If you have diabetes, you would do well to eat your walnuts, according to a study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care. The study found that adding walnuts to a low-fat diet improved cholesterol levels in those with type 2 diabetes.


It appears that the polyunsaturated fats and the particular antioxidant found in walnuts makes a winning combination. In light of this and similar previous studies, scientists are concluding that, for those with type 2 diabetes, a low-fat diet including regular intake of both fish and walnuts improves the cholesterol ratios and levels more effectively than does a regular low-fat diet. Source: Medscape Medical News.

That being said how can we manage and get a hold of these negative emotions? Well the first step is to not suppress them. Although there is a time for suppression - such as in public there is no need to express your grief. There is also an appropriate time for _expression and release. My experience with emotions is that basically it is impossible to control whether they arise but it's what we do with them that determine how much we suffer.

What is the difference between emotional pain and suffering?

Emotional pain is natural for sensitive, caring human beings. To not feel grief at the loss of a loved one would indicate a lack of humanity or ability to love. What happens for most of us is that we want to avoid the pain of feeling the emotion completely so we develop a story about the grief, anger, and loss - whatever emotion we feel and fixate our attention on the story. For example, let's say you are going through a breakup and you feel great loss at losing your partner - it's natural to feel grief for a period of time, but many of us don't feel the grief directly either we try to bury the feelings either with drugs, alcohol, sex - something to numb the pain or we develop a story in our minds about what this means - i.e. this person was wrong, I was wrong, I'm no good, she's no good, life is cruel, etc. When we bury the emotions it just goes underground and starts to manifest in the body as disease and effect our behavior and ability to feel. For those who deflect the pain into a story this story then becomes the focus of the mind's attention and creates unnecessary suffering and creates ongoing frustration. This emotional deadness and frustrated anxiety is the experience of many people due to the unwillingness to liberate the pain through direct experience. These are coping strategies, which we employ out of fear of being overwhelmed with pain. Have you all had this experience?

So the grief is never felt completely - it's more like the grief is so overwhelming that the mind deflects the direct experience of the grief into a story about what the grief means or what caused the grief or any number of stories. The attention to the story prevents one from experiencing the emotion. This is needless suffering. All emotions can be liberated by directly experiencing them. Think of the pain, anger, and fear - whatever as a giant wave coming in as you wades in the shallow water. The way to avoid being knocked over is to dive into the wave and come out on the other side - right?

This is what happens when you experience the negative emotions directly - you discover they are not as bad as you feared. Its power only comes from avoidance of direct experience. A teacher of mine told me that direct experience of negative emotions like fear, anger and sadness all reveal the lack of substance of these emotions. They don't exist other than in your mind. On the other hand, direct experience of joy, love and peace reveal that these emotions are deeper and more sustaining than we realize as long as we don't try to hold on to them.

Try this with a subject that is painful for you by thinking about the subject that brings emotional pain then,

• Welcome the emotions that arise - feel the emotion directly without any commentary in your mind. Ask for Life, God to bring all the pain, anger all of it up to your awareness.
  
• If you see a story develop in your mind - i.e. this means .....just let it go . Remember the emotion is a wave - you dive in and breath into the emotion and see what happens. It is counter- intuitive at first - but try it just once. No discussion in your mind just experiences it. Don't run into a story just dive into the emotion and let it be.
  
• You may feel a release or some physiological shift. Again be careful to notice your mind and it's internal dialog - don't attend to the commentary - let it go. Just the emotion and you and then just the emotion. Penetrate it with your consciousness.
  
• Continue this with any mental discussion that comes up, ask what is the feeling behind this grievance, this anxiety, this contraction? Now welcome the emotion be completely angry, sad or afraid not just a little - all the way, BUT don't follow ANY story about the emotion.

By James Jordan, J.D., C.N.C.