Align Yourself With Possibility by Deepak Chopra
Narayanan Kannan
witnessing; you observe the pain without getting wrapped up in all the
secondary blame, avoidance, and denial that usually follows.
In the act of witnessing, insight becomes possible. It takes
detachment to bring understanding, and if you get caught up in your
hurt, you won’t see the reason behind it. No one can hurt you today
without triggering a hurt from your past. You have to see that in
order to find yourself.
As you learn to say, “I feel hurt,” and really be with that feeling,
more openness will develop. The emotions that frighten us are the
complex ones, because they overwhelm the natural release mechanism.
You cannot simply release guilt or depression. They are secondary
formations that arose once you forgot how to release hurt.
The more hurt you honestly feel, the more comfortable you will be with
pain, because the ability to release it will grow. As this happens,
you will feel easier about all your other emotions. (To a blocked
mind, feeling “positive” emotions such as love and trust is often just
as difficult as feeling “negative” emotions such as hate and distrust.
Both are blocked by old unresolved hurts.)
Feeling easy with your emotions means that you won’t get so entangled
in other people’s. Instead of blaming the ones who hurt you, you will
be able to forgive.
The lessons of this exercise are very profound, and it puts you back
into the present, and present-moment awareness never ages. It is the
same when you are 5 or 85. The discovery of freedom in the present
opens the door for the permanent experience of timelessness, in which
past, present, and future are revealed as illusions compared to the
true reality, which is always here and now.
Adapted from Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra (Three
Rivers Press, 1998).
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"Be the change you wish to see in the world." -Gandhi