Students attending well-intentioned seminars with catchy titles such as “Be Here Now” or “Living in the Present” often need help understanding one of the key points routinely emphasized. Typically they’re puzzled by the trainer’s assertion, “You are not your feelings.” Seeking clarification they ask, “When I’m feeling rage or hopelessness, isn’t that me?” 

Initially I probably confuse them further by answering “Yes” and “No.” Yes, to the extent that feelings are “real”. They are energy. Think of emotion as “energy in motion”. And no to the conclusion that feelings are true or false pronouncements on the fundamental nature of reality itself. It’s easier to make this clear by comparing it to the Spanish translation. In English we say, I am sad, as if my very being is sad. In Spanish, it is, Yo tengo tristeza, translated literally as, I have sadness.

When you are absorbed into your sadness these feelings become confused with your selfhood (who you are). But if you think of feelings simply as processed responses to events (I have sadness) they lose their hold on you; it’s no longer necessary to stay “stuck” with your feeling in order to validate them as true or false. When you can observe your feelings rather than being the feelings, you can let them go. What is, simply is, with the anxiety removed. Your reaction to an event doesn’t have to be viewed as evidence of what is good or bad, right or wrong or happy or sad. Observation gives you distance and allows you to disengage; allows you to be in the present moment. Said in simple terms, when you see it, you’re not it… instead, you can choose not to have it any longer. By just being mindful, whatever you are watching automatically changes.

It’s this understanding that enables people to learn to live with emotions they might otherwise find intolerable. Seeing emotion as an entity both part of you yet separate from you – helps one to realize that painful feelings are not by themselves devastating.  By being mindful of the pain, we can see beyond it, see the totality of who we are.  Our feelings are put in proper context; our focus shifts to what matters: awareness of our true, inner values, empowered to live a meaningful, committed life.

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