Via Ram Dass

Try to cultivate a spaciousness or an awareness around emotions like anger and sadness that allows you to acknowledge the feelings. It comes back to the word “appreciating” again. Acknowledge the feelings and allow them, and see them as part of the human condition. They’re all generated – they’re subtle thought forms, emotions are really subtle thought forms – and they all arise in response to something. They’re reactions that come. If someone does something, you have a certain emotional response, and you have a certain reactive domain that you get into – you’re cultivating a quietness in yourself that just watches these things coming and going and arising and passing away.

You learn not to act out your emotions, but just to appreciate and allow them. That’s part of the way in which you use them spiritually. Spiritually, you don’t act out them out, you just acknowledge them. You don’t deny them though. You don’t push them down. You acknowledge that, “I’m angry,” but you don’t have to say, “Hey, I’m angry!” You acknowledge it; you don’t deny it. That’s the key.