How to approach emotions in meditation?

Emotions in meditation, and in life, can be so overwhelming sometimes.

Have you ever wished you had control over your feelings? So you can always be calm and happy? Most of us have wished that.. and realized that it does not work because everything changes. Happy moments come and go, as well as difficult ones. Nothing lasts forever. And if you truly relax into that fact, a lot of inner space is freed up.

Emotions are neither right nor wrong within the field of mindfulness practice.

You are not trying to avoid emotions, or to have some kinds of emotions and not others. Allow them to exist as they arise, without the additional complications of judgement, evaluation, preferences, aversion, desires, clinging, resistance or other reactions.
As you watch your feelings appearing and disappearing, flowing through your inner landscape, you can discern if they’re wholesome, unwholesome or neutral.

Mindfulness is the practice of honestly being aware of what happens to you and how you react to it.

Emotional maturity comes, not from the absence of emotions, but from seeing them clearly. With mindfulness, life becomes a creative process, instead of being purely a reaction to whatever comes your way.

Listen to the whole recording:

This podcast  about approaching emotions in meditation is recorded at the Mindfulness Meditation Course taught by Tatjana Mesar in April 2016. For more podcasts, go to our Soundcloud Channel.