How to Overcome Anger, Depression & negative emotions

by Sadguru Sri Sivapremananda

Whenever we feel negative emotions, specifically your feelings are the measurement system, moment you feel depressed, negative emotions are there just be aware. Whenever you have feeling like, am powerless, my work is not happening, there is frustration, depression, anger, feeling that people are rejecting me, just be aware, this is very important skill in our life.

If am not aware that something is happening when am conscious then I cannot overcome it. First step is to know that something is happening in me, and it is creating some changes in our physical system. These negative emotions are like an emergency, if we get anger often, it’s like calling ambulance (emergency response). How many times can you call everyday? A day will come when the ambulance won’t reach you. When you are angry, what happens? Breathing pattern changes glands secrete hormones to control this, so many things are happening at physical level. If we are not having awareness then we won’t know what happens inside us. Anger creates a lot of waste of energy. Now some of you have asked the question, Guruji I am doing meditation and I do not have energy? How can you feel energy, when you are angry?  Everything is drained when we have negative emotion, therefore first step is to be aware, this is very important. Second step is to take slowly detach yourself from the situation and become focused on your breathing. You are not going to fight depression, anger, not going to think positive, the moment you turn your attention to breathing, whatever is happening the moment I turn my attention to my breathing what happens in my mind slowly starts dissolving/settling into my soul conscious. No need to think positive, just bringing your attention to breathing will take care of stress, anger, negative thought. During any negative feeling/emotion, just be aware of it and bring attention to breathing.  Once you settle down be aware of the situation and what is the thought behind that, what is the belief and how true they are, the moment you know that it’s not true. For eg your mind is telling you that you are powerless but you are a child of Siva Shakti, spark of Siva Shakti, that is the truth. With experience you will know that, the moment I affirm that, I am divine, I can manage everything. With that consciousness, I know that inner world creates outside world. My acceptance, my bhava helps me to change or makes me dominate external world. More you become like this, you become master of handling negative thoughts, negative emotions, negative feeling. Awareness is very important in our life. For eg, if this table is dirty and if I do not have eye to see the dirt then I cannot clean it. Awareness is the soul, inner eye, that sees everything. Your thought can be seen only with awareness, observation is quality of the awareness, witness is the quality of your soul. Even in India we say awareness itself is a real guru, just by seeing we know what went wrong, what solution is required. When two people are fighting, if we are not involved in the fight and we are detached from the fight, you know who is right or who is wrong. If you are attached to even one person in the fight then we won’t be able to see who is right or wrong. This attachment this involvement because of your belief and bias, it makes you not to see the truth. If I detach from anger and the situation, slowly bringing attention to awareness and breathing, I centre myself, I start living in the present moment. I am not thinking of past or future, the moment you bring attention to I am here and now, this here and now is what we call super consciousness, cosmic consciousness, infinity dimension, Siva consciousness. It is blank, here nothing is there, this nothingness is what we call everything. From nothing everything has come out. In Upanishad, it says there was nothing initially, from nothingness that pure consciousness that infinity sky this matter is manifested, when matter is dissolved then nothingness exists.