Watch your moods

What the Method Is

The core instruction for this meditation method is: “When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered.” This sutra provides a technique to transcend emotional reactions by shifting focus from the external object of the mood to its internal source within oneself.

How It Is Done

To practice this method, you should:

  • Identify the arising mood: When any mood, such as hate, love, or anger, arises towards or against someone.
  • Do not project outwardly: The crucial step is not to project this mood onto the external person or object. For instance, if someone insults you, the anger is yours, not created by the other person; they merely “prick” what is already within you.
  • Turn inward to the source: Immediately shift your attention from the external object to the internal point from where the mood is arising. Move to this internal source, not to the person or object that triggered it.
  • Remain centered: Stay focused on this internal source, making the mood a “journey toward your inner center”.
  • Engage in conscious psychodrama (optional, but helpful):
    • If you feel anger, express it “in a vacuum” by screaming or beating the empty sky, while remaining a witness to the act. This allows for catharsis without causing harm or guilt, and helps you observe the undisturbed center within.
    • You can also relive past incomplete desires or wounds by re-enacting them. This helps heal old emotional imprints and build the capacity to remain undisturbed in future emotional situations.
    • Similarly, one can explore sexual energy alone, allowing the body to move and express itself fully, while remaining meditatively aware.
  • Avoid suppression or external expression: This technique is fundamentally neither suppression nor external expression of the emotion. Instead, it uses the energy of the mood to turn inward. Suppressing emotions postpones them and creates a “burden” or “perversion,” while expression wastes energy and forms habits.
  • Utilize intense moments: When the mood is “hot” or intense, the “path” back to its source is clearer and more visible within.
  • Start with simpler actions: If it feels too difficult to apply this to strong emotions like anger, begin with easier, everyday actions. For example, be aware while walking, then suddenly stop; or consciously choose which foot to step out of bed with, breaking a mechanical habit. This builds the capacity for awareness and the “feel of stopping with awareness” before moving to more complex emotional situations.
Commentaries and Insights
  • Identification as “The Only Sin”: A central principle behind this method is George Gurdjieff’s assertion that identification is the only sin. Unconscious identification with thoughts, emotions, or external objects is the root cause of misery. This meditation transforms this by using conscious “identification” (e.g., becoming the mood in a meditative context) as a tool to ultimately transcend identification itself, leading to a state of non-identification.
  • Transformation Through Acceptance: Tantra emphasizes total acceptance of your nature, including what is often judged as negative like anger, hate, or sexual desire. Rather than fighting or denying these energies, Tantra encourages moving with them with deep awareness and sensitivity. By doing so, these energies, which are intrinsically neutral, can be transformed. Anger, for example, is seen as “compassion in seed form,” which can be transmuted through awareness. Trying to suppress emotions, as in yoga, can lead to a “dead man”.
  • The Inner Source of Emotions: All moods and emotions are understood to originate from within you. The external world or another person merely acts as a trigger, “pricking” or “throwing a bucket” into your inner well, bringing out what is already present there. If a Buddha is insulted, only compassion will emerge because anger is not present within them.
  • Discovering the Undisturbed Center (Witness): This technique helps in discovering an inner core or “center” that remains undisturbed even amidst extreme desires or emotional turmoil. This pure inner core is the “witness”. The disturbance you feel is on the “dust part” of your mind, but your true self remains untouched. The very ability to feel disturbed implies the existence of an undisturbed point within, providing a contrast for comparison.
  • Distance from Center and Disturbance: Your level of disturbance is directly proportional to your distance from your inner center. The further you are from your center, the more disturbed you become; the closer you are, the less disturbed. At the very center, there is no disturbance, like the calm eye of a cyclone.
  • Beyond Polarity (The Middle Path): By focusing on the source of the mood rather than externalizing it, you learn to remain in the middle, transcending the oscillation between emotional polarities. Buddha’s entire philosophy of majjhim nikai, the middle path, is rooted in this witnessing process – neither being attracted nor repulsed by extremes, but simply observing.
  • Energy Mastery and Authenticity: When the energy of an emotion is guided back to its source, rather than dissipated externally, you develop into a magnetic center. This makes you the master of your own energy, mind, and body, reducing dissipation and making you less susceptible to external manipulation. This approach encourages authenticity in your emotional life. By fully engaging with and witnessing emotions like anger or love, without pretense or suppression, you allow yourself to grow beyond them, as repressed emotions can lead to a “numb, dead” state and hinder true connection.
  • Meditation as Unburdening: Osho views meditation as a process of unburdening repressions and shedding “false faces” or personas, allowing your authentic self to emerge. This method directly supports this by requiring you to face and integrate your true emotional landscape without judgment, leading to inner purity and freedom.
  • Initial Disturbance as a Positive Sign: When first practicing this method, you might feel more disturbed than usual, as repressed inner “chaos” and “madness” come to the surface. Osho emphasizes that this is a sign the technique is working, and this initial confrontation with your authentic self is a necessary step towards transformation.
  • Effort Towards Effortlessness: While initially, an effort is required to consciously redirect attention inward and apply the technique, the ultimate aim is to move towards a state of effortlessness. This initial effort acts as a “starter” to break old, unconscious habits, allowing awareness to become spontaneous.
  • Beyond Therapy: Unlike Western psychology, which often aims to normalize the mind, Tantra sees the mind itself as the disease. This technique, like other Tantric methods, aims for transcendence of the mind by shifting identity from the mind to the pure witnessing consciousness, leading to true health and wholeness.