There's sometimes a little energy, especially in the mental noting technique, which if you can be aware of the subtlety of it, this can help you to know whether you're actually letting go or whether you're suppressing. For example, I'm sitting there and I'm trying to be aware of my breath or something, and a thought about my past comes up, something to do with one of my brothers, this or that, and I go "Past!, Past!" and I come back to the breathing. OK, there's this kind of feeling of, you know, "Get away, get away, I don't want you."
There can be this subtlety in just the way you make the mental noting. In the Compassion and Lovingkindness meditation, you can pick up this as well. You can see whether you're actually kind of just doing something to get it done or whether you're actually doing it in an easy and gentle way. Especially regarding the group of people like all those "enemies" from the past, people you don't like, people you had friction with and so on, see how the phrase flows. OK?
It's often like this, we sit there and we want to do ourselves, we want to do our family, our friends, we go "May so and so...dadadadada boop" fine. Each person we like, we do fine. When it comes to people we don't like, often what may happen is "May so and so
Try to be aware of "How easy was that mental note?" "How easy was that Compassion and Lovingkindness phrase?" This will give you an indication of whether you're actually suppressing or getting rid of something or whether you're just doing the job, doing the job.
There is an analogy, I think it's in one of Rosemary's talks, about the scientists looking at the cell samples and all, and being objective. The scientists are going to do their work, they're not going to start hating cell samples. They're not going to start loving some and ignoring everything else. No, they're going to look at each one, and it's just day in and day out and day in and day out and they just do their job. Because that's what they're working on. That's what they're trying to do, and maybe they're going to discover something in the end, maybe not, but they're just treating every cell sample pretty much the same way. So, to really feel that you have let go of something is that, yeah, you just did it easy, you let go of it for that time, maybe it comes back again, but each time you let it go it develops the conditioning to let go on the deeper level. As to suppressing, there's always going to be a bit of different way with the mental noting, a different factor going on.