Cloudscape

Emotion and reason should know their place. Emotion should not be reasoned about and reason should not be based on emotion. They can, nonetheless, be connected.

Emotions are, for a large part and perhaps entirely, experiences which are embedded within sensations, in the form of impressions. The sensations in which emotions are imbued may be real or exist only in imagination. Thus, to better become aware how you feel, try to attribute emotions to your sensations, including sight, sound, touch, smell (and to a lesser extent, perhaps taste). When you are aware of how you feel,  to feel better, try to imagine that you fill every sensation with positive emotions.

Give negative feelings as much love as positive emotions, but shun negative thoughts. In fact, perhaps negative feelings would not be called negative were it not for negative thoughts that judge them thus.

Ensure that in your winters you will retain as much yang as possible to complete the yin of winter, but also accept the yin it brings; meanwhile, ensure that in your summers you will retain as much yin as possible to compensate the yang of summer, but also accept the yang it will bring. Remedy not what there is too much but what there is too little.

Always remember when trying to change your feelings that you change them only in whatever way already feels is truly the best for you in this moment, and not based on your thoughts of how you "ought" to feel.

When feeling an emotion such as anger and despair, observe them as though it were a leak of energy and no more than this — a leak that needs to be sealed — thereby encouraging you to do so, as well as to take an objective distance from the emotion.

There are always two ways of dealing with a feeling, either by dealing with its material cause or dealing with its psychological cause. Choose whichever feels most efficient.

At times our thoughts crowd in on our experience, the transition from one experience to the next becomes more difficult, and we must instead make use of the transition from thought to experience, meaning that we must seek out experience through thought, as a detour. Often when we want to become conscious of our experience, we try to do so; but experience itself cannot be a goal, and when we try to experience, we do so from our thought; when we are trying to become more conscious of our experience, we must therefore realize that we must be patient till the trying wears off, and we can truly experience, not departing from thought but from feeling.

To achieve the balance of neither repressing negative emotions nor surrendering to them, acknowledge them first of all and afterwards do something about them if needed, be it either by changing one's way of thinking, or the situation that causes it; when it comes to this, do this both through thought and through action in balance. Remember how you feel, but also remember how you could feel instead of how you feel.

In whatever we do, we should start from our feelings and end with it, using thought only when we need it as a tool.