No culture, no education system teaches children how to deal with their natural emotions. They grow up intellectually trained and emotionally loaded. Ignoring or denying feelings only means that they acquire monstrous proportions. Two basic approaches to handle feelings can be helpful: watching and expressing.
A New York Times article by Tenzin Gyatso, a Buddhist monk, expresses concern about the global effects of our negative feelings: “These are times when destructive emotions like anger, fear and hatred are giving rise to devastating problems throughout the world. While daily news offers grim reminders of the destructive power of such emotions, the question we must ask is this: What can we do, person by person, to overcome them? I believe that there are practical ways for us as individuals to curb our dangerous impulses — impulses that collectively can lead to war and mass violence. As evidence, I have not only my spiritual practices and the understanding of human existence based on Buddhist teachings but now also the work of scientists.”
It has come to the point where science and religion are agreeing with Osho’s repeated reminder that man needs to be cleansed. Here is an Osho suggestion for the emotional healing that will be useful in today’s turbulent world.
“When you feel these negative emotions about yourself, don’t try to watch them; it is not yet the ripe time — simply live them. I would have suggested to you to be watchful, but the time is not mature, you cannot be. Before you can be totally one with watchfulness, you have to go through the hell of all your negative emotions; otherwise, they will be repressed, and they will erupt at any moment, at any weak time. So it is better to get rid of them. But getting rid of them does not mean you have to be watchful.
First, forget about watchfulness. Live each emotion that you feel; it is you. Hateful, ugly, unworthy — whatever it is, you be actually in it. First, give your emotions a chance to come up totally into the conscious. Right now, by your effort of watchfulness you are repressing them into the unconscious, and then you get involved in your day-to-day work, and you force them back again. That is not the way to get rid of them. Let them come out, live them, suffer them.
It will be difficult and tedious, but immensely rewarding. Once you have lived them, suffered them, accepted them, that this is you; that you have not made yourself in this way, so you need not condemn yourself; this is the way you have found yourself. Once your emotions are lived consciously, without any repression, you will be surprised that they start disappearing on their own. Their force on you is becoming less; their grip on your neck is no longer that tight. And when they are going away, there may be a time when you can start watching.”
