Emma,

I’m sorry for your suffering, and can understand how sometimes when we are a very passionate person, its difficult to find temperance. We can become scared of our emotions, seeing the havoc they seem to cause when blurting, and so our mind works to suppress our feelings, action, motion. Choppy waters indeed! A few things came to heart as I read your words.

First, its time for both sides to put down their weapons and learn to get along. Accept the conflicts for what they were, and put away blame or shame, and let both sides throw their hands up together and say “OK, what in the world is going on here?”

Consider that we are all yin and yang… fertile and creative, cosmic and organic, enlightened and feral, mental and emotional. These forces work in harmony, balance out our energy, path. Too much mind, the world becomes tasteless, empty. Too much heart, and our world becomes listless, aimless, run by cravings.

The secret to balancing these energies (basically) is to offer them both the space they need. We can do this by self nurturing, or spending time letting the body and mind both unwind, relax, find peace. Consider starting a metta meditation practice. Metta is the feeling of warm friendship we have in the chest, and will help the pressure relieve from your experiences. As we wish for happiness for self and others, our mind becomes smooth, peaceful, and develops concentration quickly. This helps the mind stay open while experiencing emotions. Also, spending time in the warmth of metta may help your body remember, become more rooted in loving feelings, keeping your inner light strong. Consider Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on youtube, if interested. Even a few times for a week should see many of the swords turn to plowshares.

Finally, my teacher noted how when we have uncomfortable feelings we are processing, its normal to try to shut them out, cower, attack, suppress. This is like trying to close the door on a strong wind, and we use up our precious strength in struggle. If we let go of the front door, and open the back door, it just whistles through, and often clears tons of dust along the way.

To do this, consider an analogy. When we have uncomfortable feelings, they’re tied to an attached thought, which continues to drink from a well. Start thinking about a lion, for instance, really thinking about it, and the body becomes agitated, fight or flight mode. If we don’t think about a lion, the body relaxes, finds a harmony with what is really there. What we can learn to do is simply not drink from the well. Instead of cycling through “the world” such as atlas, carrying a burden, all those emotional eruptions, all that inner fighting, etc., Emma can sit down, in the world, right where she is, and just breathe. Emotions settle, thoughts settle as we bring our attention to the breath, setting down the past, future, accept the wildness or emotion calms, and its done. No more Atlas, just Emma, looking around with wakefulness, what a beauty!

Namaste, sister, may your passionate spirit find balance, peace.

With warmth,
Matt