“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings
not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest
that such a state is not tolerable to most people."
Thomas Ligotti, American Author
After awakening almost every camper in Yosemite by yelling at the campers nearby to be ”QUIET!”, I ducked back into the darkness of my tent and lay down. My heart pounded out its beats as if some war cry had just gone out. My overzealous demand for peace and quiet from others resulted in just the opposite within me. Internal turmoil from my head to my toes made getting comfortable in my sleeping bag a “no-go.” My taut nerves and shallow breathing limited my oxygen intake, and my constricted blood vessels amped up my blood pressure to make finding rest an unlikely endeavor. I struggled to calm myself by focusing on my breathing, but my negative emotions got the best of me. Additionally, now my thoughts castigated me for venting my frustration with such little restraint.
Then, a light shone on my tent. I thought it might be a Ranger finally arriving, ironically, to reprimand me after I had waited and waited for a Ranger to arrive to intervene against the “quiet-time” violators. The bright light moved back and forth across my tent, shining like a police helicopter’s “night-sun” that had locked onto my location. It felt likely that newscasts across the country had my tent “live” onscreen as they all awaited my exit with my hands above my head signaling my guilt in having disturbed the slumber of so many Yosemite visitors.
The floodlight, however, came from neither a Ranger nor a police helicopter. The noisemakers whom I had targeted with my loud scream had zeroed in on my tent as the source of the verbal outburst. My hypocrisy had been exposed! In my haste to judge them for their rule-breaking, I had committed a far greater offense, impacting far more people.
I did my best to manage my roiled state as their beam of light “interrogated” me through the thin nylon fabric of my tent. I found some relief when they finally turned their spotlight away. I could feel my heart lighten up on its “throttle” and reduce its “rpm’s”.
It would take time to quiet my body before falling asleep. Negative emotions impact more than the heart. Blood flow, respiration, digestion, and hormone secretion all go into alert mode to rally the energy needed to fight, flight, or freeze against perceived threats. That energy must go somewhere. Dennis Lewis, the author of The Tao of Natural Breathing, in referring to the law of conservation of energy stated it this way: “The neurochemical energy of these emotions cannot be destroyed—it can only be transformed.”
Perhaps those loud Yosemite campers did me a favor, however, by focusing their light on me, forcing me to examine my negative response with greater scrutiny. That kind of scrutiny helps a person look at one’s behavior to identify possible sources of extreme emotional responses, be it the result of trauma experienced as a child or bad habits developed early in life. Admittedly, that kind of self-reflection takes courage and humility. Bangambiki Habyarimana, a Rwandan writer and blogger stated, “Keep quiet and the enemy will reveal himself.” Often, objective observation of oneself reveals the enemy to be one’s own inability to “quiet” the inner turmoil within.
Once our weaknesses have been identified and exposed, ongoing observation, or, in other words, “staring the issue down,” dissipates its force and power thereby diminishing its control over us. Dennis Lewis refers to this as opening our negative emotions to “the transformative light of impartial awareness,” which aids us in freeing up that negative emotional energy for more positive purposes and outcomes.
Yosemite National Park does not have “mental" detectors at each of its entrances to screen visitors for whatever emotional baggage they carry into the Park. Perhaps I would have never been let into the Park all those years ago--nor a lot of others! Then the Park would really return to a more natural state.
How do I know my own emotional baggage came with me into the Park during that visit? I alone responded to the noisemakers that way. I can only surmise that the other campers easily focused on their fortune just to be in Yosemite at the time, just to have a highly sought-after campsite, and just to welcome sleep’s onset, instead of letting loud music and conversation take away the feeling of contentment Yosemite offers.
Under the circumstances, I had no logical reason to be ungrateful at that moment or display such uncontrolled behavior. I mean, the palatial granite walls of the Yosemite Valley still surrounded me in their grandeur. The Valley’s resplendent waterfalls continued to majestically leap off those granite walls. Neither did the mighty Merced River suddenly disappear; no, it still bisected the Valley’s meadows as it nourished and kept alive the unique ecosystem that I found so endearing.
Ravi Ravinda, Ph.D., a contributor to the book Global Chorus: 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet, stated that “If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy.”
How could I not access that “quiet joy” while lying in my sleeping bag when all of that vastness of Yosemite still existed just outside the thin fabric of my tent walls? The answer can only be because of the emotional “baggage” I brought along on my visit to the Park. It included my own unreasonable standards of what is fair and just and the desire that no one gets away with “special” treatment for disregarding the “rules.”
Unresolved tension and conflict over who got what and why in a family with 11 children contributed to my extreme response. Is that easy to say? No, but, childhood tension in the form of “transformed” or “stored” energy within the body does not simply vanish when we become an adult. It finds ways to express itself either externally or internally regardless of its deleterious effects.
That tension and conflict must be identified, exposed, and observed to allow it to melt away, much like the Yosemite snowpack that slowly disappears when exposed to the lengthening spring and summer light. The self-awareness needed to accomplish this comes easier if we welcome the exposure of inner turmoil, knowing that the quiet that washes over us benefits our entire organism, like creeks and rivers that whisk away the sediment of our past.
Instead of fearing the process, giving ourselves permission to courageously face past failures and bad habits smooths the process along. This cannot be something we demand from ourselves, for that will only create greater tension and conflict. Rather, we courteously and gently invite the process to begin by saying, “Quiet, please.” This initiates the shift to a more productive use of our energy, as we find rest within the vastness of our own palatial walls.
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