Why is a quiet mind essential to health?
Reaction of the mind to the emotional field stagnates the embryological organizing forces that not only create our life, but continue to maintain it long after birth. Embryology is mostly associated with in utero gestation -the original organization of life- yet in life we continue to have cell birth, death and organization that is guided by these same influences: we never stop being born. The forces that allow us to exist as individual entities in this vast universe come with powerful consequences.
In the formation of the identity of the individual we become exposed to consequence of this structure. The positive aspects of our creation of the body-mind/ego is counter weighted by our exposure to habitual negative emotional reaction: passion, fear, anger, anxiety, sadness and worry. These emotions are tied to our identity, physiology and the organization of our life. Light and shadow are not separate they are only different aspects of the same, you can not have one without the other. This is the profound and ironic truth of life. Emotions are the natural outcome of our individual consciousness. This "I" becomes a precious thing and full of attachments, which opens the door to anger, fear, anxiety, passion, worry and ultimately loss. We must accept emotions presence. Follow any emotion, “positive” or “negative”, to its root and you see it is always in defense or enhancement to the protection and propagation of the image of “I”, “me” and “mine”. The mechanisms that grants us an individual physical and psychological structure, comes with attachment to our creation of self and make us vulnerable to a life of tension and fear.
We must feel our emotions when they arise. In the relative world of “I” and “Me” if someone “we” love passes, sadness is a natural response and allows us to connect to the love we have for this person. By no mean is this essay saying that we shouldn’t feel these powerful forces, but that vast majority of the time we do not feel our emotions, but instead we intellectualize our emotions, allowing our mind to hijack and stagnate these powerful force. We all too oftensay “ I am so emotional” but in reality what we are calling emotion is actually the thinking about emotions vs. actually feeling the physical manifestation of these powerful forces. To really experience the reality of an emotion is simply to feel it at the physical level without engaging in contemplation, intellectualization, imagination or fantasy, to feel, to actually feel what is. To sit with these sensations is extremely difficult and easily over powers the balance of the mind. We must also be aware of sensations when we feel the bliss of pleasure, passion and joy. In this awareness we must maintain balance though acceptance of theimpermanence and un-sustainability of this state . It is all too easy to mistake pleasure for happiness.
If we do not want to become slaves to our emotions we must sit with them in objective observation, a quiet mind, to allow them their full expression so they may pass away like the river that is flowing by.
The key to understand is that life force and emotions are tied, they are one. If we engage in mental reaction to our emotions we reroute this life giving force and deny our body its regulation and nourishment, which is why an unbalanced mind is the birth place of disease. The mind consumes 20 percent of the energy our body produces. The more agitated and attached it becomes the more energy it consumes. If we do not engage in combat with what is and accept it for what it is, which is impermanent sensations, then this force is left unrestricted and there is not a sliver of tension in the body and this universal force will automatically organize, regulate, and nourish life. This is a vibrational force that is responsible for all life, we must simply quiet our mind and get out of the way. The breath is the gift that comes with the burden of our consciousness. Through breath, meditation, we can still the mind, releasing vast amounts of energy to nourish the body and let the spirit soar.
There is a health that runs deeper than our persona. What would anger, fear, worry, anxiety, and sorrow be without “I” and “me”?