Spiritual Healing - 3 ; Guest Blog by Dr Ferda Kaleagasioglu, Turkey

 Knowing Yourself-Being Aware of Emotions

Fear, grief, guilt, despair, disgust, dislike, hate, rage, anger, shame, jealousy…
Emotions, emotions, emotions…

We are driven by our emotions, as we strive hard to fulfil our worldly desires. We become victims of our emotions, as we hopelessly cling to our addictions like relations, positions and habits.
ð    We cling to miserable and unhappy relations because we have no self-confidence, but we have fear, grief, hate, envy and disgust…
ð    We cling to devastating and embarrassing positions because we don’t act with self-respect, but we act with disappointment, anger, rage, despair, hatred…
ð    We cling to negative and destructive habits because we don’t feel self-worthy, but we feel guilty, ashamed, angry…

Just take a deep breath and think about your desires, then try to understand your emotions behind. What is your real need waiting to be gratified? Be aware of your emotions without any judgment about yourself.

“It’s easy to shield the outer body from poisoned arrows, but it’s impossible to shield the mind from the poisoned darts that originate within itself”1. One of our important tasks is to learn how to be aware of our own defiled emotions attached to our desires. But is that so easy? Not at all, unfortunately.

We evade self-knowledge because being responsible of the realized knowledge is difficult. We prefer to pretend to be incurious and stupid since we are afraid of action. We avoid the pain of personal growth. As a result, we turn out to be slaves of our insatiable desires in a vicious cycle.

Endless human desires are like the thirst of a man who drinks salty water. He gets no satisfaction and his thirst is only increased” 1. Unless we purify our desires from defiled emotions, we will be increasingly dissatisfied in spite of more and more gratified desires.  If not, there would be no paradox between happiness and income and life satisfaction rates wouldn’t decline in spite of increasing income.  

Sigmund Freud says “To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make.”

However, being completely honest requires boldness. Self-confrontation may shake self-esteem. We naturally prefer to evade knowledge which causes us to despise or vilify ourselves. None of us likes to feel humiliated, worthless, weak, or contemptible. We feel deeply afraid to confront the true-self. We evade the consciousness of unpleasant truth. Consequently, we develop our “resistances” in order not to unveil the true self within, because we are weak and not bold enough.

Escaping from inner work for evolution is the struggle of denying our highest potentialities and against our own greatness. Our evolutionary journey will be exhilarating but at the same time very annoying, since it implies that we must stop playing the victim or blaming others and events –which is quite easy, but move forward with patience in the difficult and hardly endurable path of evolution, which will carry us to our freedom.

Let’s be honest to ourselves. In Maqālāt which covers the conversations between Shams-i Tabrîzî and Mawlânâ Jalâl al-Dîn al-Rûmî (*), “How to look at the mirror” is so nicely put as below (*):

 “The mirror does not stir at all, even if you prostrate yourself before, a hundred times. If, in the mirror, any ugliness has emerged afterwards, know that it’s your own imperfection and don’t think ill of the mirror. Hide from him, this only imperfection you saw on his face, because he is my friend. “I certainly can’t” says the mirror, naturally.”

“He said: “Now my dear friend, you ask me to hand in the mirror! I cannot find an excuse for this, I cannot offend you, but I wish to find a cordial excuse so that I don’t pass the mirror to you. Because if I say you have imperfection on your face, maybe you won’t consider it likely. If you say that the face of the mirror has imperfection, then it would be even worse. Love does not let me find an excuse. Now I say, let me hand in the mirror to you, but if you see imperfection on the mirror, do not regard it as imperfection of the mirror, but as having emerged afterwards! Regard it as your own image, or as imperfection resides within you! At least don’t look at the mirror when I am with you. It’s a must that you don’t find any imperfection on the mirror’s face. If you cannot find imperfection in yourself, then find it in me because I am the owner of the mirror. Don’t speak ill of the mirror.”

Let’s see “imperfections” in ourselves. Let’s not blame the mirrors, which only reflect our own imperfections. Let’s quit protecting “the self” when looking at the mirror.

Look for the faults in yourself. The only person, who will not accept any excuse at the last moment of your life, will be your own reflection in the mirror.

And always remain with love,

Ferda Kaleagasioglu

References
1.    The Teachings of Buddha by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai. Kosaido Printing Co. Ltd. 2nd revised Ed, 2005.
2.    Maslow, A.H. Toward a Psychology of Being. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982.
3.    Sharma, R. Discover Your Destiny with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. The 7 Stages of Self-Awakening. Harper Element, 2004.
4.    Easterlin, R.A. and Angelescu, L Happiness and Growth the World Over: Time Series Evidence on the Happiness-Income Paradox, IZA Discussion Paper No. 4060, 2009

(*) Translation by the author

Turkish version of this series can be read in the Journal of "Spirit and Matter” published monthly by Foundation for Spreading the Knowledge to Unify Humanity (BILYAY) at http://www.bilyay.org.tr

Brief Profile

Ferda Kaleagasioglu is a doctor of medicine. She worked as an academician at Istanbul University and then at various senior executive positions at multinational pharmaceutical companies. Her current fields of interest are integrative medicine, quantum physics, consciousness and spiritual healing. Her medical approach is “Primum non nocere”.