and more 'aware'

  In the previous posting I wrote, there is something there that could take me many lifetimes to really understand. When I note that being aware of feelings is sometimes enough, does that mean that I just act on them? What is the difference between 'accepting' and 'reacting' with emotions? Again--it takes a while for me to truly understand the meaning.
      The difference between accepting and reacting? Well, in a way, they are opposites. For example, when I am reacting, I am usually in a conflict with some thought or emotion that I dislike, or want to remove. Rather than just enjoying the emotion as it arises, there is an intense desire in me to act on that emotion: I have to take it and 'do something with it', like it is a hot potato to hand over to someone else. Reacting could be thought to be the game of 'hot potato' where I try to find a willing (or unwilling) lap on which to deposit the emotion. At this point, the emotion is kind of like an object. I struggle to find some place to put it.
   Accepting an emotion is sort of the opposite. It is an attitude of not even needing to form a concept of the emotion, like 'this is my emotion'. It is almost a kind of pre-cognitive awareness that something is in the air. By not really fixing a notion onto this feeling, it pervades my pores, and I remain open to its possibilities as it is actually happening. I don't elaborate on thoughts related to it. At that point, one can even say it doesn't matter where the emotion came from or why it exists. Even if I try to hang an explanation on the emotion, that explanation is only a way to give the emotion unnecessary artillery or wheels: artillery to charge forward at an invading army, or wheels to retreat into the self. So, it's an important aspect to simply let the emotion be what it is. There is no right or wrong for it to be there. In this way, I am not reacting or even acting on the emotion. I like that emotion on its own terms, without trying to create an agenda out of it.
   As I reflect in this way, I realize: so much of what passes for 'acceptance' of emotions (or even self-acceptance) is often an elaborate defense against emotions that one dislikes. For example, I might say, "I totally accept the way I am regardless of how you treat me!" But already, in that statement, there is a rejection of the kind of emotions that arise when another person treats one a certain way. If I accept all the emotions, I wouldn't need to differentiate between 'the way I am' and 'the way others treat me''. They would both be the same experience, and I could potentially enjoy all of it .  But because I make a distinction between 'my true self' and 'your experience of me', I find reason to reject the latter. I try to protect 'me' from others' opinions. But if I accept all emotions, I wouldn't try to reject even sadness that arises from what others say about me. I can just happily accept the sadness that arises.
    When I was in seventh grade, I was not a particularly great student. I think the main reason was that somehow I had not quite gotten the hang of how to be successful in school, and I think I had a lot of interests beyond school as well. Most teachers might see this 'lack of school ambition' as something negative, and they would try to condition me through encouragement, reinforcement, etc. More or less, that conditioning must have worked; otherwise, I perhaps would not have succeeded in securing employment. Lack of interest might be seen as pathological to some, but in retrospect, I didn't need to 'fix' that lack of interest, or substitute something else for it. It was just there, and it would pass like many emotional states.
     I found  that the most effective way that teachers use to motivate students is to give them a compelling identity that suggests that one can succeed. The problem is that in relentlessly pursuing a cultural ideal of the 'model student', one ends up having no way to really be with emotional states which counter that model.  Repression results, as well as the relentless pursuit for the elusive model self. But in trying to be this model self, I lose the ability to stay in emotions that don't have a clearly defined self. These emotions almost seem to threaten my stability or the 'hope' I place in the model identity. But if I treat emotions meditatively, I no longer need to see them as annihilating or crushing in any way. This subverts the classic notion of trying to choose emotions that are most conducive to a 'virtuous' being. Actually, in not choosing, one will naturally be virtuous, because there is no longer a need to react, to run away from emotion or to pretend it doesn't exist.