How to Deal with Intense Emotions and Trauma | Nonduality

So how do we deal with intense emotions and trauma? This is something that's very typically faced in the nonduality space or self inquiry. Or to be honest, in most people's life, as soon as there's some type of self reflection, if life sort of pushes you in corners of you to eventually turn the attention inwardly, it could be some disaster, some hardship, it could be something very beautiful, something magnificent in your life may just suddenly happen and it just corners you to see and witness what's taking place within yourself. These intense emotions and trauma which have always been there, which have been accumulated somewhere down the line and further developed, are now noticed. They now seem to appear more than ever before.

A Form of Resistance

This is the case because you have switched on the light in a dark, dark room. This room has been dark for so long and so anytime you eat something the packages are somewhere in the room because it doesn't matter, you don't see the dirt anyway, but if you want to light it switched on, you look around and you're like oh my God, what do I do? There's so much, there's such a mess that needs to be dealt with now. And so some people, they go back to turn the light off again, which doesn't actually solve the problem.

It can somehow dampen the symptoms that may be felt from recognising these intense emotions and the trauma. But really the way to go about this is not just simply to be aware of awareness and that's it. As you are aware of awareness or as you take part in a self inquiry, as these things bubble up, there needs to be some level of acceptance. As soon as there's some form of resistance, we are fueling that which we are resisting. As soon as there's resistance, we are energising that which we are resisting. That's just how it works.

If you have a river and you build a dam, a reservoir is developed because all of this water accumulates, accumulates and it's now developed and now you have a bigger thing to deal with. And so that's the same with emotions. We need emotions. They bubble up. If we create some sort of resistance, they just sort of accumulate. At some point the dam may break and it just comes out into the form of panic attack or something very intense. But in essence, if we just allow the river to flow, if we allow the emotions that suffer to flow, regardless of what the opinions are, regardless of how intense the emotions link to it is, if we allow ourselves to have some universal level of acceptance and take away the personhood, take away the value imposed from the character, the bias that I like this and I don't like this, and I love this and I don't know these. Opinions and the expectations of how we should and shouldn't be.

All of these accumulated notions of character, all of these opinions, all of these beliefs, all of these thoughts, they are the ones that formulate why we should resist or shouldn't resist. If we leave that aside, being aware of awareness, resting in being, if we accept whatever comes up and fully allow ourselves to experience it, then eventually the resistance continues to flow. But as soon as you resist it, it will come back again and again and again because this reservoir is accumulating. So that is not to say that I don't want to create an expectation that one of these emotions will go away in an instance and I don't want to create an expectation that they will stay there forever either. That's not something we should worry about because that worrying can just also act as a form of resistance.

Resistance can be present in a sneaky way

Now, another typical thing that can also happen is if we are faced with these intense emotions and this intense trauma and we are allowing ourselves to experience it, but it just keeps happening. Resistance can sometimes be present in a very sneaky way. Resistance can sometimes be present in ways we could have never imagined that would be. So instead, certain events and certain activities may trigger the trauma and may trigger these intense emotions to come up and so we avoid these activities. Instead this time go ahead. If there's some type of meditation or self inquiry, if there's an intense amount of fear that comes with that then that's exactly what we need to do more of.

If there is the fear of rejection then that's exactly something we need to go and experience more of. And so as we do that we flip the script. We are turning our resistance into acceptance and sometimes we may not always have to even fully experience the magnitude of fear or whatever. It just subsides, it gets dissolved because the resistance has literally turned into acceptance.

Universal Acceptance

So really it's a question of “Okay, I am on this nonduality path and I’m doing this self-inquiry. I am aware of awareness and all of that stuff. I recognise the separate self isn't real, it's an illusion.” But there's still so many emotions and stuff and then I experience this piece and then why am I not experiencing anymore? Then there's an attachment to this piece and so on. All that there needs to be is a universal acceptance. Acceptance does not imply you are agreeing with absolutely everything. Acceptance does not mean agreement. You may very well disagree but that's fine. That's also a thought, whether you agree or disagree. That's also a thought and that's okay. But acceptance is your birthright. It's something that is in some way actually not in our control.

If I bring this empty water bottle in front of you it has appeared within your reality. It's appeared within reality, right? And so we don't claim any ownership of this reality but think it appears in reality. If we don't accept this then we have to blur this out somehow and blurring this out will blur other aspects of life. It's a very counterintuitive way of going about wherever appears in reality.

The Takeaway

When naturally everything is accepted even if it's something that's typically known as bad, at the very least we are creating space for understanding and as we understand that, we transcend whatever has appeared in reality. If there's resistance it doesn't mean that the bottle hasn't appeared in reality. It's just that this resistance is not creating some sort of internal knot to be reconciled with. So there needs to be this universal acceptance and this absolute okayness through and through in every aspect of life. It's okay. It's absolutely okay. Whatever may be going on. It needs to be the underlying okayness and we rest in that okayness.

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