How To Know When Your Healed

[rush]

Hello,

Once you feel into a negative emotion, for example, through meditation, why is it that same thought about an event can still bring on pain later,

How do you know you've 'felt into an emotion long enough' to know you've dealt with that negative feeling ? Whence of you know to stop ?

[Visitor]

We have memory. We remember past negative emotions. The goal is to come to a point where you have accepted what caused the negative emotion in the first place. For instance, many people re-experience grief and loss of a loved one on a yearly basis. They remember how painful it was when it first experienced the loss. If they have accepted the loss, they naturally will still feel some sadness, but can accept that again and move on. Those who have not accepted their loss will relive their grief and loss until they do accept it.

Even after acceptance, one may revisit their original grief, but it usually subsides when they remind themselves that they have accepted it, or made amends, or dealt with it in the past. I still remember / re-experience certain negative emotions, especially when I relate to them through another person. Like, someone does something which may trigger a past embarrassment for me. I may even go red in the face, but I no longer actually have the stories of embarrassment attached to them. They are simply re-visits of how I was. They remind me of how far removed I am from being such a fearful person in my earlier life. Or how I no longer actually create so many negative emotions for myself anymore.

To answer your question: It may never stop arising, because you have memory, but you no longer need to dwell on them anymore. Re-accept it allows those emotions to arise and quickly fade away, knowing it was just a memory.