For many years I have sought to teach the meaning of living beyond emotion. I am asked time and time again what will replace the emotions if they are “dropped.”

There is something within us all called: THE FEEL. Masters call it: I AM THAT. If we meditate on just the words I AM THAT, we find that these simple words can open up many doors within us. We are THAT which the mind cannot think. It is a wonderful meditation to work upon.

Most people are not mature or willing enough to have the direct experience of Being within the existence of their life. Hence, meditation is difficult if not impossible for them due to the relationship they are having with the body and the many emotions that come from it in such an insidious way. So, rather than realizing all of this and moving into consciousness, they allow their body and mind to redirect their attentions through their emotions. This causes them to live only for the gratifications that seem necessary to cover up the unthinkable and intolerable pain that their body holds through their emotions.

Most people in this world live unresolved within themselves and their life. Devotion to an authentic spiritual practice requires that they live and have their Being beyond the emotional need for comfort and relief that has defined their entire life as well as many lifetimes prior. In an authentic practice, they must give up everything that eclipses the true meaning of this life.

Most do not engage in the practice of meditation and Love because they do not realize HOW IMPORTANT THEIR LIFE REALLY IS. Life matters – there are no elements of this life that are without significance.

Most of us do not sense this because we live without THE FEEL of our own being. We experience emotions through our five senses, but we do not FEEL the urgency of BEING because we are so busy trying to tantalize and gratify our emotions. We have lost our way in this world and have squandered our energies for mere emotional satisfaction. In doing so, in becoming completely obsessed with emotion, we have lost our essence…the FEEL of our Being.

Now all we are left with is rationalized fear accommodated through logical hate. Most never question this or consider that Love could be something more important than emotions. The sad mistake most of us make is associating Love with emotion. This simple problem is the biggest issue of our entire life.

Living in this straightforwardness brings forth a clarity that is unintelligible to the intellect that is congested with emotional desire. To the ego, all of this looks like losing what is important. But again, that is mere illusion.

Here is a wonderful Sufi story…I hope you can realize the point of it all:

There was once a great Sufi mystic, Abraham Adam. At one time he was the Emperor of Bokhara, then he left everything and became a Sufi beggar. When he was staying with another Sufi beggar he was puzzled because every day the man was continuously complaining about his poverty.

Abraham said to the Sufi beggar: “The way you abuse it, it may be that you have bought your poverty cheaply.”

“How stupid you must be!” the beggar retorted, not knowing to whom he was talking, not knowing that Abraham was once the Emperor. “How stupid you must be to think that one buys poverty.”

Abraham replied, “In my case, I paid my kingdom for it. I would even give away a hundred worlds for a single moment of it, for everyday its value becomes more and more meaningful and apparent to me. No wonder then that I give thanks for it while you lament it.”

It all begins with gratitude, thankfulness and the humility that guides us to Love. Our emotions are meant to be used as a conduit to our intuition and Heart. But we have “used” them to accentuate our body’s deepest fears through living in the unconscious mind, and hence we have created for ourselves deep emotional despair.

Our poverty is not financial. Our poverty is that we are so emotional we cannot recognize the meaning of anything that comes to us. The “loss” we feel when we lose someone or something that we have loved emotionally can only be overcome through gratitude for its place in our life. The time and place that they occupied in our livingness is what matters. As the Sufi story depicts, we must learn how to live in an unconscionable generosity that exceeds our emotional fears. From here, we realize that everything we lose or that seems to break the human heart is actually here to propel us beyond our selfish emotions and into the compassion that frees us to experience our Karma through mercy.

It has taken many years of inner practice in the devotion of Karma to come to the place where I can let someone go for the sake of his or her mischief and not let it be a “loss” in my life. These people had to come into my life in order to show me where I “was” and “am” with my own inner state and flow in Love. It has taken a long time for me to place my human heart in the correct posture within so I can sustain my spiritual practice and complete my Karma with other people who enter into and depart from my life.

I no longer love people as a means to my own selfish ends. I now Love people where they are within the depth of the Karma that I am living in and through. I allow everyone to come and go without taking it to the human heart. I have found that most people do not “run deep.” They typically dwell on the surface feeding off of emotional gratification and its eventual pain and sorrow. They know not what they do because they do not care to know WHAT they ARE. The MEANING of their life has not become important to them.

Most of us find this hard to understand because we do not have any distance from our emotions in order to recognize them for what they are. We have allowed emotions to motivate and energize our behaviors to such a degree that our minds have been forced to concede to their demands through intimidation and a constant barrage of strong perceptions that cause us to react from FEAR of some form of imagined danger.

Seeking to control emotions through denial is absolutely futile. We cannot deny their existence nor can we remove their affect on our body and unconscious mind. They are NOT controllable as they are the basis of our instinct for social, political and earthly survival. They are the animal part of us that comes with having a human body.

We can however change our relationship with them. This is the essence of intelligence.

When we are willing to enter into an authentic transformational practice we truly realize how transformation through Love is not tarnished by emotions, but rather it allows emotion to become a conduit to the powerful essence of intuition. This is the proper use of emotion that brings about the intelligent merging of authentic mind (no-mind) and the feel of Love (utter mercy) as an authentic spiritual practice. This union creates a “new person” of us that is compassionate and deeply insightful.