We typically classify emotions as positive or negative based on our experience of them. We like the feelings that are “positive”, we do not like the feelings that are “negative”.
Our emotions are energy and by themselves are neither positive nor negative. What is more important than our value judgments on feelings is HOW we understand and process them. It is what we ultimately do with our emotions that matters. If we approach them as a means to self- knowledge, then they can be healing and contribute to our wholeness and capacity to live a rich and satisfying life in keeping with our authentic selves.
We are spiritual beings in human form and wired to feel.
If we are to truly know ourselves and become wholly alive, healthy and happy….as well as prosperous, peace-filled and loving….we need to be “emotionally intelligent ” E.G. know how to navigate and process ALL of our emotions. To be in intimate relationship with ourselves —ALL of our “selves”— means being informed by our emotions and then having the capacity to channel them properly.
Many of our habitual feelings are related to our early conditioning and family legacies. These are typically responsible for the habitual ways we react in the world. Some may be helpful, pleasant and life enhancing. Others are not and it is those that can create difficulties blocks, jams or spasms in our energy centers or a more widespread collapse of our energy system.
Our negative emotions often contain important information for us. If we try to avoid, suppress or repress them then we are setting the stage for trouble, opening the door to greater stress, ill health and troubled relationships. If we learn how to be open and let emotion move freely within, we can learn, be informed and grow from all our experiences. This can be tricky as we are REALLY not welcoming when it comes to experiencing unpleasant sensations, thoughts and feelings.
A Gift in Parents’ Clothing
One of the gifts that I received from my elderly parents’ long illnesses and need for care was the extreme necessity for having a way to process the energy of all kinds of negativity anger, grief, despair, frustration, sadness, hurt, resentment need I go on? J That experience was the impetus for creating our recording Letting Go: The Heart of Healing —so I could share with others going through challenging times some methods that can help ease the way through life’s challenges.
What I have learned through that time was not only how to make it through a tough period in life, but also how to be a bit more graceful navigating my own humanity. I am still challenged by that, but definitely more accepting and open to riding the waves of life in a way that does not dump me on the beach in a shaken heap tangled in seaweed and dragging a lobster trap! (Evidence of the past influencing the future–growing up by the sea has inclined me to ocean metaphors)
Blending Our Spiritual and Human Natures
When we learn how to navigate all our energies –to be open, allowing, curious, not resisting life in all its forms, open to letting go and forgiveness…then we truly clear negative influences from our energy system. The result is that we create the space for higher level energies to course through us and to learn how to align with it in a more permanent way. It is then that we have greater access to pure awareness and our natural gifts of intuition, creativity and spiritual experience.
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