Good Emotions Bad Emotions
How do You feel?
So where are you? Where are you on the emotional scale? Emotional scale? What is the emotional scale?
When we bump up against “reality,” we get a reflection of sorts. An emotional radar, you might say. We project our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes up against the “reality” before us and what comes back is our “emotional” echo. It is those thoughts, beliefs and attitudes that decide where we are on this metaphorical emotional scale.
Life isn’t fair. It’s not my fault. They won’t let me. I can’t. These types of thoughts and beliefs are anchored in a victim mentality.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” ~
We are all experiencing a form of karmic momentum. A karmic collage of experiences. We build up our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes as we go through our life. The core of these thoughts, beliefs and attitudes is instilled in us by our family environment. Nobody had an ego to speak of the day they were born. And our subconscious had not been loaded up the day we were born either. It was in our family dynamics that our early imprinting got established. Setting ourselves up for a particular karmic experience.
Add to that the accumulation of our emotions. We literally accumulate the energies of emotions we avoid. We load up our subconscious when we avoid our feeling in the moment. Our subconscious is like a giant emotions recorder. Not really recording how we feel, but rather, the emotions we don’t feel. In other words, the emotions we avoid, the emotions we suppress, are the emotions that we “take on” energetically. If you think about road rage, where does that intense emotional energy come from? It comes from not processing those feelings in the moment.
What were the emotions in your family of origin? What were the emotions that you remember most? And perhaps, more important, what were the emotions that were not felt? That were avoided? It is important to understand that the most impactful emotions from your family of origin might not have ever been felt. I know “ever” is a decisive word, but sometimes there are emotions that are just completely outside of the day-in and day-out family dynamics.
What if your family were so totally structured and formal? What would the opposite of that look like? Totally unstructured and totally informal? Uncontrolled laughter and silliness? Having squirt gun water fights in the living room? Throwing the newspapers up in the air as you run through the house butt naked? Draws an image, doesn’t it?
It is quite common for people to “settle in” as they grow older. They avoid feelings that get them upset. In other words, instead of healing their relationship with their emotions, they just avoid the uncomfortable feelings. Creating narrow corridors of sorts. Collapsing the emotional arena(s) they are willing to go into.
Good Emotions Bad Emotions
When our feelings are generally difficult or challenging, those are the emotions that are telling us that our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes do not support us. Do not honor us. It can be a condition that mirrors our family of origin. Where our soul chose to incarnate into a difficult situation. Chose to come into a family that is not emotionally healthy. And therein lies the challenge, or lessons. To heal our relationship with our more difficult emotions is to heal our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes.
When we decide we want a different experience, a better experience of our life, we will want to heal our relationship with how we feel our emotions. How we feel our emotions is a variable. Sure, our emotions have a particular “feeling” to them. But that feeling can have a whole multitude of possible experiences. This is where we can change our emotional experience … in a moment. In a flash.
So, in my family dynamic, anger was an intense and scary emotion. When my father got angry we all felt scared and intimidated. Those feeling were not from the anger, but rather, our re-action to that anger. When we have the same re-action, we experience the same re-sults.
I can feel anger, the same emotion now, and have a completely different re-action to it. The organic “feeling” of the anger itself doesn’t change, really. But rather, how we re-act to that emotion can change. When I feel anger now, I value it. I am thankful for it. My anger is showing me that there is something in-congruent happening in the situation. And as a value-added bonus, there is this intense energy, indifferent energy, that comes along with the anger, that can fuel my resolution of the situation. The anger is showing me the incongruency and providing the fuel to get it resolved. I am talking about the very same anger. The very same anger, that would set the whole household on pins and needles, is welcome in my life now. WE decide the relationship we have with all of our emotions. The emotions themselves have no motive or agenda. It is our relationship with our emotions that decides if the experience is “good” or “bad.” The emotions themselves are indifferent as to how we are experiencing them. If we feel powerless and afraid with a particular emotion, we can change that experience. To the point that we value that once difficult emotion, and thank it for showing us where we are in our spiritual journey.
Pay attention to how you feel with your emotions. What are your emotions telling you about how you see yourself? Where are they prompting you to grow yourself? What thoughts, beliefs and/or attitudes would need to change for you to have a different experience?
Emotions, like gravity, are impersonal.
Love You!
Les
