How to embrace all your feelings (even the most difficult ones) and dissolve any resistance

Let your feelings flow through you

Think of a recent negative emotion that you have experienced. Was it anger, sadness, fear, or something else? What was your first inclination when you noticed the emotion? Resist it, ignore it, or push it down? Unfortunately, this is how many people react when unwanted emotions arise. From a young age we are taught that some emotions are good and others are bad. But there are no good or bad emotions. All emotions have a purpose and act as messengers, alerting us to something that requires our attention.

Here’s a helpful idea: When we experience unpleasant emotions, we should do our best to welcome them, not resist them. We have been conditioned all our lives to resist them due to their unpleasant nature. The key is to allow emotions to move through us; be integrated into our true nature of wholeness. It may surprise you to learn that the universe uses our painful emotions to serve our highest good. It’s about integration, not separation. When we resist or reject painful emotions, we create separation. This results in our emotions becoming stronger because they want to be recognized and expressed through us. Therefore, we must stop characterizing emotions as good or bad. An unpleasant emotion can be an excellent teaching aid, and a positive emotion can be bad for us if we get caught up in it. We must allow our feelings to flow through us like water in a river.

There is only one source of happiness

To further illustrate this idea: We free ourselves from our conditioning when we accept our feelings without trying to control or manipulate them. Reread that passage until you get its meaning, because it bears repeating. Our job is not to control, resist, or manipulate painful emotions, but to allow them to pass through us. It is about welcoming and accepting everything we experience and integrating it into our being. By doing so, we are no longer separate from our painful emotions, but instead create a space around them. This space I speak of is pure consciousness where we discover our true nature. It involves not repressing your feelings, even unbearable ones. It bears repeating: welcome them, feel them, and let them go as easily as they came.

You see, it is the nature of consciousness to be open to all human experiences. Consciousness does not discriminate between a negative or a positive emotion. Therefore, noticing painful emotions frees us from becoming entangled in them. The act of acceptance and welcome becomes our primary focus rather than resistance. Is this something you are willing to practice? Could you stop resisting your negative emotions and allow them to come and go? It requires observing them with an open mind and heart and noticing any impulses or intuitive insights that arise. We don’t even need to say yes to our experiences because the true nature of consciousness says yes to everything, since it is all-encompassing.. Resistance comes from the ego, while awareness accepts all that is because awareness uses painful emotions for your highest good. To exemplify with a simple metaphor: a tree does not say no to rain, hail or strong winds, even though they may damage it. He accepts everything.

To take this idea further: there is only one source of happiness, which does not depend on external conditions. For example, we cannot experience one form of happiness when we are with our loved one and another form if we receive a raise at work. In other words, happiness is not subjective to our experience of it in different settings. Happiness results from integration, acceptance, nonresistance, and allowing. Happiness is the residue of letting go of what gets in the way of recognizing our true nature; that is bound in love. Therefore, if we want to experience lasting happiness, we must surrender to our moment-to-moment experience and allow life to permeate through us. I am not suggesting that it will be easy, but with practice and patience, we will no longer be imprisoned by our negative thoughts and emotions.

This is the state of true freedom because we stop resisting unpleasant emotions and allow them to wash over us. Resistance arises because we try to control or manipulate our unpleasant feelings. But this only serves to create more emotional suffering and layers of judgment. I invite you to put aside judgment and immerse yourself in the pure awareness of who you really are. There is nothing to buy when you practice this way of being. There is no subscription or annual fee, more to get carried away by resistance to what it is. It requires saying yes to life and accepting whatever comes your way, even when you can’t understand the meaning or purpose of your pain.. Allowing and accepting opens the door to meaning, as we can fully appreciate what we are seeing. We must be intimately familiar with our experience to truly appreciate it.

The practice of welcoming and accepting your feelings

Are you willing to give this a try? I’m sure you’re scared or curious about how this works in practice. But the only way is to give in little by little and see how you feel. For example, the next time you experience anger toward your partner, family member, or friend, instead of resisting the anger, embrace it. Say yes to anger and let it pass through you so that it can convey a message about its meaning.

If you are comfortable with this, I encourage you to practice the exercise for the next 7 to 14 days, or as long as you like. When you feel a painful emotion, silently affirm to yourself: “I accept” or “I consent.” Notice a feeling of inner freedom and expansion arising from within you. The practice of welcoming and accepting our feelings has a quality of lightness, while resistance is heavy and dark. The more you practice welcoming your painful feelings, the more layers of conditioning you will remove, which is a healing agent for the soul. Ultimately, if we want to free ourselves from negative emotions, we must welcome them and dissolve any resistance that surrounds them. Difficult emotions are not the cause of our pain and suffering. It is our resistance to them that creates more of the same feelings, that leads to suffering, and this is something we have the power to control.