Emotions: Welcoming Ying & Yang

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS? Why do they exist? And why do we have both afflictive and expansive emotions? We can begin to answer these questions by looking at the principle of yin and yang.

Yin/yang is one of the most recognized symbols of Eastern spirituality. We can see ancient depictions of this symbol in scriptures from Taoism and Confucianism in China. Nevertheless, each of the sources recognizes that the sign came from a previous and older origin, at least as early as the fourteenth century BCE.[i] That’s three and a half thousand years ago.

Yin/yang is not a symbol of duality but the principle of unity and dynamic balance in the universe. These two powers of nature, created from a single oneness, are everywhere in creation: night and day, heat and cold, expansion and contraction, stillness and motion, male and female. At the same time, such polarities are never extreme black or extreme white. Darkness has light, and light has darkness. Yin/yang is not a concept of extremes but of integration and equilibrium.

As the Chinese sage Chuang Tzu puts it, “The perfect negative principle is majestically passive. The perfect positive is powerfully active. The interaction of the two results in that harmony by which all things are produced.”[ii]

In qigong philosophy, the perpetual dance between these two forces is created and activated by the pure light of universal consciousness. It is the presence of love and light that some people refer to as divinity or God. Everything, including each of us, is a single intelligent and conscious energy in constant and harmonious movement.

THIS POLARITY IS, OF COURSE, MANIFEST in the realm of emotion. Emotions are beneficial; they are part of what makes us human and can take us all the way up or down. The direction we take with our emotions is our choice. To a large extent, our parents and society took a “good versus evil” approach to emotions, teaching us that anger, fear, and sadness are bad or negative, and joy, peace, and love are pure and positive.

The conundrum is that these emotions are not oppositional; they are parts of a whole.

Just as the two poles in a magnet exist simultaneously, there is a wonderful polarity dynamic in every one of us. We require this polarity to adjust to the external environment—to distinguish inner from outer, cold from heat, and day from night. We might say some emotions are dense, while others are light; some have a low vibration, while others have a higher vibration. In this sense, “negative” does not equate with “bad.” The negative charge in an atom is not bad or wrong; it’s just the opposite of the positive charge. And both need to exist to create polarity. Their interaction generates movement, vibration, energy, and intelligent equilibrium—ultimately giving rise to life itself.

Emotions are valuable and necessary on their own. They have their rightful place in our lives. Our ancestors chose to put the rainbow of emotions in humanity because, at a survival level, these emotions can give us the precise force to do things right. Fear anticipates danger. Anger can protect us. Hatred can empower you to attack if faced with a lethal confrontation. Joy, peace, sweetness, and awe enable us to experience and marvel at the beauty and majesty of life.

SO, WHAT ARE EMOTIONS? On one level, emotions are expressions of qi, the vital force that enlivens your being and allows you to relate to yourself and the world around you.

The expansive emotions—happiness, joy, peace, contentment, gratitude—are related to the satisfaction of your survival needs and the attainment of your goals, such as personal development, reproduction, professional success, and social interaction. The afflictive emotions—anger, hatred, anxiety, sadness, and fear—are preservation responses. They can be functional and necessary where the danger is real, or dysfunctional and unnecessary where there is no actual peril. There are also higher emotions like supreme joy, profound peace, and unconditional love, which transcend survival and involve sublime levels of experience—approaching the Divine.

Anger, for example, is a survival emotion, and much as we would use a knife, we can utilize such feelings either for or against ourselves and those around us. You can employ a knife to cut a cake or to defend yourself. Many times with clients, I have to let them know that their anger can be helpful, and even necessary, in setting limits. It can be constructive to use anger to say No! Don’t treat me like this! I will no longer accept this situation! It can be correct and appropriate to raise your voice. Sometimes you must assert yourself to stop abuse from others. When this is the case, anger can be a form of self-love and self-respect.

I want to underscore how unproductive it is to be preoccupied with having “negative emotions” and feeling bad or guilty about them every time they come up. “Oh my God, I have anger.” Surprise! You are human! In the rainbow of emotions, you have both negative and positive. One is not greater than the other. All feelings come from the same source. Like waves, they arise and subside in the ocean of your awareness. Emerging from the same pure space, emotions are also pure; they are natural and exist for your benefit and upliftment.

In this ying/yang universe, where there is joy, there is sorrow. They are inseparable. So, the issue is not the waves of emotion themselves. Our challenge is not one of “positive” or “negative,” joy or sorrow. The problem is an excess, imbalance, accumulation, and a judgmental regard for your emotions. The problem is that, when they come, we don’t let them go.

If emotions are part of the natural polarity of life and arise from the same source within you, and if one is not greater than the other, then surely you do not need to empty yourself of emotion. But what about your judgmental regard for your emotions? Your belief that one kind of emotion is better than another? What about your conviction that your life’s external circumstances are to blame? Indeed, these kinds of thoughts might be getting in your way!

The more you judge your emotions and the situations you believe are generating them—attaching yourself to the ones you think are greater and rejecting the ones you believe are inferior—the more your emotions will accumulate. This is the crux of emotional blockages.

We all have plenty of self-criticism in our minds, from being unhappy with how we appear to comparing ourselves to others, from believing we are not good enough to the never-ending desire of being liked by others. We are constantly striving to improve ourselves, to fix ourselves, to transform ourselves, and to be better, usually to meet what we believe are other’s actual or imagined expectations.

I believe we have had enough of this lack of self-acceptance in our lives to now add not welcoming our emotions! The truth is that, once we learn to accept our emotions, to let them be, we regain our self-respect, emotional sovereignty, sense of dignity, strength, worthiness and self-love—they all come back to us.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was an old and wise gardener. He was renowned for his trade. People came from abroad to admire his gardens. The way the trees, plants, and flowers grew around him was remarkable. There were exotic trees and vines, wide varieties of roses and gardenias, orchids, and lotus flowers of enchanting colors. Each garden was unique. Each was imbued with the rare and sweet fragrances of the flowers, spices, and fruit trees it contained.

One day, a young man arrived at the legendary gardens. He had come from far away in search of the master gardener, whom the young man recognized immediately on sight. The gardener was completely absorbed in his work, which at this moment was planting some saplings. The visitor introduced himself respectfully and requested the master gardener to please divulge the secret of how he worked with vegetation.

Continuing with his work and without looking up, the master gardener said, “When planting trees, be careful to set the roots straight, to smooth the earth around them, to use a good mold, and to ram the roots down well.” He paused. “And then, don’t touch them.” With this, the gardener was silent.

“But… but…” The young man was surprised. “That is all?”

“Yes,” the sage replied, “it is. Don’t touch the plants. Don’t think about them. Don’t go and look at them to see how they are doing. Allow them to look after themselves; nature will do the rest.

“Other gardeners are forever running backward and forward to see how their plants are growing. Some scratch them to make sure they are still alive or shake them to see if they are sufficiently firm in the ground, thus constantly interfering with the natural way of the tree and turning their affection and care into an absolute bane and curse.

“I refrain from doing those things,” the gardener said in conclusion. “That is all.” [iii]

The master gardener was embodying the Taoist principle of “inaction” or “action without action”, also known as wu wei. Like the wise gardener of the story, you can apply wu wei in your life by allowing the natural flow of events to run their course while not trying to control them. Needless to say, the term “wu wei” has multiple meanings: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Here, we are speaking of wu wei as the attitude of unconditional acceptance towards yourself and your emotions.

Instead of resisting your own reactions or the actions and attitudes of others, you allow things to be. You let your body be, your mind be, and your emotions be. To “let something be” means you relate to it with total acceptance. It is appropriate to resist certain events and responses when you are dependent, vulnerable, and helpless; it is unnecessary when you are not. You can face them with serenity, with inner strength and dignity.

Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up, nor is it a passive state of not doing anything. By accepting what is happening, you are allowing your inner intelligence, the wisdom of the qi inside of you, to respond to people, incidents, and circumstances in your life with ease and harmony.

Regarding emotions, applying wu wei in your daily life means suspending judgment of your feelings, thoughts, and ways of being as they arise in your consciousness. You can choose to do this, knowing that the energy becomes stuck in your body when you judge, repress, and suppress your feelings.

By learning to accept your feelings through the Emotional Blocks Clearing (EBC) process, you can let them be and let them go without resistance, allowing the natural flow to arise and subside like a wave. Only then can you respond to your emotional reactions with wisdom and compassion, returning to a state of stillness, harmony, and balance.

What’s more, with the support of qi, you can clear accumulated emotions in a similar way. This premise is the basis of the techniques used in the Healing Sessions.

Wu wei is an attitude of total acceptance of who you are and what you think, feel, and do at every moment. This outlook simultaneously includes accepting others, the outer circumstances, and life as it is. This is at the core of what happiness is all about.

Sincerely,

Héctor Vimarsha Campero

• Lic. Clinical Psychologist

• Psychotherapist

• Siddha Yoga Meditation Teacher

• Spring Forest Qigong Healer specialized in emotional blocks

*Credit: “BW” - creative ocean imagery by Khalil Tenor: https://www.instagram.com/khalil_tenor/

[i] Robin R. Wang, Yinyang (Yin-yang), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource. https://iep.utm.edu/yinyang/.

[ii] Jean C. Cooper, An illustrated Introduction to Taoism: The Wisdom of the Sages (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010) p. 19.

[iii] Adapted from J.C. Cooper, An Illustrated Introduction to Taoism: the Wisdom of the Sages, p.  64.