Following the breath and pushing back

When one meditates and is following the breath, it is not a neat trick per se.  When you are concentrating on your breath you are also conscious of the thoughts and feelings but you also are working with a sense of surrender, of being conscious and letting it go. The energies of the emotions are our bottled up energy that forces us into rebirth again and again continuously. When we surrender these into the breath we are freeing that energy and freeing ourselves from another constriction that causes use to act in a deluded manner. Delusion being the unconscious thinking that these emotions are an absolute fact of our being, that they are the truth of our identities.

Surrendering the emotions and feelings into the breath too is a metaphor. It is more like a pushing contest we are engaged in with the energy of our minds.   As we quiet ourselves with the breath, we stop pushing and these little shells that we are holding just slide on by and dissolve. This is what it feels like to me.