stop analysing

Stop analysing

We humans love to analyse things. Instead of simply sitting with whatever is in front of us, we start analysing, looking for reasons why, what has caused this, what are the consequences going to be? There's a huge mental activity that comes into play. And this analysis has its place in human life. However, most of us take it to extremes and over analyse. And that's why it's worth stopping oneself from analysing, at least once in a while, to counter this tendency of over analysis.

When we analyse something, we are really creating a story, and the purpose of that story is for us to feel comfortable. We feel we understand what's going on. We feel that things make sense, and that's what's important. However, in a way, when we are analysing, we are avoiding something else. And typically we are avoiding feeling emotion. Raw emotion is a strong sensation. And it can be tough to really sit in a feeling of sadness, or a feeling of hopelessness, or a feeling of anger, or even a feeling of love.

All the emotions – negative or positive – can be felt very strongly and they can tend to overwhelm us. And rather than allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed, we might often turn to analysis. It's taking energy away from the emotion and into thinking: the realm of thoughts, ideas, concepts. And by shifting our awareness from the emotions to the thoughts, we don't really have to face the emotions. We are escaping from them. And it's a shame because the emotions are what make life worth living. And our capacity to feel our own emotional energy can only really be expanded to its full potential if we sit with the emotions. And to do that we have to stop analysing, at least some of the time.

And our capacity to feel the positive emotions – love, joy, humour – our capacity for these is going to grow in proportion to our capacity for the negative emotions. So if we always try to avoid anger and sorrow and despair, loneliness, if we try to avoid these negative emotions, we won't be able to handle the positive ones either. Our emotional life will remain stunted, underdeveloped. And remember it's the emotional tone of life that gives it quality. This is really what makes life worth living. Otherwise we are merely robots and might as well be replaced by machines.

And aside from the emotions, all this analysis also takes us away from simply being, being in the moment, being with what is, with the direct perception of our senses, and with our very existence. So for this even deeper reason, it's vital that, from time to time at least, we stop analysing.