Pendulum

Learning how to feel negative emotions (i.e., guilt, shame, anger) and sometimes even neutral emotions (i.e, boredom, indifference) is a key part of moving through suffering. In our understanding of dukkha (a Buddhist word that means “the truth of suffering”), and our acceptance of suffering as a fundamental part of the human condition, we come to see that it is not pain itself that immobilizes us, but rather our resistance to feeling that pain.

I have found that this resistance, specifically the resistance to allowing ourselves to feel awful things, keeps us in a prolonged limbo of suffering. Over time we become so weakened by our intolerance for negative emotions that we become stunted, stuck, depressed, anxious, disconnected and out of touch with ourselves. Resistance to feeling is the only thing separating us from peace. If we move through our emotions as they come (the good, the bad, and the ugly)—we inevitably find that one moment is always followed by a new moment. Indeed, every emotion is impermanent. By embracing the impermanence of emotions, we de-identify with our emotions and see ourselves for our truer nature—the consciousness that experiences the emotion. The emotions that our consciousness experiences are temporary states that are bound to the physical body alone.

Many people in the field of mental health have come to call this phenomenon of building a tolerance for negative emotions as, “increasing your window of tolerance.” But while helpful, that phrase never felt satisfying to me. How I prefer to view it, is through a mental picture: the pendulum.

Imagine your inner emotional world, moving from one emotional state to the next, is like the swinging of a pendulum. Depending upon the actor (i.e., the circumstances, the stressors, the karma, etc.) the pendulum is “pushed,” and as a result, the pendulum must swing back with equal but opposite force. When we do not “push” or “pull,” the pendulum (i.e., when we do not create resistance through the Ego’s desire to control the pendulum), we find that the pendulum settles itself. All we need to do is wait. This is how I prefer to view emotional volatility: the inability to wait for the pendulum to stop itself and return to its center point. Now of course, it is true that while we may try our best to not push or pull—to simply feel and trust that the process of feeling without action is sufficient—that does not mean that outside forces cannot push or pull at our pendulum. While we have power over our inner world, we do not live in a vacuum. The truth is that other people, systems, and environmental factors can offset our pendulum. This is what I think is meant by clinicians who advocate for building a wider window of tolerance. It means that in the presence of outside stressors, we have more wiggle room to maintain our own equilibrium. Through the pendulum model—I like to describe this as elongating the pendulum. This way, when we experience the world acting upon us, our pendulum may still move, but because the leg of the pendulum is longer, this movement is not as jarring, and we do not experience such extreme pulls between the polarity of opposites. What’s nice about the pendulum metaphor is that it reminds us not to push or pull.

I heard a Buddhist monk use prayer beads to illustrate this concept. Holding up his prayer beads in one hand in front of his face he demonstrated that when you push the beads away from you they swing back into your face. Likewise, when you pull the beads closer to you, they subsequently swing farther away from your face. This is a metaphor for how we can deal with emotions as they arise. When we push something away, to avoid something we do not wish to have close to us, it comes back with a vengeance. Similarly, when we pull something closer to us out of a desire to grab ahold of it (i.e., clinging to love, joy, pleasure, etc.), we are more likely to experience the disappointment of it escaping our hold. So the Buddhist monk said: Don’t push, don’t pull. If someone is a creative visual thinker—I encourage them to combine the image of the prayer beads and the pendulum. Altogether, this conceptual image or metaphor gives us the key to navigating difficult emotions with greater ease.

So the question becomes, how do we make our pendulum longer, so we experience less extreme polarity and a greater sense of equilibrium? Making the pendulum longer is like elongating time. Slowing time down. Having more of it. Getting out of a sense of urgency and moving into the space between things. To slow down time, we need to master nonaction.

Mastering nonaction, finding stillness, and pausing is key. When we move into nonaction, we can truly focus on feeling. When we find stillness, through increased awareness, we move into the space between and around emotions. Rather than running from them or jumping into emotions with haste, everything slows down. Like a moving picture (i.e., movie or video), we begin to see that the continuity of motion is only an illusion. Upon further inspection, every motion is actually a collection of stills (i.e., single pictures that blur together due to speed). It is through this slowing down, that the still moments become clear. Each emotional experience is only a moment, strung together with other moments. Upon even further inspection, we come to find that there is in fact space between each moment. This mindful awareness of the space between moments, helps us see that emotions are in fact discreet. They do come and go, and in between them, we find grace. In the space between our thoughts, our body sensations, and our emotions, there is room to breathe. Through the space and with the breath, we remember that we are the experiencer, and we begin to watch the emotions like waves passing by. Instead of identifying with the waves of our emotions, we identify as the water (i.e., consciousness/the experiencer/the witness). Through meditation (i.e., the practice of mastering non-action), the illusion of permanence dissolves. Nothing lasts forever—not even forever.

© 2023 Krystal H. Parrish, PhD. All Rights Reserved.