October 16th
Whenever there is emotional pain, one likely feels helpless, powerless, and fears that state may be permanent. Thus one looks to the outside to change, so that one hopefully may feel more comfortable. One does not realize then that the only change necessary is the willingness to observe our conditioned responses to life situations, and that if we wait or hope for the world around us, or ourselves, to change, we remain trapped in emotional pain.
What would happen if we could look at what it means to react to the world, to understand that when we are not in a state of emotional reaction? Then when emotional pain comes up, we are much more able to recognize that we are creating and prolonging the pain through our resistance to accepting life as it is. We begin to see that those feelings of helplessness, despair, and hopelessness, are not who we really are, but only temporarily how we see our lives in relationship to what is happening around us.
We can learn that emotional pain is created by the ego and that all we need to do is observe ourselves reacting to the world, observe that it is our resistance to accepting life as it is, that causes our emotional pain, and not the situation to which we react. We need do nothing to change. Real change never occurs through effort or resistance. It is the result of awareness, and the acceptance of what is, that comes out of that awareness.