Accept negative emotions as a natural part of life

• Life without emotions would be as calm as death, like a world without weather. Accept feelings as they are; pleasant or painful, they are natural and don’t need fixing. Let them rise and pass without allowing changeable emotions to run your life. Dan Millman
• Self-actualizing does not mean a transcendence of all human problems. Conflict, anxiety, frustration, sadness, hurt, and guilt can all be found in healthy human beings. Abraham Maslow
• The emotional life that the Perfectionist expects is one of a constant high; the Optimalist expects his life to include emotional ups, emotional downs, and everything in between. The Perfectionist rejects painful emotions that do not meet his expectation of an unwavering flow of positive emotions; the Optimalist permits himself to experience the full range of human emotions. Tal Ben- Shahar
• I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don’t think that’s only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that. Kevin Bacon  
• It’s OK not to be OK. Lindsey Kelk
• Emotions,  Mindfulness,  Awareness,  Letting go

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Don’t fight negative emotions for what you resist persists 

• Don’t wrestle with the bad feeling, don’t fight the problem; do and act the best you know in spite of how you feel, and return to your center of inward sovereignty and walk on. Ervin Seale
• Be very very still and allow every new experience to take place in your life without any resistance whatsoever. You do not have to do anything, you simply have to be and let things happen. Eileen Caddy
• The master is totally at one with this moment. He or she does not oppose, internally, this moment. He or she offers no inner- resistance to this moment – to the isness of now – to whatever arises now. It is not resisted internally. Eckhart Tolle
• What you resist, persists. If you are resisting something, you are feeding it.  Any energy you actively fight, you are feeding.  If you are using negative energy to push something away, you are inviting it to stay.  Marc and Angel Chernoff
• Non-resistance,  Allowing

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Accepting negative emotions does not mean letting them run your life 

• The heart of accepting your emotions and reclaiming your will is to do what you need to do despite what you are feeling. Accept and learn from your feelings, but don’t let them run your life. By remaining productive during difficult emotional episodes, you are more likely to improve your emotional state than if you do nothing but ruminate and wait for sunny skies. Daniel Goleman
• Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be; just don’t let them run your life. Dan Millman
• You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings. Pearl S. Buck
• As human beings, we all experience a wide range of emotions. We often don’t choose the emotions we encounter, but we can choose what to do with them. Amanda Harvey
• Acceptance

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You need to face and feel your negative and painful emotions to let them go 

• The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings. Gita Bellin
• Pain will leave you, when you let go. Jeremy Aldana
• To be able to hear our own feelings and needs and to empathize with them can free us from depression. Marshall Rosenberg
• That’s the thing about pain…it demands to be felt. John Green
• The cure for pain is in the pain. Rumi
• There are some wounds that one can heal only by deepening them and making them worse. Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam
• Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain. Kahlil Gibran
• Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel. D. James
• You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things. Ann Brashares
• But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’. Mitch Albom
• The only way to deal with emotional pain is to feel it. The more you can feel it in a soft and gentle way, the easier it is for you.  It can be soft and gentle.  You can feel it without protest or complaint or blame.  There is no need to fix it or make the pain go away.  Just feel the pain.  Enter into it.  If the pain is there from the past, it wants to be experienced. Things from the past were not experienced, because they were too painful then.  You were too vulnerable then. These things are waiting to be experienced so that they can be released. If you are really gentle with yourself, you might find that the pain is nowhere near as large and awesome as you had imagined.  It was your refusal to go near it, that gave it its size and power.  Leonard Jacobson
• Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold.  The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are.  Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives.  Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometime for many years, gathering the courage to experience them.  Rachel Naomi Remen
• Remembering our pain can also teach us something important about ourselves. When we remember and then work through our hurts, we allow them to heal. Covering old hurts is just another way of denying who we are and what we want to become.  Just as someone earns her wrinkles because she has lived, we earn who we are by all that we’ve experienced–our joys, our pains, our sorrows.  It is only when we come to terms with painful memories that we can begin the process of extracting them from our pasts.  Leslie Levine
• If you want to end your suffering enter your pain. Robert Augustus Masters
• If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. Stephen Levine
• The pain in those chakras is meant to be felt; experienced. You are going to feel it (the sadness, and despair) move. It’s part of the “push-through”. The energy in the solar plexus, especially, needs to move… Lena Lees
• Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival. Osho
• Pain

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If you do not face a negative emotion, it goes down deep and returns later as pain, depression or illness. 

• Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. … This energy field of old but still very- much- alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain- body. Eckhart Tolle
• The things you left behind, will always find you in future. Nikhil Anubhav Minz
• When I repress my emotion, my stomach keeps score. John Enoch Powell
• Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. K. Rowling
• Suppressing a thought feeling or sensation, including pain ultimately increases it. Clark Ball & Pape
• Depression

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You need to feel your negative emotions to get in touch with your authentic love, joy and peace 

• Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully conscious of your emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which lies beyond them. Emotion literally means “disturbance. Eckhart Tolle
• If we try to deny and suppress our darker emotions, we will only succeed in numbing ourselves emotionally. If you anesthetize yourself against pain, how will you feel joy? Amanda Harvey
• You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. Jonathan Safran Foer
• Joy came always after pain. Guillaume Apollinaire
• Experiencing deep sadness can, sometimes, heighten your ability to feel joy. Markéta Irglová
• I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you’ve felt heartache. Kelly Cutron
• Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale. Stephenie Meyer
• What is joy without sorrow? Mark Twain
• The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy. Djuna Barnes
• The secret of joy is the mastery of pain. Anaïs Nin
• If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow. John Gray
• The truth is that in order for you to experience true happiness in your life, you must experience sadness. It’s required. Without sadness, we really can’t even understand what happiness is. Karl Moore
• Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Carl Jung
• The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? Kahlil Gibran
• The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy. Jim Rohn  
• I do believe that if you haven’t learnt about sadness, you cannot appreciate happiness. Nana Mouskouri 
• Sadness and gladness succeed each other. Proverb
• He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. Alexandre Dumas
• Suffering teaches joy. Sonia Rumzi
• Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark. Zen Proverb
• The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow
• To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness. Erich Fromm
• For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned. Harlan Ellison
• Attempting to not feel what you’re feeling, or deny what you’re feeling, or pretend that you’re not feeling it is much, much harder than just feeling it. Martin Boroson
• Love,  Joy,  Inner peace

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Become aware of any negative emotions as early as possible 

• Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form—it may be the awakening of the pain- body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state. Any delay will allow a conditioned mental- emotional reaction to arise and take you over. Make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body. Eckhart Tolle
• Self-awareness

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Welcome each emotion, however negative it may be, as a guest 

• This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival; a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and attend them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest as honourable. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each guest has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi
• Welcome the emotion, much as you’d welcome a friend into your home. Welcoming doesn’t mean you agree or forgive the emotion, just embrace it, accept it, welcome it. Allow it to be there, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. Bob Parsons
• If you notice sadness, say to yourself, “Sadness is here.” Welcome it by saying, “Hello sadness.” Rivka Simmons

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Flood the negative emotion with self-awareness 

• Self-awareness is not an attention that gets carried away by emotions, overreacting and amplifying what is perceived. Rather, it is a neutral mode that maintains self-reflectiveness even amidst turbulent emotions. Daniel Goleman
• Self-awareness

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Accept the emotion as part of the state of this present moment 

• Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment. Eckhart Tolle
• Without question, fear is beyond our control. Herein lies the power and the prize. If you cannot control it, the only sane alternative is to relax into pure acceptance of it. Gay Hendrick
• Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non- peace is transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender. Eckhart Tolle
• Live in the present

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Become intensely present in the moment… 

• Catch it before it can take over your thinking or behaviour. This simply means putting the spotlight of your attention on it. If it is an emotion, feel the strong energy charge behind it. Know that it is the pain- body.  At the same time, be the knowing; that is to say, be aware of your conscious presence and feel its power. Any emotion that you take your presence into will quickly subside and become transmuted.  Eckhart Tolle
• Presence

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… for only by being present can you avoid getting caught up in the emotion 

• An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds —unless there is enough presence in you. If you are pulled into unconscious identification with the emotion through lack of presence, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you” … Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial undifferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Eckhart Tolle
• When you can “hold” your feelings, you can still feel them–even feel them strongly–but you aren’t swamped by them and don’t have to act on them. The choice is yours.  Martin Boroson

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Focus your attention on the emotion and observe it without mentally judging it or analysing it 

• Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens. Eckhart Tolle
• We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us. Vernon Howard
• Watch your emotional responses with detachment (i.e. sense their physiological effect on your body and breathing.) Observe them. Feel them but calmly, not tensed up. The emotion will move through you and soften up. Unblock emotions in this way. Bob Parsons
• Your practice is to become a curious witness to your feelings so that feelings become more familiar and less scary. Ultimately, you will notice that feelings aren’t permanent, that they change and move through us, if we let them. Rivka Simmons
• Focus,  Attention

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Focusing on the inner energy of your body can help you do this 

• If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. Eckhart Tolle

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While observing the emotion, remain detached… 

• Practice detachment. This is the best way to experience feelings without letting them control you.  Think of an old steam locomotive—it comes roaring into the station full of power, noise, smoke, bells, lights—a huge, overwhelming experience.  But we have some ability to choose whether we get on board or not.  Distance yourself somewhat from mood and emotions:  they are part of you, but not all of you.  They won’t last forever.  Richard O’Connor
• Non-attachment

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… and also remain as relaxed as possible, using your breath as an anchor 

• Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. Thich Nhat Hanh
• Even when feeling angry, fearful, and sorrowful, breathe evenly and fully. Keep your body relaxed. Dan Millman
• Relaxation,  Breathing

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Feeling and observing the emotion will let you unblock and release it 

• You have to face your fear. And do the same with anger, do the same with jealousy, do the same with hatred. And a significant point to remember is: if you witness anything—fear, anger, hate—if you simply watch them as they arise, without any judgment or condemnation, they will disappear, leaving a tremendous amount of energy that you can use for creativity. Osho
• In a fully functional organism, an emotion has a very short life span. It is like a momentary ripple or wave on the surface of your Being. Eckhart Tolle

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Label the emotion 

• Angry? Attach the phrase “this is anger” to every furious thought. Anxious? As you suffer it, say, “This is anxiety.” Twenty-five hundred years ago, Buddha taught that we manage our emotions better when we label experiences. Science is catching up.  Jena Pincott

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Don’t define yourself in terms of the feeling for that will feed it 

• When we realize that we are not our emotions, and that we don’t need a particular emotion, we can simply choose to let it go. Bob Parsons
• Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the ‘I.’ Don’t define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don’t say, ‘I am depressed.’ If you want to say, ‘It is depressed,’ that’s all right. If you want to say that depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. Anthony de Mello
• As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from them. Eckhart Tolle
• As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal the pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious. Eckhart Tolle

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No feeling is permanent 

• Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent. Joan Kerr
• No feeling is final. Rainer Maria Rilke
• Feelings aren’t facts; they are subject to change.
• Impermanence

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Don’t give fuel to the emotion by creating a story around it 

• Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness. Eckhart Tolle
• Letting go of stories of self

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If tears come, let them flow for there is no greater healer 

• Invisible tears are the hardest to wipe away. Just let it out, my friend. Terri Guillemets
• It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears. Ovid
• It is such a secret place, the land of tears. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it. Albert Smith
• Tears are words the mouth can’t say nor can the heart bare. Joshua Wisenbaker
• Tears,  Healing

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The River of Feelings

• Our feelings play a very important part in directing all of our thoughts and actions. In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence.  To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.
  There are three sorts of feelings– pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.  When we have an unpleasant feeling, we may want to chase it away.  But it is more effective to return to our conscious breathing and just observe it, identifying it silently to ourselves:  “Breathing in, I know there is an unpleasant feeling in me.  Breathing out, I know there is an unpleasant feeling in me.”  Calling a feeling by its name, such as “anger,” “sorrow,” “joy,” or “happiness,” helps us identify it clearly and recognize it more deeply.
  We can use our breathing to be in contact with out feelings and accept them.  If our breathing is light and calm–a natural result of conscious breathing– our mind and body will slowly become light, calm, and clear, and our feelings also.
  Mindful observation is based on the principle of “non-duality”:  our feeling is not separate from us or caused merely by something outside us; our feeling is us, and for the moment we are that feeling.
  We are neither drowned in nor terrorized by the feeling, nor do we reject it. Our attitude of not clinging to or rejecting our feelings is the attitude of letting go, an important part of meditation practice.
  If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us.  By the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society.
  – Thich Nhat Hanh

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Being fully open

• Any movement to escape emotions is seeking. The mind asks, “How can I be free of negative emotions?” You can’t. Whatever is arising is what is. Attempting to escape emotions is resisting them. You — the separate self — are that resistance.
  Do nothing except notice that the pure awareness that you are in this moment is naturally and fully open to every experience, state, and emotion that arises in that awareness. When any emotion arises, notice that awareness is what sees and feels the emotion directly. “Notice” is not an invitation to witness the emotions as if you are somehow separate from them. Notice is an invitation to be fully open to the emotion and to see that awareness is arising as the emotion.
  Notice the tendency to contract against and resist life. To be fully open and awake to life and every emotion that arises in response to life is not a practice or doing in time. It is a present seeing. To be fully open is to be the emotion fully without resistance, without the “person” who would try to escape it. Noticing emotions reveals that emotions are empty. They are made of — and not other than — the very emptiness (i.e., awareness) that you are.
  – Scott Kiloby
• Openness

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