今天，我们继续思考「愿意承认自己的感受」这个重要的观念。事实是，大部分的人都不愿意「感受」负面的情绪，大家会设法尽快把它除去。

人的个性里面有一种适应性的潜能，称为「防卫机制」，它能够在必要的时候帮助我们借着压抑或压制来除去负面的感受。压抑涉及将它们推往意识以下，去到潜意识那里，比如说：「我现在不再去想它，因为太痛苦了」。压制是将它们推进无意识里面，完全忘记它们的存在。这些「防卫机制」可以缓解我们在需要面对不能接受的情绪时的焦虑，令我们暂时脱离困境，但却没有把问题解决。

唯一促使我们能够全面成长的方法是愿意面对感受，不管它们是多么可怕和具有威胁性。当然，这是不容易的事情，我自己在这方面仍然有挣扎。虽然与二十年前的我相比，现在的我更能够面对那些不能接受的感受，只是我前面要走的道路还很长远。要谨记我昨天说过的话，因为那是十分重要的：我们越是将不能接受的感受推开、害怕面对或感受它，它就越是继续在我们里面产生反效果。为了我们的精神和灵性健康，我们必须明白任何埋葬在我们里面的情绪都不是死去，而只是被活埋。

We must spend another day looking at this important matter of being willing to acknowledge our feelings. The truth is, most of us are unwilling to "feel" a negative emotion and we try to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Our personalities are equipped with adaptive devices called "defence mechanisms" which come to our aid at such times and help us rid ourselves of negative feelings by either suppressing them or repressing them. Suppression involves pushing them down just below the level of our conscious mind into the subconscious, where we say: "I won't think about that now - it's too hurtful." Repression involves pushing them down into the unconscious where they are completely forgotten. These "defence mechanisms" may get us temporarily off the hook by relieving the anxiety we feel at having to face an unacceptable emotion, but they don't really solve the problem.

The only way to real growth and wholeness is a willingness to face feelings, no matter how terrifying and threatening they may be. It's not easy, of course - I still struggle in this area myself. I know I am better at facing unacceptable feelings than I was, say, twenty years ago - but I still have a long way to go. Keep in mind what I said yesterday, for it is a vitally important matter: to the extent that we push an unacceptable emotion away from us, fearing to face it and feel it, to that extent it will go on working within us counter-productively. For the sake of our mental and spiritual health, we must realise that any emotion that is buried within us is never buried dead - but buried alive.