Would you be surprised to discover that there is something toxic festering inside you? Wouldn't it be great to remove them?

Even if you think you are happy, you might have some toxic emotions hidden inside you, some of them for years. Any personal development quest or a search for happiness requires a seeker to deal with this, and the exercise in this article will yield some surprising results.

I believe that these emotions are not, in fact, hidden. Rather, they're so much a part of us that we no longer notice them, although the toxicity still eats away at us from the inside.

There is a physical analogy for this that I have: A few years ago, a minor spine injury I suffered in training began hurting so much that I desperately began looking for health care practitioners that could fix it. After trying many different therapies and practitioners, I eventually found one which worked. The pain disappeared for days. But after a week, my spine started hurting again, and I booked in for another appointment.

At first I was thinking that he didn't properly fix the injury, and that it had returned. But it wasn't the case. He checked my spine, and told me that in fact, he had fixed that injury. The pain I was feeling was in fact the pain that I have been carrying for years prior, caused by poor posture and obesity. I had become so accustomed to it that it didn't register consciously. The reason it felt like fresh pain to me was because I had been pain-free the week before.

This is the case for emotional pain as well. Much like old physical injuries, they have a way of destroying your body slowly, sometimes without you noticing.

These ?background? resentments are a bit harder to understand then more intense emotions. Eckhart Tolle, in his powerful works The Power of NOW and A New Earth, states that they are caused by a few structures of the ego. See if any of them apply to you:

-This shouldn't be happening to me.

-I need to get (a new relationship, a new job, more money)

-Something happened to me in the past that shouldn't have happened.

All of these carry in common a theme of waiting ? waiting to live, waiting for something to bring you happiness, waiting for something to be cleared so you can be free.

Tolle goes on to explain that you cannot live in the future or the past. If you waiting for a future event to make you happy, it cannot ? for Now is the only time you are alive, and the only time you can ever be happy. When the future comes, it is no longer the future, but Now. The same applies to past burdens. You cannot live in the past, there is only Now. Think about it.

He also goes into detail about the ego, which is the root of unhappiness, as well as the pain-body. I won't go into them here, but he suggests observing the unhappiness ? a part of which is accepting it ? and it will slowly be transmuted into what he calls Presence (a deep peace and inner stillness). In essence, as you observe your unhappiness, it disappears.

I agree with his observation method, but I also find that using a combination of observation and letting your emotions out safely and healthily work better for me, hence the exercise in Part 2. You'll also find this approach throughout the rest of the Urban Monk site.

Next: Part Two, also found on the Urban Monk site. You're on your way to mastery!