Contents
Introduction
Hints for Letting Go
More on Letting Go
Experiencing Emotions to Their Full Depth
Letting Out and Letting Go
Returning to Tranquility is a Way to Recognize You Have Let Go
Liking and Letting Go
A Two Pronged Approach
Letting Go and the Ego
Introduction
This post contains hints for letting go of unpleasant emotions and cravings. It is a process you get better at with practice.
Emotions for the purpose of this discussion are emotions that arise in the mind in response to thoughts or situations. This excludes emotions due to purely biological causes such as some types of anxiety and depression. Biological causes include genetics, poor diet, and developmental processes that while learned are, for practical purposes, permanent. For example, stress in childhood can result in permanent changes in stress hormone receptor levels that continue throughout adulthood.
Often with biologically caused non-cognitive emotions there are layers of cognitive emotions that occur in reaction to them. Meditation and mindfulness can help elimnate those added layers. In some cases this may make the non-cognitive emotions seem more like physical sensations instead of a cloud over reality, they become much easier to bear. A similar phenomenon can occur with physical pain, when the mental anguish surrounding physical pain is eased, the pain is easier to bear.
The full list of steps (below) is for stronger emotions. For little things, sometimes you can just be aware of them, let them express themselves, relax, and they fade in a matter of a second or two.
And if you start to feel overwhelmed with a lot of strong emotions, you can take a break from observing emotions.
Letting go does not mean eradicating. An emotion you have let go of may be triggered again in the future. In time, the strength of an emotion may decrease as you let go of it after repeated triggerings.
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Hints for Letting Go
To let go of unpleasant emotions:
- Remember the problem is not the situation, the problem is your reaction to the situation. (That doesn't mean you should ignore situations, it means if you are non-attached you can respond with reason and compassion rather than out of control emotions.)
- Let out the emotion. Let yourself feel it to its full depth. Notice the physical sensations in your body that accompany the emotion. In many cases this only takes a second and the emotion is over and that's all you have to do. If you are mindful then with experience you will find yourself noticing emotions bubbling up and finding yourself deliberately recognizing you have to let them out, and you do let them out, you experience them to their full depth in your mind and body, and then they fade right away as you expect. If the emotion or the feeling of stress or tension continues you can go on to the next steps.
- Dig through layers when necessary. Sometimes the root of the problem is hidden behind other emotions and you have to dig through one or more layers of emotions to understand the root of the problem
- Relax. If you can't just relax, try taking a deep breath, or breathing in a relaxed way. Notice if you feel muscle tension and try to relax the tension. Moving the muscles a few times can help release tension.
If there are certain muscles that tend to get tense when you are upset, like your jaw, or back, or shoulders, pay attention to those muscles throughout the day and try to keep them relaxed. Emotions express themselves in part through our posture, facial expressions, and tone of voice, etc. They do this by influencing muscle tension. You can't let go of an emotion completely if you have muscle tension caused by the emotion. Sometimes we unconsciously tense our muscles to suppress thoughts and emotions. When that happens, you might not be able to fully let out an emotion until you relax the muscle tension. If there are some emotions that you can't seem to let go of, you might find that relaxing the muscle tension in your frequently tense areas can allow you to be able to let go of them.
If necessary, use meditation techniques that include both physical and mental relaxation techniques to help you relax. I find that when I completely relax, I do not feel any unpleasant reactive emotions. Relaxing and staying relaxed when you are upset about a current situation or worried about the immediate future can be very hard. But if you practice relaxing, you can get better at it.
- Try to lighten your mood. Sometimes that means just remembering not to take things too seriously, it can be noticing the pleasant feeling of being relaxed, it can be metta, or piti (joy), or sukha (tranquil happiness) produced by meditation. I don't recommend pushing metta, piti, or sukha to high intense levels. It can be fun when you first learn how to do it, but I find that becomes tedious and it is nicer just to keep them going at a low level. If you find that any of these techniques have a bad effect on your mood you should cut back or stop doing them and focus more on relaxation.
- Let your barriers down and your borders expand. This is hard to explain in words, it is a feeling one gets, sometimes produced by meditation, where one feels like one is merging into their environment or letting go of their identity. It is not necessarily intense like a psychedelic trip, it can be subtle, but it can be part of letting go because when we are upset the opposite occurs. We put up barriers and contract our borders. We withdraw. We feel separate from others and our environment. To let go, you have to reverse this withdrawal, to reintegrate with our environment.
- Return to a feeling of non-attachment to self. There are different ways to do this, you can try to drop any type of egotistical or egocentric feeling (feel humble and drop any attitudes or poses of outrage, arrogance, anger, pride, defensiveness, victimhood etc). And if you can feel like you don't have a self, you can do that.
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If you are meditating or practicing mindfulness in daily life, return to the object of meditation or mindfulness, and notice if any continuing or lingering emotional sensations fade as you do this.
It can be helpful to meditate or practice mindfulness in daily while trying to be relaxed, with a lightened mood however you choose to do that, with your barriers down and your borders expanded, and feeling non-attached to self if you have a way to do that.
This way you can practice letting go even if you don't have anything specific to let go of. Then if something comes up you have the skill/habit to let go - if you can remember to do it.
Also, it's a way of just being non-attached.
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More on letting go
Steps 2,3,and 4 are often elusive because they involve using the nervous system very differently. Especially for strong emotions when thoughts, emotions, impulses, and ego can take over your mind and body.
This part of letting go involves:
- A. Being mindful of the activity of the mind.
- B. Noticing an emotion arising - letting yourself feel it.
- C. Interrupting dependent origination before you get carried away. This is where
- you decide not to let thoughts, emotions, impulses and ego take over your mind and body,
- or where you decide not to make yourself suffer,
- or you decide it is nicer to feel peaceful than upset,
- or that tranquility is more restful and being upset takes too much energy and effort,
- or you just get fed up feeling like crap and you stop,
- or you decide to put your inner adult in charge instead of your inner child.
- or you surrender to reality, you stop resisting facts of reality or facts about yourself that you don't like.
- When you observe the three characteristics and you see that all mental activity and all things in the physical world are impermanent, not-self (not me or mine), and unsatisfactory, it creates disenchantment and weakens attachments and aversions.
Repeatedly observing the three characteristics shows you that you can't always control everything, not your mind (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, ego), not your body, not material things, not other people, we can't always avoid what we don't want and we can't always have what we want.
Eventually it sinks in, particularly when you are suffering, that attachments and aversions are pointless because we can't control everything and clinging does not help us get what we want or avoid what we don't want. It just causes suffering. Changing our attitude, relaxing, letting go, accepting we just have to muddle through life one way or another, biding our time, not feeling responsible for things we don't control, relieves us of much suffering. And there is really no alternative, the alternative is a delusion and involves much more suffering.
We can still plan as best we can and try as best we can, but without clinging, we can plan and act with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.
Notice how a slight change in attitude eases suffering and then cultivate that attitude. Notice, particularly when unpleasant emotions or cravings arise, how this attitude eases suffering.
- D. Relax while noticing lingering emotions and allowing yourself to feel them to their full depth. This is when you accept your emotions, it's when you let yourself feel them and they sometimes fade, it prevents suppression, it's when you let go. After this you can go back to Step C or on to Step 5 or do both. With step 5 rember not be be attached to feeling good all the time.
Steps A, B, and D seem to me to use the nervous system very differently than step C.
A, B, and D involve not interfering just observing, they are passive.
Whereas C involves using the nervous system actively to interrupt the sequence of dependent origination.
In a sense you have to reverse course twice. In steps A and B you observe passively, in step C you take an active part, then in D you become a passive oberver again.
This is one reason letting go can be so hard. You have to switch your mental attitude twice, you have to do very different things with your nervous system which takes time and attention and intention at the same time a strong emotion is likely to take over before you get the chance to do or to think of doing any of that.
But being aware of the process at this level of detail can help, it can help if you understand, are conscious of, what you want to try to do..
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Experiencing Emotions to Their Full Depth
When observing emotions, I find it helps to try to experience the full depth of the emotion in the mind and in the body. This involves understanding the cause / trigger for the emotion and noticing the sensations in the mind/body that accompany the emotion. The "end" of an emotion is not at the end of a period of time, the end is at the full depth. When you experience it all the way to the bottom, the emotion then begins to fade (although it might be triggered again in the future). If you don't experience it to the full depth, it lingers on in time - consciously or unconsciously.
I find it's like various bodily functions, like for example burping. At first you might notice a vague sense of unease, then if you pay attention, you feel the pressure of gas in your stomach, then you burp, and the unease passes, and you feel a sense of relief.
The experience might not exactly be pleasant, but there is that sense of relief at the end. And with it comes the knowledge that finding that bottom is the key to letting go.
With emotions this can change your attitude toward unpleasant emotions and cravings. Instead of something to avoid or push away, they become something to look for, in order to clear them away, to remove those vague (or not so vague) feelings of unease and to feel the relief that comes from experiencing them to their full depth. When you do this, you also see that much of suffering comes not from the emotions themselves but from resisting them, rejecting them. When you stop reacting to them in that way a lot of mental anguish associated with them stops occurring.
How someone would put this into practice would depend on the specifics of the person, the emotion they are experiencing, and their particular situation at the moment. Often it just takes a few seconds to acknowledge the emotion relax, and let go (until it is triggered again). Other times it might require full attention to dig through layers of emotions one hidden behind another. Some people with strong (traumatic) emotions might want to go through that process gradually rather than all at once. Relaxation, metta, sukha and other positive emotions produced by meditation can help counterbalance the unpleasant emotions that arise during meditation. Also it can be a mistake to dwell on an unpleasant emotion without letting go. So how to handle an emotions is a fine balance each person has to work out for themselves and their particular situation.
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Letting Out and Letting Go
There is an intimate relationship between letting go and allowing yourself feel reactive emotions. Reactive emotions are emotions that occur in response to a thought or situation. That may sound like a contradiction - you have to let yourself feel an emotion before you can let it go - but that's the way it works. Otherwise you leave the emotion unexpressed, suppressed, you can't really let go unless you let it out.
It's like when you feel nauseous and burp and then feel better. You feel an unpleasant emotion arising, you intentionally let it out, you feel it, then you can let go, it passes, you relax, you feel okay, and you don't get carried away by thoughts and emotions dwelling upon it. With practice this becomes a very deliberate, conscious and familiar process.
The reactive emotion might not be gone permanently, it could recur, but for the moment you feel better than holding it in, you don't cling to it, it doesn't make you tense or irritable.
Not all emotions are reactive emotions. Some emotions are due to biological causes such as some forms of anxiety and depression I don't think it is possible to let go of these kinds of emotions. Some emotions are associated with memories of traumatic events. These can be very hard, if not impossible to let go of. When you have an emotion you can't let go of in the way described above, you can sometimes find some relief when meditation produces (and mindfulness in daily life maintains) a quiet, relaxed, contented state which reduces mental anguish - the emotions may still be there but they are more like physical sensations than a cloud over reality. With these kinds of emotions it might not always be helpful letting yourself feel them hoping to let go of them in the way described for reactive emotions, if you dwell on them too much in a certain way I think you can reinforce them the way focusing on pleasure reinforces itself to produce the 1st jhana. But sometimes it can help to try to do a relaxing form of meditation or mindfulness such as breathing in a relaxing way while you feel or think of the emotions - this can help you desensitize yourself to the emotions if you can be relaxed while doing it. Each person has to work out for themselves the right balance between feeling them, understanding them, and not dwelling on them. Not dwelling on them after being open to them, using samatha techniques to reduce mental anguish could be considered a different way of letting go for these types of emotions.
I think of it as a dual approach. Using meditation techniques to reduce mental anguish, to produce tranquility (samatha) and insight techniques to be mindful, notice reactive emotions arising, and let go of them. I suspect this is one reason why Buddha told his students to cultivate both samatha and vipassana.
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Returning to Tranquility is a Way to Recognize You Have Let Go
When practicing meditation or mindfulness or at other times, letting go may involve:
- Starting from a pleasant relaxed state, when nothing is bothering you consciously or unconsciously (with experience you can tell when there is something just below the surface that is interfering with you achieving a pleasant relaxed state)
- You notice dukkha arising (often by a physical sensation in your body accompanying the thoughts and emotions) and ...
- You relax back to the pleasant relaxed state. You decline to get upset. You know you aren't suppressing anything because there is no tension. You remain in the pleasant relaxed state, you are still unbothered.
- If you fail to let go, if you can't let go, because the emotion is too strong, you can do the meditation or whatever practice gets you to the pleasant relaxed state.
If you are not in a pleasant relaxed state when dukkha arises, it is hard to tell if you are really letting go because you don't have a clear "unbothered" feeling to return to, to tell you that you have let go.
That's why I think it is so useful to have some way to produce a pleasant relaxed contented "unbothered" state. So you can clearly see dukkha arising, and so you can tell you are letting go. If you are already suffering from dukkha, it's harder to notice new dukkha arising and it's harder to tell if you have let go of it.
I suspect this is why the anapanasati sutta involves calming the body (steps 3 and 4), producing joy (step 5), tranquil happiness (step 6) , and calming the mind (step 8) and gladdening the mind (step 10), before letting go (step 16). And that is why it is recommended to practice all the steps in order during every session.
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Liking and Letting Go
We have opinions about most things. We usually either like something or dislike something. Sometimes we are neutral. Noticing the dukkha aspect of things we don't like is easy. But the dukkha aspect of things we like is also there, wanting something, fear of loss, or regret after a pleasant experience is over. All of these things are unpleasant, they create stress but one can let go of them, relax the stress. Sometimes these are so subtle, or we are so accustomed to them we don't notice the unpleasantness. Whether you notice it or not, between liking an disliking there is a lot of mental activity causing suffering. People can be in a bad mood, without knowing why, almost out of habit because of subtle dukkha they are not really conscious of. But if you can be mindful in daily life, and notice how so much mental activity involves liking and disliking and feel how they both cause suffering, you can start to relax away the tension they produce, let go of the unpleasant reaction in your mind and body, and start chipping away at a huge amount of suffering that you have been doing to yourself without noticing simply out of habit. Noticing the physical sensation in our body that accompany emotions can make you more sensitive to dukkha arising. Try to notice if your thoughts involve liking/wanting or disliking.
As you learn to notice dukkha arising from liking/wanting and disliking, and learn to relax and let go of it, you get better at it, better at being relaxed, and you learn to notice dukkha arising before it becomes too strong to let go of, before it carries you away with thoughts and emotions that distract you from mindfulness. You gain confidence in your ability to end suffering. You see that you can even let go of things that produce strong reactions if you catch them early and keep letting go, relaxing tension, as they pop up again and again (rapid letting go). With enough practice it becomes a new habit, you can change your habit from making yourself suffer to letting go of suffering. Without all those things dragging down your mood, you feel much better.
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A Two Pronged Approach
Meditation and mindfulness practice is a two pronged approach.
Relaxation meditation and mindfulness quiet the mental chatter and that in itself reduces suffering since the mental chatter is often worrying about the past, future, or current problems. Just quieting the mind (tranquility) in meditation and mindfulness in daily life and making that a habit reduces suffering a lot. It makes letting go of attachments and aversions easier and natural - it's nicer to stay tranquil than to get upset.
This is why I tell people they should meditate for the benefits they get from it today, not because of some benefit they hope get in the future. There are cumulative benefits from meditation, but in my opinion if you are not getting tranquility from the first time you meditate, you are not getting the full benefits from practice and the long term benefits will not be a full as they could be.
The other prong is being mindful of dukkha arising and learning to deliberately let go (insight) of attachments and aversions. And this practice is facilitated by a tranquil mind.
This is another reason for cultivating both samatha (tranquility) and vipassana (insight) as the Buddha taught his disciples to do. They work very well together.
Overall there are several overlapping practices I recommend:
- Meditation to promote relaxation. This also helps quiet the mental chatter.
- Meditation to quiet mental chatter. This can be sitting or walking etc.
- Mindfulness in daily life. Quiet the mental chatter, maintain serenity produced by relaxation and meditation, observe the mind, practice letting go.
- Observing the mind during meditation and mindfulness.
- Practice letting go (see above, relax, lighten your mood, let down barriers and expand your boundaries) as a generic state of mind, as well as for specific issues that arise in the mind.
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Letting go and the Ego
Our sense of being successful depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want. That means the ego, the sense of self, is bound up in every experience of wanting, liking, and disliking we have. Observing this in your own mind is helpful in letting go of attachments and aversions.
Because our sense of being successful depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want, letting go of any attachments and aversions necessarily involves letting go of the ego, ie letting go of attachment to self.
Every time you let go of a distracting thought during meditation or mindfulness practice you are letting go of your attachment to your thoughts. Like letting go of any attachment, this is also letting go of attachment to self. When you practice meditation and mindfulness you are practicing letting go of attachment to self.
When the mind is tranquil and there is very little thinking of liking and disliking, of wanting and not wanting, there is very little of self involved.
When there is very little self abiding in the mind, the mind less susceptible to a attachments and aversions. There is no one to be attached or averse. Egotistical reactions are diminished, suffering is less.
This gives tranquility a kind of inertia. It takes a strong force, a strong emotion, a strong attachment, to dislodge it.
This is an example of why samatha and vipassana are not really separate practices, they are two qualities of mind that should coexist and can be developed together. And it is why, if you are troubled by egotistical attachments, practices that produce tranquility can provide relief.
This is why renunciation and generosity are part of the six-stage gradual training. Letting go of what you like is sometimes called self-denial, it is letting go of self. In a way it's a literal denying there is a self.
Virtue, another part of the six-stage gradual training which includes the precepts, right speech, right livelihood, and right action may also involve letting go of what we like or what we want or accepting what we don't like or don't want, and that can be another form of self denial.
In fact all dukkha, all mental anguish, all liking, disliking, wanting, not wanting, is an opportunity to practice letting go of the ego, letting go of attachment to the self, to things that might be considered "me" or "mine". You have to know what you are attached to, ie ego, in order to let go. When you understand that all dukkha, all reactive emotions, are ego based, it is easier to let go.
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