If we begin to realize that our emotions are largely made up from the digestive process and hormonal changes in our bodies causing us to ruminate and fixate on things other than the present here and now moment, we can stop depending on them so much, and begin to focus on our moment to moment 5 sense experiencing.
In fact, our mind kicks in when we are “feeling” these processes, and comes up with a “Oh, i know why i am feeling this way.. it is because _____ yada yada yada” reason and then begins to produce a storyline (or begins to ruminate on an old storyline) based on the scapegoat it has found.
Focusing on our moment to moment 5 sense experiencing, gives us back our pure nature way of experiencing the world, and is the actual target of many of the worlds religions, answering the question: How can i live in this world while maintaining a sense of wholeness.
While our emotions seem to tell us a verified story of our relationship to the world, they are actually painting a color on our experiencing of reality, then create a storyline based on that mixture, which we then fixate on, which then tricks us into believing that the “way i am feeling” or “my emotional state” is this way or that way.
Focusing on our moment to moment 5 sense experiencing is where our true nature speaks to us and we commune with our deep nature. Focusing on our emotions puts us out of contact with our experiencing of the present moment.
The way to do this, since ancient times, is to focus on the breath going in and out of the nostrils. It is still not explainable in neurology terms, but soon will be. This way is what nature intended us to live and experience, and thus brings us “home” in our experiencing of the world.
All the “magical methods” that are out there all point to this simple way of living in the world. Our experiencing of the sensory world is only to be found in this “present” moment. We can “remember” past events, and we can project into the future, but we can only experience this present moment. We are built that way, and it is the way of nature.
Our attitudes and opinions are all built from gathering the past present and future, and forming opinions about them.
It is our opinions that imprison us in a worldview that almost always creates a picture or storyline different from the actual world of Reality.
The more we imprison ourselves in this “thinking” process, the more we struggle with the variance between what “is” and what “our mind projects upon it”.
One of the prime issues we are facing in our world, is that folks are saying “there is no world that “IS”, there is only our subjective opinions of it.
My reply to this is (which got me locked up on twitter for offending their “selfharm” snowflake opinions) “If you think that you are living in a quantum world where the physical laws do not apply, then hit yourself in the head with a rock and see if there is blood… if you can’t think your way out of having be harmed, then either the quantum world has you locked up in the human experiencing of it, or there is actually a “experiencing level” which is the only level humans experience the world in.
In all these cases, there IS an actual world which we are all experiencing…. albeit in a subjective manner.
Reality is Dharma 