[GAudeamusMember]

Hi Griffin,

The core challenge in resolving a strong negative emotion like jealousy in my experience is that one is not able to just drop the resistance to the feeling itself and to just experience and embrace it, as is always advised. The reason is the strong sense of aversion to that feeling (in this case, jealousy). We recoil from experiencing that inferior, not good enough, less than, unworthy self (or whatever is the core identity in the individual case). In order to implement the solution (which is accepting, embracing, loving and thus integrating your jealous self), you have to first eliminate the strong judgement of bad and negative about the underlying identity.

You can accomplish that by identifying and experiencing the strong feelings of bad, horrible, despicable which you have attached to the jealousy. Just allow yourself to feel these feelings, immerse yourself into the “badness” of the jealousy. If you really apply yourself to the exercise you will notice after a couple of minutes that the strong aversion, disgust and recoiling associated with the jealousy disappear.

You then will be able to dive into the root cause of the jealousy, find the fearful, insecure, unworthy, inferior or whatever identity it is which triggers the jealousy, and welcome it, embrace it, love and heal it. This may take several sessions until you are not triggered anymore.

I have completely overcome strong jealousy using this technique.

[GAudeamusMember]

I agree with Maaike. But if you are ready to do the prep work – preferably at a young age, because we become less flexible with age -, and learn to sit it the full lotus position without pain, then I think it is definitely worth the effort. As everything, patience is the key – you cannot force it, but you have to give it time and develop the ability, like every other activity.

I am meditating in the full lotus position for 40 minutes every morning, and it works great for me. No pain at all, just some numbness during the last 10 minutes, which is no big deal. And by the way – the numbness decreases with practice. Also, it disappears after the session in a minute or so, and my legs feel great afterwards, a little bit like after a workout. I am 57, so this shows it is definitely possible, but I have to add that I practiced for the full lotus several months when I was 20, and have practiced the position since then.

Also, it helps that I have been living in Japan for over ten years, and am sitting on the floor a lot in my daily life when I am at home, so not only for the meditation. That is definitely helpful for the flexibility. It is astonishing how flexible most older Japanese people are compared to their Western counterparts, just due to the fact that they use to sit on the floor.

Again – if you feel it is important, put in the prep work over a couple of months without forcing it, with a lot of patience, and you will be rewarded – even very stiff and inflexible people can learn to sit in the full lotus over time. But it cannot be done in a day or a week or even a month in most cases. And on the other hand – I am sure you can attain even the highest stages of meditation sitting in a chair, just as Culadasa teaches. The important thing is not the position, but the meditation itself.

Just my 2 cents. 🙂

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