Feelings - recognize, experience, handle them
The nature of your personal beliefs always dictates what emotions you have. Whether you feel aggressive, happy or despondent will depend on three things: the event in which you find yourself, your beliefs about yourself in relation to those events, and your ideas (beliefs) of who or what you are. Only when you understand your beliefs will you understand your emotions. Only if you make a conscious effort to learn to listen to what your conscious mind believes, will you understand why you feel what you feel; otherwise, those feelings often won't make sense to you.
For instance, a very strong cause of depression is the belief that you (i.e. you, as "conscious mind") are powerless in the face of exterior circumstances thrust upon you, or in the face of strong, overwhelming emotions welling up inside you. Often, you can even locate the "place" where these emotions come from within your body itself. You might even define it as your "gut feelings". There might even be a sharp pain and it might even cause a severely upset stomach!
Are you afraid of those feelings or the feelings of powerlessness? Tried "positive thinking" but it made you feel worse because you could not get it right? Many "positive thinking" theories only succeed in making you afraid of "negative thinking". In all cases, the clue to your emotional experience and behaviour lies in your belief systems – some of which are more evident to you than others, but all of which are available consciously to you, and I emphasize "all" and "consciously". If you believe yourself to be worthless and inferior, or if you are a guilt-ridden individual, it might manifest itself as feelings of anger, and this "negativity" might terrify you and cause you to suppress those feelings. And you will suffer the consequences of suppressing strong emotions, and of feeling guilty about harbouring those "negative" feelings. If you are told in a book or by some spiritual leader to think on "goodness", to turn your thoughts to love and light every time you become irritated, it will only make you more frightened of your own natural emotions and make you feel guilty for feeling them. You will not understand why you get them or where they come from. You might think you feel them because you are innately "bad", which will make you feel inferior to boot! All this will make you even better at hiding your "negative" feelings than before. And all this might also make you quite ill. The harder you try to be good, the more inferior you will feel, because you will feel (probably unconsciously) cut off from living your life to the full.
Okay, so what do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, your relationships? Do write them down, one by one. Look at each of them, every day. You may even add, elucidate, alter, extend them as much as you like. Think about each one of them. Try to be objective in your thinking. Where did that belief come from? Is it a belief instilled in you by an adult, as a child, which you have ever since upheld without questioning its truth or worth? Keep analyzing your beliefs like this, every day, thus learning to think for yourself, to exercise your free will, to eliminate dogma en prejudice and superstition and narrowmindedness from all your beliefs.
Whenever you feel unpleasant emotions surfacing, pause to think where those emotions could be coming from – look for the source. You will find it; in fact, the more you try to find a reason for an emotion, the more readily it springs to mind! Now, this is important: Accept those feelings as real. They are there. You are experiencing them. But, you are you and they are what they are: feelings. You are not your feelings. Do not push those feelings away or ignore them or try to replace them with what you consider to be good feelings. Recognize the fact that they are natural consequences of a belief or string of beliefs you hold. The feelings are flowing from events or experiences that violate those beliefs.
First, be aware of the reality of your feelings. Then, as you become more aware of your beliefs over a period of time, you will see how those beliefs bring forth certain feelings, automatically. Someone who has confidence in himself or herself does not become annoyed by every slight done unto him, nor does he carry grudges. Someone who is unsure of his own worth becomes furious when slighted. "The free flow of your emotions always leads you back to your conscious beliefs if you do not impede them" (Seth in "The Nature of Personal Reality" by Jane Roberts, Bantam Books). Any attempt to kill natural feelings is bound to take its toll on your health and state of mind, but it is the belief underlying that feeling that is to blame, not the feeling itself. Not acknowledging or fully experiencing your feelings, or suppressing and denying them will put you out of touch with your inner self, will create an imbalance. You cannot force yourself to be happy when you believe you have no right to be happy or that you are unworthy; so, you must tackle your beliefs and turn them inside out!
Your feelings always change the chemical balance of your body and alter its hormonal output, but the danger comes only when you refuse to face the contents of your conscious mind. Even the intent to know yourself, to face the reality of your experience, can be very beneficial and can generate emotions that will provide an energy, an impetus.
Do this quick exercise: Sit back and close your eyes. Allow yourself to feel that emotion (anger, sadness, frustration, hate, etc.) that you have been keeping down. Let it flow through you. Push it out, feel it intensely, then let it go, let it flow out of you. Feel better? No? Repeat it until you feel spent and relaxed.
If you believe you should always show the world a cheerful disposition and a smiling, kind face, never reveal any sadness, anger or disappointment, that belief alone can cause you to deny quite natural dimensions of human experience, and to impede the flow of emotions that would otherwise clean out the clutter of unspent emotions and suppressed hurt thoughts from your body and mind. A conviction or belief that feelings are dangerous will in itself generate a fear of all your feelings, and this may lead to panic attacks, or to you constantly keeping a tight hold on your feelings and giving an appearance of calm "reasonableness".
Fear of your emotions will make you think of them as highly unpredictable, extremely powerful and to be kept down at all costs. And it will be at your own cost. You will lose your inner balance. But, it is the belief itself that is to blame, not the emotions.
If you believe that you, yourself, is good and perfect, because you are your spirit or soul and the spirit or soul is good and perfect, and you simultaneously believe that the flesh or body is weak and of no consequence, you will be in constant inner conflict, because those two beliefs are in conflict with each other. It will seem to you that the soul or spirit is degraded because it inhabits the flesh, and you will therefore not experience any sense of grace or inner balance. Your beliefs dictate your very interpretation of various emotions.
Many people are convinced that anger is always negative. (I see this notion over and over again, even in many psychic channellings and inspired writings.) It is not so. Anger can be the most arousing and therapeutic emotion under certain circumstances. Normal aggressiveness is basically a kind of communication, particularly in social orders; a way of letting another person know that they have trespassed in your terms, and it is therefore a method of preventing violence, not causing it.
Watch animal behaviour to see how it works. The animal spontaneously starts a ritual that all onlookers understand. A series of communications follows each other in stages – at each stage, the appropriate postures, sounds, facial expressions, etc. are displayed, read and understood. A highly involved series of symbolic actions are carried out long before any battle ensues, which actions usually prevent such a battle from taking place. Humans deliberately restrain the communicative elements of aggression, ignoring its positive values, because they confuse violence with aggression, until the natural power of aggression becomes dammed up and finally explodes into violence. Violence is a distortion of of the power of aggression.
Birth is an act of aggression – the thrust outwards of a self into a new environment. Any creative idea is aggressive. Violence is not aggressive. It is indeed a passive surrender to an emotion that is not understood or evaluated, only feared, and, at the same time, sought. It is the antithesis of creativity. Both killer and victim are caught up in the same kind of passion, but the passion is not aggressive or creative. It is its opposite: the desire to destroy.
Aggressiveness leads to action, to creativity and to life. It does not in itself lead to destruction, violence or annihilation.
Click on the link "bestill" to access ways of changing your moods, and on "banlack" for tips about banning lack from your life.
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