Psychologies Magazine, March 2002 —
Fear, sadness, joy, anger, jealousy… emotions express the richness of our personality and the nuances of our sensitivity. In themselves, they are neither good nor bad. Fear can save our lives, and passionate love can lead to cruel disillusionment. To contribute harmoniously to the balance of our lives, our emotions simply need to be acknowledged and aligned with reality. Repressed anger or unidentified fear creates far more damage than if these emotions were clearly brought to conscious awareness. It is then a matter of observing them with a certain detachment, analyzing their cause, and discerning whether their expression is proportionate to that cause.
We all know that this work of distancing ourselves from and gaining clarity about our own emotions can be done through psychotherapy. What is less well known is that age-old techniques also aim to bring about this awareness. From Greek schools of wisdom to the spiritual exercises of Christian mysticism, by way of the methods developed by Taoist masters or Sufi Muslim brotherhoods, all spiritual traditions advocate, with different emphases, a process of recognizing and transforming emotions – sometimes called “passions.”.
The central idea is to remain free from these emotions, in other words, to prevent them from overwhelming us and determining our actions. Meditation or prayer creates the inner space that allows us to identify them, name them, and gain perspective on them. If the recognized emotion is judged to be negative, excessive, or disproportionate to the cause, the point is not to repress it, deny it, or even suppress it, as some moralistic religious excesses have, unfortunately, often preached, but rather to transform it into a positive emotion in order to regain peace of mind and serenity.
Tibetan lamas, who have developed very precise techniques for emotional work, call this "the alchemy of emotions." Every emotion is a powerful energy. Once this energy is recognized and transformed, even if it appears destructive to oneself or others, it contributes to the spiritual progress of the individual.
I remember a woman in her fifties who had been hurt by a man and was constantly overwhelmed by feelings of anger and hatred toward him. She joined a Tibetan meditation group led by a young French lama and worked on this issue. After a few sessions, she told me she had not only managed to free herself from these negative emotions and regain inner peace, but also to forgive the man and rebuild a more authentic relationship with him. The poison had been transformed into an elixir. And this elixir was all the more potent because the poison had been so harsh.
March 2002