations on ourselves and creating our own evidence and doing our own research. We won't all come out with the same findings. Who has the right findings? I have no idea. To some extent it is largely irrelevant provided that we each find a path that works for us and promotes our own growth. Which is effectively what you said here: But it is an interesting discussion. I was thinking about this earlier and something struck me about human psychology. My previous analogy about needs being something we view as a container that we see as 'empty' led to a realisation that this sums up human behaviour. We see everything as a blank canvas or an emoty container. We feel the need to 'fill' everything. We have to create religion to fill the 'emptiness' of not knowing about creation, reality and the nature of our existance. We create technology because we can, and to not have it feels empty and lacking. We feel empty in our lives until we fill our lives with relationships, children, careers, friends and family, material objects. Life seems so empty that we fill it with music and social networking. A room with nothing in it looks 'empty' so we fill it with furniture and decorations. Life seems boring so we fill it with entertainment and stimulation. To do nothing seems dull so we fill our time with activity and pursuits. Give someone a blank sheet of paper and a pen and they will feel compelled to fill the space. And so on. The human species seems compelled to 'fill' life. It perceives 'deficiencies' and creates 'needs' from these. Then we spend our lives trying to fill these needs. There seems to be something in this. It seems to point to the root cause of human behaviour and the consequential suffering that we feel from the failure to keep juggling all these needs and maintain them. Most other species of life concern themselves only with aspects of survival, otherwise living in relative peace, satisfied with the simple reality that they perceive. Whereas we can't find satisfaction in anything because there is always something that can be 'filled up' some more. We can't just 'be', we have to be neurotically looking for ways to make our lives more 'interesting' and less painful. It all seems to be a consequence of that fancy brain we have developed, our ability to conceptualise, remember and our development of language. If anything our development as a species is our very undoing and cause of our own suffering. Most of humanity appears to be living in a half-empty glass. Food for thought.. @Nomad What's the deal here? First it was: and now it's or was that meant for Leo? I don't know. But the evidence about the damage to a childs brain is a different subject. Children have important needs that required to be met so that they can form healthy mindsets and be prepared for their adult life. On the other hand, the kind of needs they have will depend on the ultimate nature of their adult environment and the skills they will need to survive in that. But that's a whole other subject.

@shouldnt I can relate to so much of what you wrote. There are strong parallels with my own life. This I can relate to strongly. Good question. One I've found myself asking. When I think about all things I've thought were 'needs', like hobbies, interests, relationships, careers, money, location, travel etc, I realise how adament I was about each of them and how if anything was 'missing' I would feel lacking. But circumstances in my life have actualy led me to not being able to follow up on most of these things. I lost direction and gave up control of my life, winding up with very little in terms of personal 'needs' being met. For some time this created a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and emotional problems, also depression. The combination of learning more about inner-work, learning more about our psychology and what is 'real' and what isn't, so to speak, and being deprived of 'needs' led to me having multiple epiphanies about them. I've spent a lot of time developing acceptance for reality and of my situation. In doing this I have become very at peace with myself even though I no longer have much of what I previously believed I wanted or needed. I now see these things as a 'supplement' to an already peacful existance. Is peace a valid motivation? Is it a way of avoiding responsibility? Perhaps, depending on your root drives it could be a diversion tactic, or perhaps it could be a genuine need in itself. From my perspective seeking a peaceful existance comes before persuing the 'other' stuff. I am working on the theory that it is possible to be completely at peace with one's self and the world with very few needs at all. After all, with complete peace of mind, what action needs to be taken? There comes a point when the 'dreams' become unnecessary. But we can still pursue them if we wish to. I can't speak for your situation. Whether your ego is telling you that you should be doing something, or whether you genuinely are happy being peaceful without the need to actively pursue 'greatness', that's something you need to introspect on over time. Two things here. Firstly you are admiting fear of exploration. So that is something that is playing out in your life and influencing your actions. Yes, the stability thing. Hear this one alot. Society imposes this feeling of doom and gloom should we not have the right job and the right amount of money and so on. We all fall for this one. Yet there is truth that we need a certain amount of stability to act as a platform to work from. Noone says you have to give up anything for the pursuit of peace. It's not so much giving things up, although it does help, but it's more about accepting the limitations of those things and their effects on you and your needs. It's not your ego fearing poverty. That's a survival need. One that can't be eliminated. But at the same time, can you quantify the need? What denotes hunger and homelessness? Moving from a $million mansion to a cheap rental apartment? Going from extravogant banquets to self-sustainance? The problem with the 'stability' thing and the worrying about loosing it all thing is that it is compared against your expectations of what you think you need. How much money, what sort of house etc The need may be genuine and permanent but what is required to satisfy that need is subjective. And we often don't give it serious enough thought. Just have a vision of what 'looks' right. What feels comfortable. What is familiar. I'm rambling on now.. Likewise I'm starting to see Leo's goal.. As for root need, not sure on that one. Lots of fears being mentioned though. Fear of uncertainty, fear of failure. But also I think it's about questioning and quantifying the need. It's like I said previously - we act on the belief of a need without truly understand what the need is asking for and what, if anything, can even satisfy it. It can take time and a lot of introspection to really drill down to the roots of these things. I'm still doing it. However it can be hard to do when you alread have a framework of needs and sources that it holding your current 'world' together. From my own perspective, comming from a place where I have little of that framework other than a comfortable house, food on the plate and some chance to travel from time to time, it is easier to do the analysis because there aren't the comforts and 'go to' things to cloud my view.

I get this too. I try to take the advice Leo has given in some of his older videos: "Notice the feeling but don't judge yourself for it." Easier said than done. I still feel bad for egoic reactions but I remind myself that I am not fully developed yet and that I am still working on myself. Therefore I have to accept that I will continue to have these reactions for a while. Being aware of them is the important part. I also take some time to reflect on it afterwards and how I could have felt differently about the scenario. I ask myself why there was an egoic reaction and what it was, within me, that had caused it. It happens though, and it will do for a while. It's part of the journey. At least you recognise that it happens and have intent to work on it.

At peace with myself and the world. Preferably without too much suffering. If it isn't instant or during my sleep then I would like enough time to meditate and become purely mindful, to reflect upon life and remind myself "there is nothing to judge about this situation, it is reality playing out, it is neutral, life was beautiful and I am glad I had the chance for conscious awareness". Then again, it's a moot point anyway as we don't really get a choice. It will be what it will be. Most importantly I want to be at peace with everything and be 'ok' with it.

This theme seems to come up over and over on this forum. I can even relate to it myself. There certainly seems to be a rift or detachment that grows between the self-developing person and the nonself-developers. Perhaps Leo could address this in an upcoming video. Seems like a pertinent point. But this theme is not confined to personal-development. It's an inherent side-effect of any kind of 'deviation from the norm'. People that go off on dedicated and passionate paths that are quite different to what others can associate with or relate to will often find themselves becomming less interested in the 'normal' people and more interested in others who are doing something similar. Does this mean that we cannot accept people in our lives that don't 'fit in' with our personal development? Do we leave them behind? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think. It becomes harder to relate to one another when others are stuck in low-awareness and dysfunctional beliefs and habits, but as long as we don't allow them to hold us back and as long as we remain detatched from their narrow world veiw, we can continue our journeys. Sometimes we may have to let go of aspects and people from our lives in order to move on. Not everyone is conducive to our growing lives. I guess the most important thing is that we don't judge them for their perspectives. Maybe they don't get it, or laugh at it dismissively, so we keep it to ourselves and those who we can talk about it to.

@Nomad @shouldnt Let's have another go at this one. There is no defined method as such and no resource as this come only from personal experience from deep introspections and mindset-reframes. Also, I didn't say that all humans needs can be eliminated. What I implied was that it is possible to elliminate some needs. Maybe not for everyone or every need. But the possibility exists. My theory comes down to this: Many needs are believed to be true but are often a misdirection of some otherm deeper need. They also aren't really understood. So we may feel the 'need' for love, for example, without actually knowing what that need really is and what would actually satisfy it. Also, what are needs? Are they a 'given' thing, are they genetic and hard-wired in to oue brains? Or are they 'software' - condtioning through childhood, environment and culture? Are needs 'hard' or 'soft' - fixed or malleable? I hold the theory of them being conditioned beliefs. But, that said, there are some fundmental basic needs that we, along with all lifeforms, have that are required for survival. But these are rarely the cause of people's daily suffering and dysfunctional lives. Most problematic needs are perceived from limiting or faulty beliefs. But the root cause of many needs is a feeling of 'lacking'. That is to say that we feel that something is 'missing' that needs to be obtained. The best analogy I can think of is this: imagine a drinking glass. There is nothing in it. We see it as a container and that when it isn't containing anything that it is 'empty'. Because we see it as a container we understand that it 'needs' to contain something. But what if we stopped looking at this glass as a container? Removed that label and expectation? Then it would no longer be 'empty' and no longer require filling up. We do this with ourselves. We look at aspects of our lives and see them as 'containers' that are empty. We relentlessly search for ways to fill these containers but we don't really know what the containers actually needs, what fits, and what will stisfay that need. Once we do fill it with something we spend our lives trying to avoid loosing it and becomming empty again. So I surmise that it is possible to re-evaluate some of our needs and reframe our belief that they are containers that require filling. And that there is no ideal set of external circumstances that will completely and reliably fill it anyway. This is the other point - realising the futility with some needs. That actually there is no perfect solution that will satisfy them. This I can relate to. When I have realised that something I thought I needed in my life is actually unobtainable in reality. That I can waste my life chasing something that I can't even define acurately because I never inverstigated the nature of the need in the first place. Once I realised that not only did I not truly understand the root of the need, and that nothing would satisfy it anyway, the 'need' effectively dissolved. It effectively turned out to be a neuroses and not a need at all. This might be something unique to the specific examples of my own life, and in time I may discover that I'm only lying to myself. Possibly. But I think we should remain open to the possibility of this concept rather than accepting the contrary as truth. I see that as a limiting belief that could prevent many people from addressing the roots of their needs and actions. It may be that needs cannot be eliminated. But it is my preference to believe that they can as it provides a potential door we can go through rather than blocking any efforts of even trying to go through it.

There isn't really a point in leaving a legacy. Never mind about the world ending, no legacy is likely to last that long anyway. In any case, once you're gone, youre not going to care less about your legacy. So as far as you are concerned there isn't a point. As far as anyone else is concerned that is still around after you're gone, if your legacy serves them in some way, then they'll say there's every point. It's all a bit of a moot point really.

I posted this other one somewhere else on here but here it is again:

There is a difference between 'questioning' and 'doubting'. To doubt implies some kind of fear of a consequence to the realisation that something may not be as it seems. To question is to be empirical and impartial, without trying to derive value from it. At least those are my interpretations of them. Yes, study yourself openmindedly and impartially. Ask questions, be prepared to challenge existing beliefs. But there isn't anything you need to doubt. Sure, you may discover that some beliefs are false, and that you were on the wrong track previously. But that is an empowering realisation as it allows you to make positive changes and improve the quality of your life. If you are having doubts then you are fearing some negative outcome to you potential findings. There are no negative outcomes to self-questioning. Only realisations and positive actions. Confidence comes from knowing that finding 'problems' or areas that need work allows for solutions and then positive results. Here's an analogy: If I'm constantly doubting the reliability of my car then I live in fear of it letting me down. I have no confidence in it. On the other hand, I can actively question it's functionality, investigate and analyse it, look for problems which I can then fix. The only outcome of this is a better functioning car and the confidence that I know it is running well and that I can address something when, or before, it becomes a problem. This is kinda how I see personal development. Becomming the mechanic of your own mind and your own life and having the knowledge and confidence to address problems, find solutions and create positive results. Verses being just the naive driver and living in doubt and fear, not understanding what's going on under the hood, and not knowing how to fix it, or even recognise a problem until it's too late. Confidence comes from knowledge and tools. Doubt comes from fear and ignorance.

Life is neither fair or unfair. It just is. Everything just 'is'. Is it fair that life was created on Earth but not on Venus? Is it fair that the dinosaurs dies out allowing us to evolve. Is it fair that stars burn out. Is it unfair that we exist but something that doesn't exist, doesn't? Is it fair that one person 'suffers' whilst another does not? Or is that just a fact of reality, and does suffering even exist as real thing..or is it just a concept and a label that we assign to something we see as having 'less' of something than another thing? And how do you even define less and more? Isn't that just subjective? A lot of stuff happens in reality but it is just a fact of reality. There is no value, positive or negative, to any of it. EVerything is neutral. Even your personal development. Even someone else's lack of personal development. Even life or death. All just a function of the greater system. The system that runs regardless of the concepts, labels and value we decide to assign to it all.

This is a fairly normal consequence to self-development and something that has cropped up in the forum in other posts. It is a consequence of the fact that you are doing something that other people generally don't do. It is very self-focussed and outside of the norms. So you inherently find yourself feeling slightly detached from others, even those closest to you. They won't so easily understand what you are doing and why you are doing. As time goes on you will transend the norms of social conditioning and the lower-awareness of others so you will have less interest in engaging with others at their level. Many others have reported feeling the same way. The key, though, is to find a way to continue relating to others at their level whilst not allowing it to influence or withold you from your own progress. Don't get caught in the 'crab mentality':

This is something I do. In much the way that Leo talks about dealing with strong emotions by 'superconducting' them through you, this works for all feelings and emotions. Just observing it without judging it, or expecting anything from it, and most importantly without resisting it. We often feel a negative emotion well up inside us and then judge it as something that shouldn't happen or we don't want. Then we try to fight it and push it away, deny that it is happening. But if we just let it be, observe it, recognise it and allow it without reacting to it then, as you say, it melts away. This is also something I practive when meditating. If I am experiencing an emotional reation to something I can invoke that emotion during meditation, give it my full attention, then refocus my mind back on the 'nothingness', allow my thoughts to dissolve and the emotion dissolves with them. Then I'll re-invoke the emotion, observe it and do the same. I find each time I run this cycle the emotion becomes weaker and weaker until it no longer happens and I am at peace in my mind and body again. This effect lasts for a while afterwards. It's a great way to reduce emotional reactivity and maintain a more calmer and constructve mindset.