The First Step — Become Self Aware

According to the noted author and spiritualist Aaravindha Himadra, “the first step to changing your emotional programming is to step back mentally through becoming self-aware, through developing your meta-cognitions”. This means being willing to recognize when an emotion is present and then step back from an emotion to witness it impartially, taking oneself out analyzing or judging it. Similarly, he claims “the more often you accomplish that, the easier it becomes,”. Eventually, with enough practice at being self-aware, individuals will begin to develop self-awareness over mindless emotional indulgences.

The Second Step — Use Your Meta-Cognitions

Aaravindha claims that the second step to changing your automated mental programming is to use your meta-cognitions as a means to feel your emotions without resistance, prejudice of preference. Ultimately, the distance between you as the observer, and your emotion as the observed, must be relinquished until no distance remains. He encourages individuals to feel their way into their emotions without struggle or judgment, in a gentle manner similar to a leaf floating on a ponds surface gives into the gravity that slowly pulls it to settle on the floor. There’s gravity in any emotion. That gravity is the emotion seeking its natural release or resolution.

The Third Step — Give up Resistance to Emotion

Once that is accomplished, step number three can be employed. According to Himadra, this step is best encapsulated by a question posed to oneself: what does it feel like when one gives up all resistance, all resistance in on one’s awareness, in the heart of an emotion without indulging in it? Accomplishing this step is crucial, he emphasizes, as it may eventually result in the automated emotion disappearing altogether.

The Fourth Step — Listen Carefully and Feel Honestly

In the space that is created by becoming aware of and then removing one’s automated emotional response to a given situation, new opportunities for responding to life circumstances are created. Step four is the consideration of alternate avenues of feeling that leads to better kinds of actions. It may be that emotion covered a deeper authentic feeling that can then be realized and expressed in its stead. If one’s natural inclination is to slip into a mentality of victimhood, esteem issues, judgment or anger instead consider proactively trying to repair the problem through neutralizing the dominant emotion.