What stays the same recedes from my attention.
When something changes, I feel it.
Which means: A feeling is just a register of change. So there’s really nothing to worry about.
The more drastic the change, the more intensely I feel it.
When the water is colder or hotter than my skin, the experience of it is shocking at first. I recoil a little (or a lot) and then, in time, the shock subsides and a new equilibrium settles in. Soon my skin and the water become aligned and the intense feeling is gone. After a while I find I can forget that I’m even in the water.
Change is where all discomfort lies: in the momentary recalibration of sensation.
Everything that continues unchanged will eventually recede from my consciousness.
Everything that doesn’t continue is, by definition, over.
Things either continue or they don’t continue, so everything is either not happening or in the process of receding from my consciousness.
So there is nothing to fear.
Resistance to something unchanging is how I KEEP IT from receding. When I resist what I’m feeling, each new act of resistance further agitates my suffering. If I don’t go to war with what I’m feeling, but instead just recognize that I have experienced a change, acknowledge that the change comes with a feeling - the way striking a bell comes with a ring, allow the feeling ring as it will and just WAIT, the discomfort will fade all on its own.
Like the result of a stone tossed into a still pond, which goes from splash to waves, to ripples and back to perfect stillness. Every time. (As long as I don’t try to stop the waves by throwing more stones at them.)
But what about “bad” things?
I don’t want my bad feelings about bad things to recede from my consciousness, do I? Won’t I miss the chance to fix them? Won’t I be complicit in evil taking over? Isn’t that how sickness festers, how tyrants take power and how hate takes root?
Well…
Who is in the grip of evil when I judge something “bad” instead of whole (which is what I know it to be)?
Who is engaging in tyranny when I let my pain name someone or something “tyrannical” and commit me to their destruction? Who is stoking hate when I let my pain label someone or something “hateful?”
And let’s be honest: am I not, at one time or another guilty of every human “failing” I judge others for? Even as I’m judging?
What is “sickness” or “injury” but an opinion about the state of my body? Is it possible to consider myself “sick” or “injured” without the belief that things should be other than they are? Isn’t the body just living up to the mind’s fantasies?
Am I living honestly when I succumb to other-ing and feelings of superiority or opposition to what is? Am I living in my true nature?
Isn’t it true that I’m not really myself when I’m in the throes of these stressful emotional states? Isn’t it harder to access my true loving nature when I am suffering?
Don’t I want these stressful feelings of separation and unworthiness to fade away (as they are always mercifully trying to do) so I can be whole again? So I can be present, unafraid, totally connected to everyone and everything I encounter and able to freely and lovingly engage the world as a loving extension of myself?
If I do, all that’s necessary is to acknowledge that I’ve had a feeling, recognize that a feeling is nothing more than a register of change, and then let the feeling fade.