Befriend Your Feelings

Here is a quote from Lama Willa Miller, head of Natural Dharma Fellowship in Boston, and the Wonderwell Retreat Center in New Hampshire. The quote comes from a section in Lion’s Roar magazine, entitled “Free Yourself from the Patterns that are Holding You Back.”

When we think about making and breaking habits, how often do we consider our feelings? The fact is that perhaps the most important habits we can make (or break) are those relating to how we are with our emotions.

You might have thought the way to work with your feelings is to meditate around or away from them, and it seems as if many people seek out meditation hoping it will pacify their feelings. But as meditators, we must develop conscious habits of relating to our feeling life with grace and mindfulness, or our meditation will ultimately not be effective. Our feelings – if we know how to practice with them – are our best friends on the spiritual path. They have wisdom to offer.

One effective way to work with feelings is to welcome them into the meditative space. In this practice, we sit with our feelings, even unpleasant ones, and make friends with them. We often meet feelings with strategies of escape, avoidance, suppression, indulgence, or self-judgement. The practice of befriending feelings provides us with another option. We gradually learn not only to tolerate what arises, but to welcome it and take it into our personal and spiritual path.

We can access this possibility with our practice of Compassionate Presence to Feelings; befriending what arises rather than suppressing or rejecting. Open without resistance.