We can understand our physical pain, as in placing a hand on a hot stove, is not us, but something we experience as important feedback. That’s a harder distinction, however, when that feedback is continual. People in chronic pain, for example, often struggle to remember that they have pain, and not that the pain has them.

The same is true of emotional feelings—they are feedback. But it’s damn hard to take an objective view of a difficult emotional time while living through it at the time. Still, to the degree we can recognize that challenging emotions are reflections of poorer quality thoughts, we begin to have the tools to address these tough emotions with better thoughts creating better quality emotions. When we feed our bodies poor quality food, we don’t feel as well. When we feed our psyches with poor quality thoughts, likewise, we aren’t going to experience good feelings.

We understand from meditation that we can find peace amid our thoughts; we sit quietly, let the mind come to rest, and slowly calm the mental turmoil–yet we have tremendous difficulty doing this emotionally. Try this—do a heart “meditation.” Forget about the mind; sit quietly with your heart energy, and let it grow calm. Don’t think about it or “listen” for messages—that’s going back to thinking about it. Just let it be still, and just be. It’s a powerful refocusing. Your whole body energy will shift noticeably, and you’ll find distance from what had seemed sticky emotional trials.

Let the heart come to rest, and feed yourself better thoughts; at first, the negative emotions will continue to taint the results. . .but keep at it—gardens don’t grown abruptly. Keep pursuing better feeling thoughts, and gradually you’ll find yourself in a better emotional state.

Six Days, Six Sessions, Six Seeds for Success: The Kwan Yin Path