How To Conquer Negative Emotional States & Be Congruent

Emotional states can range anywhere from boundless inner joy to seemingly endless depression or angst. And then there’s all those little states in-between; impatience, boredom, excitement, satisfaction, sorrow, nostalgia, pleasure, heartbreak etc. The more aware I’ve become, the more I’ve noticed how many states I move through in just one day, let alone a week. It’s important for us masculine driven guys to not let these states distract us from our ultimate purpose and mission, even if the mission is as simple as grocery shopping.

We’re conditioned to judge ourselves when we have negative emotional states, whether it’s anger, frustration, depression, fear, sadness, etc. Men are especially considered “unmanly” when experiencing certain emotions. Many people have fanciful views of Enlightenment as the end of all negative states, and New Age philosophy backs this notion with the idea of staying positive all the time. First off, it’s unnatural not to have a range of emotions, second, this mentality promotes self-judgment and self-delusion. I’ve seen countless people deny their true feelings and intentions even to themselves, in the attempt to stay “positive” or seem “above it all”. Denying present emotion is no better than blaming others for your emotional state.

There’s pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Just like there’s things you want to do and things you don’t want to do. If you followed your own desire, every choice you made you’d be dead from chocolate ice-cream overdose at age 9. There’s cold and hot, day and night, and positive and negative emotions. So for a man, these emotions come secondary to our goals and missions, but we should acknowledge them and deal with them effectively. Haven’t many positive changes in your life come after periods of intense negative emotional states anyway? Might as well be open to experiencing them, then you can face necessary challenges instead of backing out based on fear.

Once self-judgment is dropped for having a negative emotion it just becomes energy. The societal reaction to depression or a negative feeling is to jump into emotional reaction to the feeling. They panic and quickly try to drug you so it isn’t there. To feel like “I shouldn’t feel like this” or “I need to get rid of this” is judging the energy that moves through you. Energetically negative emotions are stickier than positive ones, in part because we suppress them. It’s easier to remember a negative feeling or state than it is to recall when you were bliss-ed out at the beach or when you were having sex. When you don’t suppress an emotion it can just float on through, it may hover for a while, but once you suppress and push away the energy it becomes like quicksand.

Step #1 of dealing with emotions is to acknowledge what emotion is present if it comes up in a way that affects you. This sounds so simple that you could skip over it, but without awareness of what you’re feeling you can’t do any other steps and are essentially on automatic pilot. The people that have anger induced rages and wind up in jail, skip this step.

Step #2 is to separate yourself from the Emotion. You are not your emotions, so don’t identify with what you feel. Even if you’ve felt a negative emotion or negative feeling about yourself your entire life, it isn’t you. Feel your present moment awareness to be like the entire sky, and all emotions as passing clouds. Sometimes the clouds may even be so thick you need to stop and sit with them to help them dissipate, but generally they will be manageable. If you have a consistent emotional negativity, try and work out where or who you picked it from, usually it was a parent.

Once, in intense emotional pain, I was judging the emotion and myself as i couldn’t get it to go away. Eventually I asked myself why the state was a problem, I couldn’t come up with an answer.  “I feel terrible… so? I feel depressed… so? I feel anxious…so?”  I disconnected identity from the emotion and became the sky that contains it. This puts emotions into there proper frame as simply passing clouds of energy that don’t inhibit you or your actions. If you’re taking the right type of action in life, these emotions don’t matter, they’re just background noise.

Step #3, which is often easier for women to do, is to feel your emotions fully, don’t hold back. Once you’ve unidentified with the emotion then give it its due, it’s they’re simply to be felt. Emotions that feel solid can be slowly melted down and made fluid by fully allowing them to pass through you as the energy that they are. This is Alchemy. In fully feeling the emotion it passes through you like fire, but you remain untouched. It can take time to loosen up emotional blockages to the point where they’re more fluid. It’s useful to have a feeling sense of your entire body and not just have most of your attention in your logical brain, like most people. Your body knows what to do with emotions, so allow it to do its work. Do more than allow it, invite it in and don’t judge it. Most recurring negative emotions come from childhood, so to invite the feeling in like it’s a childlike energy will help heal it. Breathe, while feeling it fully you need to be removed from any feeling that it’s personal or belongs to you.

The more you practice this three step process, the more your awareness and senses become heightened and the more the dark clouds of negative emotion become thinner and thinner. It’s a very empowering process because you know nothing can stop you from what you need to do. it’s building up a positive emotional state. The modern day Philosopher and genius Ken Wilber wrote that when increasing your awareness “pain hurts more but it bothers you less”. This process makes you more sensitive to what you’re feeling and experiencing including joy and pain. You’ll cry more, you’ll smile more, and you’ll be more of a human being. Even your depressive states become a source of sweetness as they can bring you back in touch with life. This process brings much more joy into life.

Congruency is to act in harmony with your internal state, and to be fluid, with women, requires an emotional openness and security that many men, and people lack. This practice of staying present and letting states flow through you allows you to act in harmony with how you’re feeling on the inside, which women pick up on.

To express our full masculine potential as men we need to be masters at this process, the less dark clouds you have the more accurate your judgments are, the less biased you are, the better you are at making important decisions, the more you can deal with the emotional waves of women without it affecting you. You start taking lead in situations because the clouds don’t come to inhibit you and if they do, you can suitably act, regardless of whether you’re experiencing strong emotions. In women this process goes on more in the foreground and it’s quite visible, with men it’s more covert, as you’re mission in the moment is primary. In nature, to potentially keep yourself and others alive, has to take precedence over your emotional state. That’s what being masculine is about.

“Everyone yearns for freedom from the world of chaos. Your physical body is in the world, but your true cosmic self can remain detached from it”    –Vernon Howard

Disclaimer: If you have major debilitating emotional state problems that affect your ability to live life day to day, then you should seek professional attention.

To our success,

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