Sometimes I do my sweeping breath and emotional baggage clearing. I have some unexpected events. For example sometimes I have a memory come back to me that is very very special to me, intrinsically mine and yet it took me by surprise because I had totally forgotten it. Typically these memories make me feel good. Sometimes on the other hand they don't.
The other day I was doing my sweeping breath and I entered into an emotion, or a mood, or a feeling I associated with an event in my life. It was associated with a person in my life. I had the sudden discovery that that person had a deep representation for me. He was a friend from high school. He was part of the group of people that I thought were more popular than I was. I had a chance to spend time with him and I had a number of climbing experiences with him. In this sweeping breath activity, for the very first time, I realized that he represented all the popular people in high school to me.
He represented the people I had thought were judging me. He represented all the people who I wanted to be with but felt for some reason or another that I couldn't. So he was an important person in my life, even though he wasn't what I would call a deep and good friend.
This kind of realization shocked me. I had no idea I had made such associations. But it also brought back a whole wealth of feelings that I had buried and forgotten. It brought back that mood.
Through my emotional sweeping breath meditation I was able to clear out a lot of that mood. But you know, it's kind of like poison coming out of your system. Getting it out of your system is very very important, and it leaves your system cleaner and healthier than before. On the other hand, just having the poison moving around in your system (on its way out) makes you feel sick for a while afterwards. That's exactly how I felt. I felt a little bit nauseated and very tired, and I felt some of those moods had returned to me. It was a temporary feeling because the source of those moods had been basically removed (the magic of breathing). Well I can't really say that. I can only say that some portion of the source has been removed. I've gotten rid of some of the feelings. But I think there might be more.
That’s the funny thing about this whole baggage clearing process: there are memories that you have forgotten so well that when you finally recover them it is a surprise to yourself. AND some of them contain a powerful pack that returns you to a negative situation that you have to clean out. That’s what I call the emotional potholes. It’s like a bump on the road of life that you don’t expect.