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The Stormy Waves of Emotion

My dad, who is a long time meditator, told me recently that meditation is great for helping us deal with the difficulties of life, but that meditation doesn’t seem to work when we feel highly emotional. My experience tends to agree. When emotions threaten to drown me, I don’t think to go sit on a cushion. The waves are too powerful to swim through. But I think it is the fruition of the meditation practice that we should be able to ride the waves when they come by observing the emotions and not judging them too much. Later, when the storm has subsided, a clearer sky starts to emerge and the calm abiding of meditation leads to greater wisdom clarity.

Many teachers convey some variation of the statement, "every moment has its energy; either it will ride us or we can ride it." When our surfboard snaps in

When I Was A Werewolf

Sometimes my mind spins itself into a frenzy of negative thinking. It usually happens at night, when my body feels tired and the outside world is full of terrors. My mind transforms me into a werewolf. I go down this terrifying path and eventually fall asleep in a heap of fearful trembling. The next morning I awaken without fur or fangs. I wonder what the hell happened and how I can escape my mind when it gets like this.

This happened to me last night. I was angry

about something and then I went off to cool down. At some point I remembered to ask myself a question about how I wanted to proceed. I asked myself something like: “am I pursuing kindness or stress?” It didn’t work. I was up until late ruminating on the problems in my life I want to fix and one thought led to another.