Dear sweet Sweet:
You wrote that I may be thinking you are stupid for having felt great and later feeling not so great- not at all! I’ve been saying all along that you will be feeling lower, that feelings change, that distress will return. It is how it has to be, no other way, being human.

This is an important point: I used to have this FANTASY that once I “get it” I will feel calm and peaceful FOREVER, that it will be a state of mind, peaceful and calm for the rest of my life, that I “got it.” I held on to this fantasy for years and I got DISAPPOINTED with myself every time my temporary calm and peaceful feelings were gone and distress returned. Every time that happened I felt like a failure, that I did NOT get it after all. Then I tried to “get it” again and so on and on.

If you are in that kind of pattern, please pay attention so you can exit that pattern: there is NO SUCH THING as calm/ peaceful forever after. No such thing is possible for any human. So when we expect the impossible we get disappointed again and again and instead of feeling more and more peaceful much of the time, we add MORE distress. We achieve the opposite of what we want.

What we can achieve as humans is MORE peace MORE of the time. Not always. Not every time we WANT to feel calm and peaceful.

I know the desire – it feels so very good, of course we want to always feel like that. We do not want distress. But we have to accept reality. By accepting reality and working with reality, not against it, we can achieve results that are closer to our fantastic desires: more peace, not always peace.

The key is ACCEPTANCE of whatever we fee. The moment you feel any kind of distress, accepting it means not thinking: Oh, no, here I go again. I failed. Now what do I do? How can I get back the peace of mind? What am I doing wrong? and obsess about the situation itself. The key is acceptance: oh, this is how I feel. Breathe into it. Focus on your breathing- that may calm you down some, not all the way, just some. Accept it- don’t resist, don’t fight it. Don’t add to it.

You are right: hormones do play a part of it, of the feeling of distress or calm, hormones and chemicals in the brain released by the neurons. Over time you can retrain your neurons to release less of the chemicals that cause distress. it is a combination of insight and skills. One insight to achieve is to accept the distress. Here are two quotes from tiny buddha: “Whatever the present moment, accept it, work with it, not against it. Freedom is accepting things as they are.” and the famous: “whatever we resist persists.”

Try it and let me know how you are doing, Sweet.
anita