Continuing from Spontaneous Creativity . . .
“The idea of leaving it as it is, leaving what is in its own place, is a beautiful concept, a beautiful practice. If we leave an emotion as it is, it will liberate itself without any effort on our part, and we will be transformed as a result. For example, if I’m sad and I’m fully aware of it and I’m leaving it as it is, the sadness cannot sustain itself. But what usually happens is that our sadness triggers a story and the story drives our imagination. We anticipate our future interactions with others, which influences how we act, and the result is more confusion and pain. In this way, sadness and anger and any number of negative emotions are sustained. Sometimes you may even secretly like your emotional pain; maybe you’ve made friends through your shared sadness or righteous anger. But you are not leaving it as it is. You are attached to your sadness or anger. You are paying too much attention to it, or, more accurately, you are paying the wrong kind of attention to the emotion. That binds you to the emotion and blocks the expression of other possibilities.”
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche