It was a gray rainy day. The week had just started and I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing special had happened. It was a normal week in my really normal life. Like every Tuesday, I went to the coffee shop around the corner to buy a coffee and a piece of my favorite chocolate cake. And like every Tuesday I sat down near the window to watch the people passing by. Today was one of those weird days when I felt like everything was useless, every conversation, every thought, and everything else I planned to do in my life. It was hard to understand, some days I felt like I could hug every single person that was existing and on others I felt as if I didn’t want to be on this planet at all. Suddenly an old woman jostled me from the side and pulled me out of my thoughts. In line with my mood, I scolded her, which I immediately regretted. The old woman had two long braided black-gray braids hanging over her shoulders. Her eyes were framed by small folds and her well-tanned skin tones made her chestnut eyes glow. She smiled fondly at me as she said:
“Don’t blame yourself for your reactive behavior. Most people are controlled by their emotions. Nobody teaches you how to deal with them in a healthy way. Even in the world of spirituality handling emotions is a controversial topic.“
I was irritated by the lady’s sentences. Was she talking to me? And how the hell would she now if I acted reactively or intentionally? She was still staring with that weird constant, calm smile.
“You all behave like little rubber balls, thrown from one wall to the next. You never come to rest. You think you don’t have time to rest. You don’t get it, that it would be better to invest a little bit of your precious time so as not to spend the whole life as a stupid rubber ball. And while you are completely flung back and forth by your life, you convince yourself that you have everything under control. While flying, you feel great as if you are directing the journey, but as soon as the next unexpected wall comes up, you feel again how hard and destructive the collision is.“
Wow, I was completely overwhelmed by the confrontation, which seemed to thwart my cozy Tuesday noon. Should I get involved in this insane monologue by a strange woman? I might as well just pretend I don’t understand her.
A second later, my mouth seemed to have become self-reliant and I said that of course I was influenced by my emotions. I couldn’t understand how spiritual people could claim that they are not. If you’re not influenced, you’re non-reactive, how was life? Just stable, without any highs and lows? Without sadness but also without happiness? Wouldn’t that be equally foolish and against the laws of nature? I think claiming to be consistent means that someone is suppressing their real being. And suppressing something means creating a ticking time bomb. I thought I had shown clearly with my arguments that I was a reflected person and that I they did defeat hers. However, her remaining smile told me that I was wrong.
“If you want to become free you beautiful, young lady, you must learn how to not be controlled by your emotions. This doesn’t mean at all, that you suppress them. Suppressing is only for the foolish ones, those who think they are strong enough to ignore them. Ignorance is the peak of stupidity because you believe you know everything and if you think you know everything, you really know nothing. Let me explain how to deal with your emotions at the example of your choclate cake. It’s your favorite cake right?”
I nodded cautiously.
“See some days, when you are in a really good mood, you just feel like this choclate cake is the best thing on earth, you enjoy every single bite of it and maybe on these days you also really appreciate its appearance. The whole procedure of enjoying your favorite cake is like a little celebration. And then on some other days, when you are really stressed, you just feel like your choclate cake tastes diffrent, maybe its shape does look ugly to you and the bar tender just wanted to betray you. Another day when you are really sad you just come to stuff that choclate cake into your belly as if you would have to kill your emotions. You eat it so fast you don’t even realize eating it. And afterwards your belly moans. It was too much, and you might feel as if this cake was spoiled today. Every day this choclate cake had exactly the same ingrediants, it was exactly that same delicious cake which you once declared as your favorit one. The only thing that changed was your mood. Your emotions. You were controlled by them so much that your whole experience of eating your favorite cake has been lost.“
Oh dear goodness. This woman was right. I was totally that rubber ball she was talking about. The three possibilities of attitudes towards my chocolate cake seemed more than familiar to me. On some days I fully enjoyed it, devoting all my attention to the act of enjoying. Strangely enough, nothing can disturb me on such days. On other days, however, I don’t even notice that I have eaten. Although I love this cake so much I just seem to be in another sphere and I miss the whole point of eating it — the enjoyment. In retrospect, I found that because of this dissatisfaction, I sometimes stumbled out of the coffee shop and was really annoyed at how unfriendly the waiter was or how unlovingly the baker had prepared the cake. Probably it was all just an illusion. Realizing my strange self-deception made me feel like a fool.
“Don’t feel like a fool dear. As I said, nobody teaches us, how to behave in a healthy way. And this seems really strange to me, as it should be the preparation of living a joyful and peaceful life. Imagine the chocolate cake represents your life. Life stays the same, just like the ingredients of your cake. Depending on how you project your unconscious emotions onto your cake or onto your life, it will taste diffrent —sweet, sour, delicious, gross. You transform the possible enjoyment of your life through your feelings. Because you fully identify with them. Emotions are the reactionary consequence of your evaluating thoughts. Consequently, it is not your emotions that are the problem, but these uncontrolled, unconscious thoughts. If you can learn to be more awake, to perceive your emotions and to evaluate where they came from, you gradually start to take control. When you get to the root of your emotion, you can reflect on whether the situation can be changed. Sometimes nothing can be changed, then you have to practice acceptance — but that’s another topic.
Reaching the origin of every emotion? Sounds like a full time job to me. The old lady seemed to be able to read me like an open book as she responded immediately after I finished my thought:
“Don’t worry, dear. It is just a matter of training. I promise that if you practice diligently, you will become better very quickly. You will be able to watch your emotions and thoughts from a healthy distance, so that the enjoyment of your chocolate cake is no longer spoiled unnecessarily. It’s not about becoming emotionless. Emotions are often needed to make people feel alive. The point is to not identify with them, of being able to watch them, of being aware of them. The sweetness of your cake will be determined by your ability to observe consciously, just like the sweetness of your life.“
