What are you feeling?

I’d like to ponder today about feelings and emotions… Some of the questions I’d like to explore include: Why do we have them?  Why do we care?  or I don’t really feel emotions… does that matter?

Brandon Bays, author of The Journey, an internationally acclaimed healing process describes emotions as “the barometer of the soul” and I must say after hearing those words from Brandon many years ago, that has absolutely been my very experience.  And to be honest when I first heard those words, I didn’t feel much.  I could cry when I was in deep pain like heart break, but beyond that I didn’t feel much.  I was pretty numb.

What I’ve since discovered about emotion… Wait, before talk about that, let’s look at “what is emotion”?  If we break the word down we can see “E-Motion” or energy in motion.  Emotions are basically – biochemically-based movements of energy in the body.  What do you notice about the energy of anger or rage, grief or ecstasy, fear or excitement … or the energy of joy or peace?

Let’s go back to looking at fear and excitement for a moment and while we are at it, let’s consider love and hate.  Using the Journeywork I mentioned above, we discover that some emotions feel contractive in our bodies while others feel expansive, even when they have a similar energetic pattern.

Doesn’t excitement feel like an expansive version of the energy of fear?  It’s almost like we feel excited when we relax in our fear and in that relaxation, the fear can be transformed into excitement.

I’ve also discovered that hate is basically love in pain. Could you possibly hate something that you didn’t value?  Why would you bother hating something that meant nothing to you?  It’s almost as if the hate arises when we feel hurt and we retract or contract our love and it transmutes into hate.

Have you ever felt like you hated the one you loved the most?  Most of us have because it’s part of the natural flow of human emotions.  I remember the first time I personally experienced this for myself.  It was several years ago and the man I was in relationship with at the time was upset about something that had happened between us. I knew the guiding power of emotions and I allowed him to feel his feelings without making him wrong for what he was experiencing.  From my training and experience helping others reconnect with and welcome their emotions, I knew that if I simply let him feel he would automatically find the love.

So I told him I welcomed whatever he was feeling.  He looked angry for a few moments and then he blurted out, “I hate you!”  I said, “It’s ok…” and let him continue to feel.  I was blessed to know his feeling wasn’t the truth.   I watched as his body seemed to do a “double-take” when I told him it was ok.  Then less than 30 seconds later, he was reaching out for me with tears in his eyes saying, “I love you.”

I fortunately had the wisdom to know that “hate is simply love in pain” and that he needed to be able to express his pain so that he could reconnect with his love.  It was one of the most beautiful and magical moments I’ve shared in my years of conscious relating.    When you relax in the energy of hate it can be transformed immediately into the underlying love.

 

Hate is simply love in pain…

 

So why does all this matter?  As I quoted Brandon in the beginning, “Emotions are the barometer of the soul.”  If we notice when we are feeling contracted – no matter the emotion – hate, fear, anger, jealously, grief, shame, hurt, rejection – and we welcome that “contractive” or painful emotion, it will… if we truly welcome it… guide us into that which we wish to feel – an expansive emotion like peace, joy, bliss, passion, or love.

Kids are actually great teachers for us in this department.  Before they are conditioned (like we all were) to hide their feelings and before they experience some powerful emotion that they decide they “never wanted to feel again”, they genuinely and authentically feel their feelings and those feelings – especially the contractive ones – come and go quickly.

Have you ever seen a child lying on a bed crying profusely in one moment, start laughing and expressing their love in the next? Or have you seen a child upset with another child who’s taken a toy from them, only minutes later refocus happily on some other form of play completely forgetting about the anger over the lost toy.  This is the natural process of feelings emotions.  We all felt freely at one point in our lives and I suggest that if we make friends again with our emotions – all of them – the good, the bad and the ugly – we’d all be much happier!

 

Make friends with your emotions…

 

So back to that barometer thing… if you are feeling contracted, it’s simply an indication that you are not in alignment with something happening in your life or something that has happened in your life.  In other words, if you are feeling contracted, there is some part of you that is being repressed and held back – either your words or your emotions or both.

When you are feeling contracted welcome the emotions and in feeling them, they will connect you to your own infinite wisdom – the part of you that knows what you really want and need.  It’s that part that we so often pretend doesn’t exist – even when it’s whispering softly in our ear or when it’s screaming loudly in our gut.

 

Emotions are the barometer of the soul…

 

Your emotions will guide you to freedom, joy, bliss, peace, passion – whatever you are seeking – if you simply allow them to flow.

For more information on befriending emotions or freeing yourself of buried ones, consider reading The Journey by Brandon Bays.