“The automatic gesture of neutralizing pain reveals an unspoken lesson: we have learned not to dwell on what we feel. Today’s culture, saturated with instant gratification, turns every discomfort into an excuse for a fleeting reward. Thus, sadness ceases to unfold as an experience and becomes a gateway to superficial gratification. The brain registers this circuit, turns it into a habit, and transforms pain into an operator of accessible, brief, repeated dopamine.
It is not enough to abstain from immediate pleasure; we need to change the way we experience emotion. When sadness strikes, the impulse to stifle it must give way to a non-reactive presence. Sitting with it does not require understanding it, but allowing it to be. Listening without intervening, holding without the need for closure. This is where another relationship begins to emerge: one that neither obeys nor represses.
Working with emotions does not mean suppressing them, but suspending automatic obedience. Affection that is observed without being acted upon loses its power. It does not disappear, but it becomes visible. Emotional freedom does not arise from denial, but from inhabiting the emotion without allowing it to determine action. Remaining in sadness without giving it control opens up a different form of response: lucid, not compulsive.”
Prabhuji
