The path of self-love or feel your inner being/pain body?

[playdoh]

When doubt, anger, fear, etc., creeps up, do you feel the emotions (pain body) or send those parts of you love (self-love)? Do you sit and feel the life force energy inside of you (inner-body awareness) or just feel love? I’ve been on a journey of growth the past 1.5 years and I feel the self-love path is a very important part. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by playdoh

[JonasVE12]

Love emerges naturally as you become vulnerable to your feelings. It requires you to recognize and acknowledge it. And that's feeling it fully without any trying, needing, doing. It's also to see how that emotion carries thoughts with it. And how those thoughts generate more thoughts. And to notice when you're judging the experience of that lower emotion. Maybe you are even judging your judging. And maybe you are even judging that you didn't notice that you were judging, when you finally notice that you are judging. You basically generate clarity within the experience. You become aware of the whole cluster of feelings and thoughts. See what's going on. Are you making it pesonal? Are you making it mean something about you? Are you projecting the feeling into stories about the future or the past? Can you become aware of all of that a little at a time? 

When you become aware of what you're doing inside the experience, you're peeling layers of the onion. Love is the onion, but you first need to peel away all the things that are preventing you to access it. Most people, when they are experiencing negative emotions, they will repress it, avoid it and distract. Or they pull away from it and try to manipulate the feeling of love in their body. It's something they try or do with their will. 

You always want to get rid of any trying and forcing. It is something that has to emerge. And that happens through becoming aware, allowing and welcoming. 

Imagine if you have a dirty closet. If you want to clean it, you have to open the door and pay attention to every seperate element that needs cleaning.

You first clean up your reactive mind, and then you get access to the raw feeling in your body. At that point it is just sensations. Play with it. Move the energy. You can just let it go in an instant if you want and let any emotion come up that you want, such as love. It's the mind which needs to be stilled first.

[Salvijus]

1 hour ago, playdoh said:

I feel the self-love path is a very important part. 

I think this could be true. But it's a question whether or not that love is real or is it just halusination? I found that love transforms negative energies into smth neutral. But it's a weird practice. A lot of potential for self deception i believe.

[Nilsi]

2 hours ago, playdoh said:

When doubt, anger, fear, etc., creeps up, do you feel the emotions (pain body) or send those parts of you love (self-love)? Do you sit and feel the life force energy inside of you (inner-body awareness) or just feel love? I’ve been on a journey of growth the past 1.5 years and I feel the self-love path is a very important part. 

Fully feeling and allowing your emotions to be whatever they are without needing to change them IS loving yourself. Throughout life we tend to accumulate a lot of trauma around certain emotions and thus tend to repress them whenever they come up. I hadn't cried for years before I was roughly 20 because I had been told not to be a little bitch whenever I cried as a child. You slowly have to work yourself into allowing these emotions to be part of you again. Be mindful when you feel strong emotions and notice if you have any resistances coming up. If you're really focused and take this serious you can usually release some trauma and shame around an emotion just by feeling into it and seeing what kind of memories and thoughts are connected to the resistance. It's very rewarding to practice this and will improve your own well-being aswell as your relationships tremendously.

[playdoh]

Thank you everyone ?

[playdoh]

1 hour ago, Salvijus said:

I think this could be true. But it's a question whether or not that love is real or is it just halusination? I found that love transforms negative energies into smth neutral. But it's a weird practice. A lot of potential for self deception i believe.

I guess w that logic what’s the point of doing anything if it’s all a hallucination. And how can there be self deception? Please explain. Ram Dass, a realized being talked a lot about love and feeling love, “I am loving awareness “. 

[playdoh]

8 hours ago, JonasVE12 said:

Love emerges naturally as you become vulnerable to your feelings.

Can you please explain a little what you mean by this? I’ve been vulnerable to my feelings for years. All I do is feel them! And try not to attach any judgment to it as much as possible:) 

[playdoh]

7 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Fully feeling and allowing your emotions to be whatever they are without needing to change them IS loving yourself. Throughout life we tend to accumulate a lot of trauma around certain emotions and thus tend to repress them whenever they come up. I hadn't cried for years before I was roughly 20 because I had been told not to be a little bitch whenever I cried as a child. You slowly have to work yourself into allowing these emotions to be part of you again. Be mindful when you feel strong emotions and notice if you have any resistances coming up. If you're really focused and take this serious you can usually release some trauma and shame around an emotion just by feeling into it and seeing what kind of memories and thoughts are connected to the resistance. It's very rewarding to practice this and will improve your own well-being aswell as your relationships tremendously.

Thank you! Explained so well. Anger is a tough one. My anger is often a mix w/aggression and if it don’t release it quickly it builds and can turn to rage!

Let me ask you. What about when one is feeling just vast emptiness, nothingness, kind of almost feels like apathy. If i stay feeling that especially in a social situation I feel my emotions start to portray it. No fun to be around that or feel that. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by playdoh

[Nilsi]

2 hours ago, playdoh said:

Thank you! Explained so well. Anger is a tough one. My anger is often a mix w/aggression and if it don’t release it quickly it builds and can turn to rage!

Let me ask you. What about when one is feeling just vast emptiness, nothingness, kind of almost feels like apathy. If i stay feeling that especially in a social situation I feel my emotions start to portray it. No fun to be around that or feel that. 

Just allow that as well. If it happens in a social situation you probably weren't really engaged with your people in the first place, so just let it groove itself out. Of course you always have your rational mind, so sometimes it may be appropriate to interfere with and control an emotion that would be a liability in a given context, which also can be done consciously and lovingly as opposed to unconsciously repressing it.

[The0Self]

Feeling the body.

Self-Love is super fantastic but it doesn’t appear to be “the one true way.” For instance:

A sort of naturally-arisen (not forced) energy/feeling of “being downright apoplectic toward oneself” might be able to overcome the impetus to look away from exactly where ego doesn’t want you to look (as ego attempts to put up a fear barrier around that place/question/thought being avoided). Feel the fearful/painful/intense/blissful sensations as what they are — plain ole freakin’ body sensations. What a cosmic joke that may ensue upon taking this all the way. You have no idea. It’s a doozy alright. ? 

Fuck, as long as it’s coupled with radical forgiveness and/or faith or perhaps any authentic high-virtue or sila at all, even self-hate could bear bountiful awakening fruit, so to speak. Relentless inquiry into truth; fearlessly feeling the energy body, that’s what matters. It appears it’s not so simple, in that sense. Certainly not saying that’s a better way than Self-Love, but it’s a way, and it’s actually not even really a worse way. It’s not like it’s hatred of your true self, it’s hatred of false self anyway.

Edited July 29, 2022 by The0Self

[Salvijus]

On 2022-07-28 at 0:08 AM, playdoh said:

I guess w that logic what’s the point of doing anything if it’s all a hallucination. And how can there be self deception? Please explain. Ram Dass, a realized being talked a lot about love and feeling love, “I am loving awareness “. 

If u can enter and abide in the presence of love. That love will dissolve all negativity by itself, no need to direct it at anything.

But that's rare. Usually people just repeat a mantra in their heads, i love my self, i love my anger, i love the whole world. That's fake, and that's not how love works and in that sense it's a bit delusional imo. 

Love is not an acrion that u can perfom on things. It's a state of being. If u know how to enter that state, good. U have a very powerful practice. Otherwise it could be self deception.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Salvijus