"As one lamp serves to dispel a thousand years of darkness, so one flash of wisdom destroys ten thousand years of ignorance."
- Zen quote
I do not subscribe to certain popular beliefs that some feelings and emotions are negative. I believe that none of them are "negative"; they are all part of you; they are life expressing itself through you, also giving you important messages of who you are and who you were.
During the process of growing up almost all of us will
have found the need to hide are true feelings and who we felt we were for real. In order to gain self knowledge and relate in a healthy way with others and ourselves, we need to get out of such destructive cycles. They maybe helped us survive in difficult times in our past, but now they hider us in relating truly to others, and in achieving inner peace and happiness. So we need to get in touch again with our emotions. Part of this is to be honest about what we feel without judging or labeling the emotion itself. We need to let the experience of the emotion flow freely through us, without resistance. In this way, the emotions are released, which means that we do not end up clinging to them, or making them part of who we are, of our own identity.
Every human being has a right to be open and to feel the emotions that enter their body. The thing we do not have a right to is to blame others for those emotions. If you want to gain your own autonomy, strength, inner wisdom, and continue on our personal growth, this is a very important step to realize. To deeply understand that you are the one who is producing your emotions, and to take responsibility for those feelings. This way you will own your feelings as your own.
Our feelings can be our very best friends, guiding us towards our deeper self.
Letting your heart be open to both pain and love, two feelings which are highly intertwined.
How can you feel love, without being open to the pain it also brings? How can you feel happiness without sorrow? Or put even better in the words of Kahlil Gibrans book, "The prophet":
On Joy and Sorrow
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall."
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall."
And so it is, that without joy, there can be no sorrow, and without sorrow there can be no joy. So if you look at it, there might be no need to judge them as good or bad, but take them as they are: Two shades of the same color.
But there are also other ways of taking responsibility for your emotions. We need to see how we are making ourselves feel the different things we are feeling. they are not just something that is throw down on our heads, like snow from a full roof in wintertime. We react to a situation with thoughts, our thoughts then again creates emotional responses, and then we feel them. Some thoughts and emotions stay with us though, and gets stuck in our bodies and thought-patterns as belief-systems. Sometimes consciously, and sometimes we are totally unaware that they are there. This is why we need to find them, feel them, and let them free. It is also important then to redefine the thought-patterns they are stuck to, to make us react, think and feel in a new and healthy way, instead of the old pattern we have identified with.
Taking responsibility in this way, is also withdrawing the thought of an other person or situation "making you feel this" and taking the focus back to yourself:
If you want to express your emotion and talk it out with somebody, you might say"My feelings got triggered and felt angry when you did x" . This clearly shows you taking responsibility for the feeling, and is not blaming the other person, but is merely an expression of the situation. This allows you to work and improve to not let this situation arise again.
The opposite example would be if you said: "You made me angry when you did x" With this sentence you create blame and guilt. Emotions which often are just meant to hurt the other person deliberately, as a revenge for them maybe unwillingly hurting you. Don't get me wrong, to have a conscience is always helpful and also very valuable.
It makes you take healthy choices and consider others peoples feeling. Guilt is never healthy, for either part of a situation.
A way to get better in touch with your emotions is meditation. It helps you to get in touch with your genuine feeling self, your intrinsic being. Counselling can help to get things off your chest and give you support to move through difficult situations. Journal writing is another excellent way to stay in touch with yourself.
An other aspect of this situation is that the other person actually never made you angry. You made yourself angry. We need rather to look at our anger, or whichever feeling or emotion that is surfacing and see why it is making us angry, be aware of what it is saying to us. In this way we can gain in self knowledge and become the directors of our own lives! We can understand ourselves deeper and also heal old wounds from the past that complicates our lives and makes us miserable.
To be happy is not just something that happens to you when the right circumstances are there. To have a happy life is hard work; hard work of awareness!
A way to get better in touch with your emotions is meditation. It helps you to get in touch with your genuine feeling self, your intrinsic being. Counselling can help to get things off your chest and give you support to move through difficult situations. Journal writing is another excellent way to stay in touch with yourself.
Rome was not built in a day; and personal growth is a task of a lifetime. But no matter what, each step brings you closer to you, and who you really are. And each step that makes you get stronger in touch with your feelings and emotions, will allow you to feel more alive within each moment. And this is a wonderful experience. But that doesn't mean that this will be pleasant all the way, but rather the opposite.
To face yourself and all the difficult emotions you have suppressed can be quite demanding and hard. but the more you can stay open to them and let them flow, the less it will hurt you. Most feelings and emotions when accepted, even sadness end up feeling quite comfortable. If you "take the whole package" as we say; the "good" with the "bad", stay awake and accepting to what is happening, no feeling really feels negative, but flows through you sometimes almost pleasurably.
There is also something about facing emotions and letting them free, that gives us a healthier life in general. For instance, if you do not show your anger you might think that no one will know you are angry, and you avoid a difficult confrontation. Thing is; people who do not genuinely express themselves when they are angry tend either to find themselves from time to time exploding in arage or maybe expressing this rage thought passive aggression instead. Both reactions that are more difficult for both parts than the original display of anger.
Working out feelings and emotions and getting in touch with your genuine felt self offers an inner richness which is totally independent to any material wealth.
Working out feelings and emotions and getting in touch with your genuine felt self offers an inner richness which is totally independent to any material wealth.
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