We've all seen the fire triangle right? Heat, Oxygen and Fuel. If you have all three in the same place your work place will inevitably burn to the ground, but remove one, and everyone is happy and safe again. Although, if you constantly try and remove oxygen from your office, I don't see you remaining all that popular with your colleagues.
When I talk to people about trying to separate themselves from their thoughts, or emotions, and how they should attempt to "stepping back from them", I often meet resistance because they think I'm asking them to "stop feeling".
Spoiler Alert! I'm not.
In fact it's quite the opposite, just as we tend to look at fire as a single entity, until we learn in a terribly acted online training video at work that it's not, we need to learn that if we focus on, then remove one of the three sides of our mental triangle, the others, although still dangerous, lose their power over us.
Feelings are a physical thing. You might feel a tightness in your chest, or your jaw clenching, your palms could have become hot and sweaty and you begin to frame those feelings into something to make sense of them.
Let's use a simple example. If you can feel that tightness in your chest, and you palms are getting hot and sweaty and your pulse is racing...what does it mean?
Now, if you happen to be at a gym, it means that you're smashing your workout, kudos to you. However, if you're sat at your desk at work...I'm sorry to tell you that it's probably a heart attach and you should stop reading this and phone an ambulance, seriously, do it NOW!
Another wonderful example is that when you think about it excitement and nervousness feel identical. It's often why some people say they love the feeling when they're about to step out on stage, or jump out of a plane, the frame their nervous energy as excitement and it changes everything.
Having said all that, we're all perfectly able to feel an itch without an emotional response, or even giving it a thought. I rarely think, "you know what, I'll give that a scratch" I just do it. I don't spend a lot of time considering how to breathe, I just get on and do it. Although I will admit if I feel a pain in the left side of my chest, or the top of my left arm, I have been known to think it might be a heart attack (it wasn't).
You can feel a physical feeling completely, without reservation or limitation and not need to have an emotional response to it. You do not have to think about it, or more importantly overthink it. Just feel it. Utterly.
Emotions are ephemeral, they seemingly come from nowhere and then return to that same place just as quickly. That is, unless you decide to interact with them.
Here's the thing. Just like a physical feeling, you can learn to recognise and absorb an emotion completely, without reservation yet not allow it to manifest itself as a physical feeling, or indeed control your next thought.
Let's jump into a cheeky little analogy to show you what I mean.
Remember when you were a kid and you had a balloon, not a fancy one filled with helium that cost more than a meal out and had a ribbon that wasn't quite long enough to reach when you let it float up to the ceiling, no, no, just a bog standard normal balloon filled with air that you probably blew up yourself. We all did the same thing at some point, we threw it up in the air and then tried to keep it from falling to the floor. You may have used your feet in the slowest version of keepy uppy the world has ever seen, or you may have just tapped it with your hands, either way, the game was the same it could NEVER touch the ground. That game could last for hours, but no matter how you played it, the moment you decided to end the game, and you stopped touching your balloon, it eventually fell to the floor.
Emotions are no different to that balloon. If you acknowledge them, see them for what they are, but otherwise remain "hands off" and not interact with them, if only for a couple of minutes, they fall to the floor and their power to control the game disappear. But, if you play with them, if you keep tapping at them, they can take over your world for hours, if not longer.
It's the ability to choose which direction of travel you want to go in. Trying to hold on to a wonderful feeling is actually equally pointless, we'll talk about that another time, but at least it's not initially self-destructive. Holding on to anger, hatred, and periods of self loathing do nothing other than harm you, and clinging to them is a choice. So make a good one.
Thoughts are the things we mistake for ourselves more than anything else.
Imagine yourself sitting alone in a quiet room. How many thoughts are running through your mind? Are you sitting there telling yourself that you’re bored? Are you thinking about a memory from your past, or perhaps considering something that you think may happen in the future? Or, you might be singing “Bat Out of Hell” by Meatloaf, because if you had the chance, why wouldn’t you?
Here’s the real question: who, or what, chose the memory? Why did you happen to be thinking about your first kiss, or that time you were almost in a road accident, or the last podcast you listened to? And if you were thinking of one of those things, why was it not one of the other things? And if you think that you made that choice, where did you make it before it appeared in consciousness? I mean seriously, where exactly do you think you were mulling over the thought before you were aware of it and it was offered up to you in consciousness?
Here’s the thing: your thoughts are not you; they’re simply thoughts. They can influence you, sure, but they do not control you, unless you allow them to do so. You need to learn how to find the moment in time that allows you to consider them before reacting. Only then can you decide whether to follow them, like a child chasing a bubble floating on the wind, or decide to dismiss them. And even better, with the crappy thoughts, learn to laugh at them.
The Point here is actually rather simple, as most things that come from Buddhist philosophy are. You are not your emotions. You are not your feelings. You are not even your own thoughts. You are a mixture of those three things and something else altogether. And here’s the takeaway: you can weaken their power by breaking the triangle, much like extinguishing a fire. Whichever side of the triangle you find it easiest to attack, do so.
What you are trying to achieve is giving yourself time between something popping into your head—whether it’s a feeling, an emotion, or a thought—and your reaction to it. That reaction could be crying, physically lashing out, or even something that might otherwise be considered positive, like laughing. Initially, it may seem impossible to create enough time between the action and your reaction. However, over time, those gaps will appear to grow—they’ll get bigger and longer—and you’ll begin to find them more useful. Then, one day, you’ll notice that something happened, and you’ll realise that months ago, you would have instinctively reacted differently. The reason? You made a change.
