Emotional Well Being
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Introduction
Review Of Literature
Emotional Overtones & General Attitudes
What You Give Your Attention To & Duality
How To Meet An Emotion
Choosing Emotions
Developing The Habit Of Feeling Positive Emotions
How Do Emotions Create Reality?
Emotions In The Air
Similarities Between Emotions
Emotions As Steering Mechanisms
Emotions Were The First Communication
Emotions & Your Body
Emotions & Thoughts
Gas & Brakes At The Same Time
What To Do When You Cannot Switch Emotions At Will
Conclusion
Exercises for Emotional Well-Being
Words To Meditate By
Using Your Emotional Body To Decide
Finding Out Your Patterns
Changing Your General Emotional Tone
Giving Your Attention To What Feels Good
Making A Plan Of Action
Feeling It As If You Have It
Which Thought Feels Better?
Recovering Your Natural State Of Well-Being
Examine Particular Situations For Feelings & Beliefs
Written by Christine Breese, D.D., Ph.D.
Introduction
Emotional well-being is well within your grasp. You can train your emotional body to gravitate toward certain emotions rather than others. It is possible to choose emotions at will, rather than let your life be run by emotional "weather." The Law of Attraction is inescapable in physical reality. It is the most powerful law of the universe. Like attracts like on all levels. Not only do your thoughts attract experiences, but so do your emotions. If you are to create a wonderful reality you must address your emotions with the same intensity that you address your thought processes. The Law of Attraction responds more to your feeling, than it does to your words. Words are empty if a powerful feeling does not accompany them. You can say as many affirmations as you would like, but if you do not feel them nothing will happen. "Creating your reality," takes on a whole new meaning when you realize that the emotional body is just as much involved in the process as your thoughts.
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Review Of Literature
There are so many books written on the subject of manifestation and how thought creates reality, including the emotional force, that it is done with, that it is impossible to include them all. A select few were chosen based on their popularity in the field of metaphysics.
Louise Hay wrote You Can Heal Your Life in 1984, back when this was a fairly new concept in mainstream media. She was one of the forerunners in presenting to the Western audience that thoughts and emotions create reality. She dealt with a diagnosis of cancer by changing her thoughts and feelings, and thus her disease went into remission. She is a living testament to the concepts in the metaphysical community surrounding manifestation of reality. She is a best-selling author of 20 books and "has assisted thousands of people in discovering and using the full potential of their own creative powers for personal growth and self-healing."
Esther Hicks channels a nonphysical entity named Abraham. She has many books, and Ask And It Is Given: Learning To Manifest Your Desires (2004), written by herself and her husband Jerry Hicks, is only one among many. This book has a collection of channeled teachings by Abraham, focused on learning how to manifest a joyous and fulfilling life. Universal laws that govern time and space are discussed. The Hicks have created a wonderful book on the process of manifesting reality, and have included much information on the emotional part of the process. The emotional part of the process is often left out in many metaphysical manifestation books, and is only mentioned briefly. However this book gives it the full treatment.
Gerald G. Jampolsky wrote a simple book called Love Is Letting Go Of Fear (1979) and it is a quick read. After reading this book back in the early days of my spiritual search, it was rather profound and life changing. It made the art of affirmations of easy and quite understandable for the beginner.
Jane Roberts wrote many wonderful books, channeling an entity named Seth. She wrote The Seth Material (1970), Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity Of The Soul (1972), The Nature Of The Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), Dreams, "Evolution," And Value Fulfillment: Volume I (1986) among many others. These are the books that I am quoting in this course and thus they are listed here. Jane Roberts has long been one of my favorite authors, and she expounds on a theory about electromagnetic energy (EE units) being fundamental in the creation of reality.
Nancy Ashley wrote a wonderful how-to book called Your Own Happiness (1988). She gives multitudes of exercises throughout the book and these exercises have proven to be very life-changing indeed. She was a student of Jane Roberts and this book is based on her understanding of Jane Roberts' (Seth's) teachings.
Feelings: Buried Alive Never Die (1991) by Karol K. Truman is a very thorough look at the role that feelings play in our lives. And she gives feelings a thorough treatment. Karol K. Truman is a practicing therapist and spiritual healer. She is also an accomplished pianist and was a music instructor for many years.
Power Versus Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (2002) by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. is an excellent book that has gained much popularity on the market. Hawkins has practiced psychiatry since 1952. He has appeared on national television and written numerous scientific papers. He is also involved in The Institute For Advanced Theoretical Research in Arizona. In this book, he expounds on the topics of unconsciousness, its structure, and how to work with it.
The Power Of Now (1999) by Eckhart Tolle is a well-known book in the metaphysical field. He expounds on how it is most powerful to be in the present moment rather than in the past, or even the future. When a person is focused in the past or the future, emotions are not clear, and thus a positive reality is most difficult to create.
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Emotional Overtones & General Attitudes
Your emotional overtones, your essence feeling, your general patterns and outlook, all of these are involved in attracting to you what you experience. If you have a general emotional tone of depression, you will attract what matches it. If you have a general emotional tone of peacefulness, you will attract this in turn. If you learn to control your emotional body along with your mental body, you can become a deliberate creator. You are a transmitter and a receiver of vibrational patterns. The patterns that you transmit are the patterns that you receive. It is as simple as that. If you are focused on what you lack, and "feeling despair because of lack", this is what you are transmitting, and thus what you receive. If you focus on what you want, and feel the energy of having it, this is the vibration that will come back to you.
It is not that you do not desire it enough, or that you are not intelligent enough to achieve what you want, but you most likely learned emotional patterns that keep you immersed in a reality that you do not like. Esther Hicks says in Ask And It Is Given (2004), "The reason you have not already gotten what you desire is because you are holding yourself in a vibrational holding pattern that does not match the vibration of your desire… And an important thing for you to now understand is that if you will stop and think about it, or, more important, stop and feel about it, you can identify your very discord." She continues by saying, "Your attitude or mood is always pointing toward what is coming, but you are never stuck with your current point of attraction. Just because you have picked up these thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and moods along your physical trail does not mean that you have to continue attracting in response to them. You have creative control of your own experience. And, by paying attention to your own Emotional Guidance System, you can change your point of attraction." She also says, "Your emotions indicate the degree of your alignment with Source." This, in essence, is saying, the closer you are to who you really are, the happier you feel. The further you are from who you really are, the worse you feel. If you constantly feel depressed, then you're constantly separate from who you really are. For instance, when you think a thought that is in alignment with who you really are, you feel harmony and joy. When you think a thought about lack, this is more distant from who you really are, and thus you feel depression.
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What You Give Your Attention To & Duality
A Master of Life is able to stop emotional spinouts quite quickly, and this is the difference between the master and the seeker. A spiritual adept is not immune from feeling negative emotions any more than the ordinary person. However, the advanced person recognizes emotions as illusion, knowing that illusions can be experienced by giving focused attention to them. If one removes attention from negative emotions, they disappear, as if drying up from lack of attention. Since physical reality itself is an illusion, the emotions, even though they are also illusions, can affect the illusion itself. It is all about learning how to work within the illusion, and using tools that are given for manipulating the illusion.
Because this is a universe ruled by duality, emotions could be thought of as coming from either one pole or the other, bad/good, dark/light. Gerald G. Jampolsky states this in his book Love Is Letting Go Of Fear (1979), and Karol K. Truman agrees in her book Feelings: Buried Alive Never Die (1991). She says, "My experience has been that all of the feelings and emotions in the world can basically be narrowed down to two. LOVE and FEAR. All positive feelings/emotions are LOVE based. All negative feelings/emotions are FEAR based. In other words we are either coming from LOVE, or we are coming from FEAR."
It is important to recognize and give validity to emotions as they show up, whether they are positive or negative. It is useful to learn what these patterns are so you can recognize them more easily. Recognizing positive emotions is important because it is necessary to fully experience positive emotions. Then the emotional body can truly learn these patterns. Your emotional body will be able to hold these positive emotions more readily if a conscious scan of what it like to fully experience the emotion is had. The emotional body can be trained to gravitate toward these positive experiences by memorizing the vibrational signature of an emotion.
Acknowledging negative emotions when they come up is very important. Otherwise they keep running under the surface and don't become resolved. Unresolved emotions, or emotions that you never learned to deal with, are terrible destroyers in your reality indeed. In her book Feelings: Buried Alive Never Die (1991), Karol K. Truman says, "…When negative feelings are not resolved as they occur, these feelings remain very much alive in your physical energy field (body) and these feelings affect each day of your life. In other words, unresolved "feelings, buried alive, never die!" And these buried feelings are very real. They're energies in and of themselves. They are alive, living, and constantly affecting you. These buried feelings have a personality, and these feelings that have been buried alive will, of necessity, have to manifest themselves sooner or later."
Your memories are stored by association rather than by the timeline. These memories are organized by emotional content. All your memories of being happy will be stored in one pocket of consciousness while all your memories of being frightened will be stored in another pocket of consciousness. When you access one type of emotional memory, they are all available easily because they are in the same "family" of memories. A whole pockets of unresolved emotional events could be quite Dutch for men told to your reality because of the beliefs that they support. Space Jane Roberts says in her book The Nature Of The Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), "You will see that the events will not necessarily be structured according to usual time, but according to emotional content… your emotions trigger your memories, and they organize your associations. Your emotions are generated through your beliefs. They attach themselves so that certain beliefs and emotions seem almost synonymous. The next time an opportunity arises, and you recognize the presence of a fairly strong emotion in yourself, then let your associations flow. Events and images will spring to mind in an out-of-time context. You will clearly see the connection between the emotion and the event." It is advisable to explore pockets of unresolved emotional content because these are creating your reality even if you are not aware of it.
The first step is to acknowledge negative feelings and let go of any denial around feeling them. It is alright to have negative emotions. It is not a sign of spiritual weakness to have a negative emotion. It simply goes with the territory of being human. Accept this and refrain from avoidance strategies that keep the emotion running underneath your consciousness in a dysfunctional manner.
Do not be afraid of a negative emotion. Most people deny negative emotions or run away from them, trying to avoid feeling them, mostly because they are afraid of feeling them. Some people fear that if they feel the emotion in its full force, they might lose control and do something regretful. It is not dangerous nor will it hurt you to have a negative emotion. You most certainly can control yourself during the negative emotion, and if you fear expressing it, explore it when you are alone and safe from harming others. It is perfectly fine to feel the negative emotion fully and completely.
Sometimes it is quite appropriate to feel a negative emotion. Perhaps a boundary has been crossed, or someone is behaving quite badly around you. It is important for you to assert yourself and enforce your boundaries, and state your personal preferences. However, you do not have to do this from the viewpoint of a negative emotion. You can do this in a rational and practical manner. If you're acting out from a negative emotion, you are most likely not acting in a rational or practical manner.
Avoid telling the story around the negative emotion. This is not necessary. If there is a message for the mental body, it will simply pop into your mind as an "aha!" moment. Not all messages from the emotional body are interpreted with words. The first thing to do when feeling a negative emotion is inspect it. Find out what this signature pattern of the negative emotion really is. Taste it, smell it, feel it, see it as energy, hear it. Find out everything you can about this emotion. Use all your senses. The emotion has appeared for a reason. It has a message for you about what is going on in your inner landscape. Negative emotions are like messages from the unconscious, or subconscious, aspects of yourself. It is important that you listen to these messages, or else the emotions keep popping up until you do acknowledge them.
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How To Meet An Emotion
Feel the emotion fully without fear of the emotion. Allow the emotion to answer your consciousness in full force. It is alright to have the emotion. In this moment you are not going to address the story around the emotion, or the events. You are just going to explore the emotion itself.
Notice what its pattern is. It is only an energy signature. It is not even real. It is just an experience in the dream of being human. Experiences cannot hurt you, any more than death itself can hurt you. So meet the emotion fully and completely, and don't run away. You cannot outrun negative emotions. They will find you sooner or later. It is up to you whether you want to experience these emotions in a functional way or a dysfunctional way.
After you have met the emotion fully, notice what happens. You will find that it loses its power. When you meet a negative emotion fully there is no reason for it to continue to plague you, for its job is done. It has alerted you to an issue within your inner landscape, or that perhaps you are on the wrong path. This is the purpose of negative emotions. Once you meet the emotion and experience its message, there is no reason for it to linger on. You will notice that these emotions disappear quite shortly after you have given them your full attention. They disintegrate back into the ether from where they came.
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Choosing Emotions
You can choose emotions just the same way that you choose who you would like to spend time with, or what colors you would like to use in your painting. Emotions are like colors, or sound frequencies on a scale of notes. It is up to you what notes you want to play. You are not a slave to your emotions, nor are you bound to feeling them for any particular length of time. You can choose to feel anger for days. You can also choose to feel anger for three seconds. It is up to you how long you want to spend in any particular emotion. Next time when you are feeling anger, see how long it is before you can switch it consciously to another "note." At first it might take a while, but as you gain proficiency you can switch your emotions more quickly. This is the only difference between the master and the seeker. Again, Masters are not immune to feeling negative emotions. It is just that they recognize it as an illusion, an experience in the human dream, and can move to another emotion more quickly. You can do this too.
Moving from one negative emotion to a "higher negative emotion" is still a move in the direction of positive emotions. Esther Hicks, in her book Ask And It Is Given (2004), mentions that moving from the feelings of fear, grief, depression, despair, or powerlessness (22) into anger or rage (17, 19) is actually a movement into the higher emotional frequencies. According to Hicks, fear is a lower "note" on the scale than anger. Below is Esther Hicks' depiction (from page 114 of her book) of what an emotional scale might look like:
- joy/knowledge/empowerment/freedom/love/appreciation
- passion
- enthusiasm/eagerness/happiness
- positive expectations/belief
- optimism
- hopefulness
- contentment
- boredom
- pessimism
- frustration/irritation/impatience
- "overwhelment"
- disappointment
- doubt
- worry
- blame
- discouragement
- anger
- revenge
- hatred/rage
- jealousy
- insecurity/guilt/unworthiness
- fear/grief/depression/despair/powerlessness
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Developing The Habit Of Feeling Positive Emotions
It is one thing to switch from a negative emotion to a positive emotion quickly, but it is quite another thing to develop the habit of feeling positive emotions as a natural state. Many people have learned to constantly feel a negative emotion, even if nothing negative is going on. It is just a conditioned habit. That emotion has been felt so often that the pattern has been "learned." You can unlearn this habit just as easily as you learned it. It may take practice and time, but it can be done with conscious awareness.
Positive emotions are patterns of energy, just like negative emotions. Consciously explore positive emotions and learn their patterns. You can easily move into them even if you're not feeling them because you have learned the energy pattern and can duplicated. It can be thought of as a "fake it to you make it" strategy. In one moment you might be feeling a negative emotion, then you adopt a learned pattern of a positive emotion, and in the next moment you are feeling the positive emotion.
The only way to learn positive emotional patterns is to explore them as fully as you experience the negative emotions. Next time you are feeling a positive emotion, explore it fully. Taste it, smell it, feel it, hear it, see it as energy. Use all your senses to find out what this energy signature pattern is all about. Feel what it is like to have it in your body. Feel it at the molecular level, the cellular level, and the atomic level. You'll notice that even your cells feel happier, not just your heart. Memorize this pattern so that you can move into it even when you're not feeling it. Learn the "notes" of the scale just as a musician learns notes and scales, and you will be able to move about in the emotional frequencies with ease and speediness.
Nancy Ashley suggests in her book Create Your Own Happiness (1988), that the practice of gratitude and appreciation is a powerful way to create a positive reality. She says, "If you find that a lot of people in your life do things for you that you appreciate and feel like giving a heartfelt thanks Bork, you created that reality for yourself… it feels great to express appreciation and thanks, and it feels great to receive it. You just want to get that person [who expressed gratitude for your actions] more and more." Nancy Ashley suggests an exercise in the habit of happiness. "Every day, take 10 minutes to write a thank you note to yourself for all the beautiful things you have created in the past twenty four hours: the sun in the trees, the purring in your lap, the smile of a child, the joke someone made at work, the insight you had, the letter from a friend. Revel in how good it feels to do this and savor the appreciation and gratitude you're giving to yourself. Notice how much more you want to do for yourself."
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How Do Emotions Create Reality?
In Power Vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants Of Human Behavior (2002), David R. Hawkins tells us about the presence of "attractor fields" in the realm of energy and human consciousness. He tells us that, "Each of us possesses a computer far more advanced than the most elaborate artificial intelligence machine available, one that's available at any time—the human mind itself. The basic function of any measuring device is simply to give a signal indicating the detection by the instrument of slight change. In the experiments to be described in this book, the reactions of the human body provide such a signal of change and conditions. As will be seen, the body can discern, to the finest degree, the difference between that which is supportive of life and that which is not." He goes on to say "This isn't surprising: after all, living things react positively to what is life supportive and negatively to what is not; this is a fundamental mechanism of survival. Inherent in all life forms is the capacity to detect change and react correctively—thus, trees become smaller at higher elevations as the oxygen in the atmosphere becomes scarcer. Human protoplasm is far more sensitive than that of a tree." Emotions are part of this human bio-machinery that discerns what is life supportive or not, and reacting to events at an emotional level is a natural part of this sensing mechanism.
We could say that the emotional field of a human being is the detection system of the human brain, which gives signals identifying thoughts and actions as supportive of life or not. He agrees with Esther Hicks that a negative emotion is an indication that one's thoughts or actions are out of balance with source, and a positive emotion is an indication of resonance. In the attractor field theory of David Hawkins, which is supported by other scientific research, is the proposal that there are hidden attractor fields within the realm of human consciousness, which, in effect, pull us, as with gravitational pull, toward what is supportive of life, the actions and thoughts most supportive of life resonating with the strongest field, and actions and thoughts which are the least supportive of life resonating with the weakest fields, positive and negative emotions being the indicators, to us, of these hidden fields. This is a fascinating way to look at emotions, to begin to understand their importance as direct messages to us about how to think and act in life-supportive ways.
Jane Roberts speaks of electromagnetic energy units, or EE units, in her books The Seth Material (1970), Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity Of The Soul (1972), The Nature Of The Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979),and Dreams, "Evolution," And Value Fulfillment: Volume I (1986). These EE units are produced by consciousness. They are made up of emotional, mental, and intent charges that come from consciousness in itself. They could be thought of as the messengers of consciousness that are sent out by the self to "fetch" the reality that matches them. I personally feel that this is a most interesting idea, and by working with the concept I have shifted my reality in many ways just by thinking of these little EE units as extensions of myself into physical reality that retrieve what I desire. The following are a few things that she says about these EE units:
"Each unit of consciousness (or CU for consciousness units) intensifies, magnifies its own intent to be—and you might say, works up from within itself an explosive spark of primal desire that ‘explodes' into a process that causes physical materialization. It turns into what I have called [an] EE unit… These EE units also operate as fields, as waves, or as particles, as the units of consciousness do—but in your terms they are closer to physical orientation. Their dye is cast, so to speak: they have already begun the special kind of screening process necessary that will bring about physical form. They begin to deal with the kinds of information that will help form your world. There are literally numberless steps taken before EE units combine in their own fashion to form the most microscopic physical particles…that will allow for the production of atoms and molecules impeccably suited to your kind of world. First, you have various stages of, say pseudomatter…that only gradually…coalesce and become physically viable, for there are endless barriers between the matter that you recognize and the antimatter of physicists' theories."
Roberts sums it all up by saying that electromagnetic EE units are "solidified emotions, with solidified subjective states, given physical materialization." This gives one much to think about pertaining to the actual creation of reality. These EE units work outside of and inside physical reality. For instance, the actual desire for something, like wishing for a new car, is a thought that consciousness is having. This is outside of physical reality. With this wish, the EE units that will create this manifestation are created and set into motion. They run around the universe, so to speak, and look for anything that will match this desire for a new car.
Now, if one were to "unwish" this with an inner dialogue like, "Oh, but I'll never have enough money for a new car" or "I don't deserve a new car," these EE units are neutralized and new ones are created and sent out to look for the appropriate matter that matches the reality manifestation. Of course, beliefs and thought-forms would be quite involved in the formation of these EE units, for they are made up of thoughts, emotions, beliefs and intentions.
In her book Feelings: Buried Alive Never Die (1991), Karol K. Truman talks about the energetic frequencies of all things. She says, "In any given matter, the closer together the vibrational frequencies, the higher the vibration and the closer the matter is to its source. She tells a powerful story to illustrate this fact:
"A very vivid and profound illustration of the power of feeling and thought frequencies was told by Dr. W. Jerome Stowell. Here is his story. "I was almost a devout atheist. I did not believe that God was any more than a conglomeration of everyone's mind put together, and the good that was there, that was God as far as I was concerned. As for the real, all-powerful God existing and loving us all, with power over everything, I did not believe that. Then one day I had an experience that really set me thinking. I was in a large pathological laboratory where we were attempting to find the wavelength of the brain. We found a channel of wavelengths…wherein the different wavelength of each individual's brain further separated an identity more clearly than are the fingerprints of each individual's hand…
"We wanted to make an experiment to discover what took place in the brain at the moment of transition from life to death. We chose first a lady whose family has sent her to a mental institution but who'd been discharged. The doctors could find nothing wrong with her other than the fact that she had cancer of the brain. This affected the balance of her body only. As far as her alertness of mind was concerned and in every other way, she was exceptionally brilliant. We knew she was on the verge of death and she was informed, in this research hospital, that she was going to die. We arranged a tiny pick-up in her room to ascertain what would take place in the transition of her brain from life to death. We also put a very small microphone, about the size of a shilling, in the room so that we could hear what she said, if she had anything to say. Five of us hardened scientists—perhaps I was the hardest of the group—were in an adjoining room with their instruments prepared to register and record what transpired.
"Our device has a needle pointing to zero in the center of the scale. To the right the scale is calibrated to 500 positive, to the left the scale was calibrated to 500 points negative. We previously had recorded on this identical instrument the power used by a 50 kW broadcasting station in sending a message around the world. The needle then registered nine points of the positive side.
As the last moments of this woman's life arrived, she began to pray and praise the Lord. She asked the Lord to be merciful unto those that spitefully used her, she reaffirmed her faith in God, telling him she knew he was the only power and the only living power. He always had been and always would be. She praised God and thanked him for his power and for her knowledge of his reality. She told him how much she loved him.
"We scientists had been so engrossed with this woman's prayer that we had forgotten our experiment. We looked at each other and saw tears streaming down scientific faces. Suddenly we heard a clicking sound on our forgotten instrument. We looked and the needle was registering a positive 500, desperately trying to go higher only to bounce against the 500 positive post in its attempt! By actual instrumentation we had recorded that the brain of a woman alone and dying in communication with God had registered more than 55 times the power used by a 50 kW broadcasting station in sending a message around the world."
This experiment makes one wonder if the emotional body has anything to do with the output of energy that comes from human experiences. Not only was there great mental activity in that room during the event of death, but also the activity of the emotional body in rapture and ecstasy. Is it possible in the future that emotions could be measured as to their electrical or magnetic output, perhaps even identifying frequency patterns?
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Emotions In The Air
You will notice that emotions also permeate the air around you. This is how people can tell what mood you are in before they even speak to you. You have surely had the experience of walking into a room and suddenly feeling yourself become very tired and depressed simply because the person in the room is feeling that. You have also had the experience of walking into a room and suddenly feeling inspired and happy because the person in the room is feeling that. This is because emotions have vibrational affects on the air. It appears as if, although not proven at this time, emotions actually have molecular structures that reach out into the air, or perhaps they might change the molecular signature of some of the molecules in the air around a person. It is not quite certain how this works, but perhaps science will explore this at some point. It is quite effective in meditation to imagine that you are able to affect the molecules in the air around you through emotional patterning. This can produce profound results.
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Similarities Between Emotions
Some emotions are very similar to others. You might think that serenity is the same as tranquility, but if you explore it more deeply you will find that these are two different notes on the emotional scale. Depression is not quite the same as sadness. Even though they might be in the same general area, these are two different notes. When you explore emotions that are similar to each other, and might be considered to be in the same "family" of emotions, find out what the subtle differences are between them. This can be a very interesting exercise.
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Emotions As Steering Mechanisms
Emotions can be quite useful in steering through life. The emotional body knows more than the mind does, in many ways. For instance, you might have an uneasy feeling about a business deal with a certain person, but your mind is saying "Go for it!" This is your emotional wisdom and intelligence telling you that this is probably not a good avenue for you to pursue, or a good person for you to associate with, even though your mind is giving you a green light. Sometimes a negative emotion is giving you information about possible paths you might take, information that the mind is not capable of picking up on. If you find yourself feeling irritable or annoyed around a certain person, it is probably not healthy for you to be around this person often. If you're feeling unhappy in a certain situation, it is probably time to extract yourself and find new situations to be in.
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Emotions Were The First Communication
Emotions are the first communication process that you experience as a baby in the womb. The emotions that the mother has are the emotions that you experience in your first moments of awareness as a human. If your mother was angry, you felt that anger as well. If your mother was happy, you felt happiness. This is how you first learned your patterning in the emotional body. If your mother was prone to depression, it is quite possible that you were depressed as a child. If your mother has an optimistic outlook, and generally feels happy, then you might have been a happy child.
Once you were born, this training continued. If your parents experienced lack of money, along with the worry and the fear that comes with this, you learned this pattern in the emotional and mental bodies. If someone has died in the family unexpectedly, and fear and insecurity around physical vitality and safety was experienced by the parents or the family in general, this was a pattern you learned to hold.
These patterns have been with you for a long time. Presently, whenever a certain subject comes up, you most likely jump to the vibrational emotional pattern that you are most familiar with concerning the subject, and is most likely one that you learned as a child. For instance, whenever lack of money comes up, you jump to the vibrational energy pattern in your emotional and mental bodies that you learned from your parents so long ago. This is why it might take some time to unlearn what you have learned since the moments you became aware in the womb. However, you now have the tools you need to unlearn these negative patterns that have become so habitual in your daily life. It is just a matter of discipline and vigilance.
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Emotions & Your Body
Emotions cause biochemical reactions in your physical body. Not only do these emotions have different energetic patterning, but they cause biochemical patterning as well. This is why you might feel nauseous or ill when you have a negative emotion. It is not uncommon to have a headache after feeling anger, for instance. This is because emotions cause biochemical rearrangements and interactions within the physical body. When people speak of mind-body-emotion connections in metaphysics, this is the most obvious example of this. The body responds to the mental and emotional state quite immediately, by producing the chemical counterpart of the emotion.
As you feel emotions, just be aware of what your body does in response to these emotions. This is the beginning of understanding how powerful and potent emotions are in creating your reality. They not only rearrange your physical body but they rearrange your entire life. Physical reality is a reflection machine, much the way that a mirror reflects your physical image. If you are feeling angry or depressed most of the time, even if you are not conscious that these are the emotions running underneath your awareness, these emotions are going to create a reality that will reflect this. It is not just thought that creates reality, it is also emotional patterning. In fact, emotions are more direct indicators of what we are attracting than thoughts.
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Emotions & Thoughts
Of course, emotions are quite connected to thoughts. You will notice that usually a thought precedes an emotion. It may not be a conscious thought, especially if you are not used to paying attention to what the mind is doing, but there is usually a thought nonetheless before an emotion shows up. Emotions are usually responses to thoughts. Emotions that persist, and run underneath your daily activities constantly, like depression, are responses to mental attitudes. Mental attitudes might not count as thoughts, per se, but according to the emotional body they are thoughts that in turn create an emotional attitude. Consistent moods can be indicators of emotional attitudes. A pessimistic outlook on life causes an emotional response that is general rather than specific to a thought. A mental attitude is a general mental state, and the emotional body will generate a general emotional state to match it. This is why it is important to examine your mental attitudes when attempting to change your emotional attitude. It is not just your emotions, but also your mental states. Both thoughts and emotions are intertwined vibrational energy patterns, and physical reality is intimately intertwined with these as well. Science is finding that it really is all done with smoke and mirrors, and in fact, matter is not as solid as it seems. Matter is far more liquid than formerly believed and it responds immediately to thought and emotion.
Some emotions truly are connected to specific thoughts. Louise Hay says in her book You Can Heal Your Life (1984), "No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts. Even self-hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself. You have a thought that says, ‘I am a bad person.' The thought produces a feeling, and you buy into the feeling. However, if you don't have the thought, you won't have the feeling. And thoughts can be changed. Change the thought, and the feeling must go." Yes, some emotions are responses to specific thoughts. In a way, these are easier to deal with than general mental attitudes, because a specific conscious thought is easier to work with than a grouping of unconscious thoughts.
Nancy Ashley argues in her book Create Your Own Happiness: A Seth Workbook (1988) that thoughts and emotions are actually the same thing, just one is translated in words, and the other is not. She says, "Most people tend to make a big distinction between thoughts (beliefs) and emotions. Thoughts are in words, which makes them concrete and thus ‘rational;' emotions are wordless feelings, ephemeral and irrational. Emotions are generally considered uncontrollable. They ‘just happen.'" So, if we're to look at each thought as if it is also an emotion put into tangible words, and vice versa, we might find much information about our beliefs. If any emotion could be a thought in words, what would it say?
Nancy Ashley also says in her book Create Your Own Happiness (1988), "It is easy for a pleasant state to go unnoticed, but it isn't so easy to ignore an unpleasant one. This is precisely why the emotions serve as valuable clues to our beliefs—particularly mass beliefs—which make us unhappy, which limit us unnecessarily. If we can look behind the unpleasant emotions, which are so apparent to us, to the beliefs that they symbolize, which are not so apparent, we can discover a lot that we may not find out from simply asking ourselves whether or not we believe this or that… As we have seen, often what we think we believe we don't really believe. We want to, but we don't. However, what we feel is unmistakably either pleasant or unpleasant. If we think we believe, say, in a peaceful, cooperative universe, if we find ourselves, instead of feeling good, feeling bad…we can be sure that what we think we believe is not what we really believe. Our feelings always tell us the truth about our beliefs. In this sense they are like helpful friends to us. All we need do when feeling frightened or angry or depressed is ask ourselves what is behind the emotion, and we discover beliefs we weren't aware of, which may go against what we thought we believed."
Hmmm… very thought-provoking. (No pun intended!)
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Gas & Brakes At The Same Time
Switching back and forth between positive outlooks and pessimistic outlooks is very much like putting the brakes and the gas on in the car at the same time. One day you might be feeling rather optimistic, gravitating toward positive emotions, and then the next day you might be doubting that physical reality will change for you, and feeling despair and helplessness. Then the day after that you might be back to the optimistic expectation of your desires becoming manifest. If you find yourself going back and forth between two different moods, you can be sure that your reality will not change, because in essence you have put on the gas one day, but put the brakes on the next day.
If you truly want to change your reality, you must maintain a consistent emotional (and mental) state for at least 30 days. Physical reality moves slower than your mind and emotions. You must believe in your mind, and this concerns your thoughts and the dialogue that you say to yourself, and you also must feel the new vibration of the reality that you are trying to create. Affirmations do not work unless you carry the feeling tone that goes with the expectation of them. Just as you stop the thinking of the mind in order to achieve a still mind, you must also do the same with the emotional body. Whenever you find yourself feeling a negative emotion, simply stop, and readjust yourself. When you feel hungry in the physical body, you eat. When you feel thirsty in the physical body you drink liquids. You can do the same with the emotional body. When the emotional body feels negative emotions, you can make adjustments in the mental body to appease the emotional body and make it feel better, just the way that you give food to the physical body when it is uncomfortable from hunger or thirst.
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What To Do When You Cannot Switch Emotions At Will
Emotions do not rule you, or run you. You are not susceptible to every emotion that comes along the way. Emotions are much like weather, coming and going. Some days are cloudy and some days are sunny. However, no one is such a master that they can always switching emotions at will. Even a great master has grumpy days. Not every day is going to be sunny. Even a master does not experience sunny days 24/7. Even the most enlightened among us have bad days. The only difference is that they don't take it so seriously, and might refrain from social interactions during those moments when they're feeling rather grumpy. Just accept that this is the way it is in the human condition, and don't berate yourself for lacking the ability to change emotions at will. This is a skill that takes great practice and time, and in fact takes a lifetime to learn. Emotions are unavoidable. It is part of the human experience and cannot be escaped.
You might as well accept now that, yes, you will feel anger again, you feel will feel sadness again, and you will feel depression again, and it might even be possible that you won't be able to take your attention off them. You will also feel happiness again, and joy. These are not unavailable to you. All emotions are available at all times. It is up to you what you decide to focus your attention on. Experiences can only be had if your attention is on them. If you do not give your attention to them, experiences simply disappear back into the ethers of unconsciousness. Emotions are experiences. Nothing more. You can choose what experience you want to have, but if you cannot take your attention off it, this is what I call a "consciousness loop." A consciousness loop could be considered an obsessive thought, or an indulged emotion.
Sometimes you cannot switch to another note on the scale of emotions because the emotional body needs to purge. The only thing to do when there is cloudy weather in your emotional body, and it resists being switched to a positive emotion, is to simply live through it until it passes, just the way that you live through rainy days until the sunny days come back. It is not possible to feel bliss all the time, for the physical body simply cannot hold this level of energy constantly. The physical body would burn out if you were experiencing bliss 24/7. Sometimes the cloudy weather is necessary in your emotional body in order to purge and cleanse spiritually, just the same way that it is necessary for the physical body to become ill once a year in order to keep the immune system up-to-date on new bacteria and viruses, and rebuild the antibody defenses. Simply allow your emotional body its time for illness, and the illness will pass more quickly. You might even want to take a "sick day" and do nurturing things for yourself in order to appease the emotional body and its needs. This could help in the switching of emotions.
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Conclusion
The meditations in this course are given so that you can see how you can change your emotional state at will. The first meditation deals with emotional spin outs, where emotions become out-of-control. It is possible to stop a spin-out with conscious awareness and the right tools. In the meditation you will experience a negative emotion fully, and slow down the spin of a negative emotion that has gotten out of control. You will be able to experience what it is like to sit for a moment in the emotion in its still-state. This is where you can find peace and calm even while the emotion is present. Then you will learn how to switch to a positive emotion at will.
The second meditation is about learning the energy patterning of positive emotions. You will try on a few emotions and explore their patterning, but you can try many more than what are offered in meditation. Exercise 1 contains a list of some of the emotional states you might like to try on your own in meditation. Learn the patterns, and practice switching to them at will and during your day, even as you go about your daily tasks. Perhaps you might like to pick one emotional state to switch to throughout the day whenever you think of it. For instance, you might be washing your dishes and might think to yourself, "Let's try out serenity for a moment." You do not have to be sitting in meditation to practice this. Truly, life is a meditation in itself, and still states of mind and positive emotions can be practiced no matter what you are doing.
A useful visualization that can help you with learning new emotions and fully exploring their patterns, is to bring your guides in on the fun! When you are exploring a positive emotion, ask for your guides or any other spirit friends who you would like to invite, to sit around you in a circle and hold this frequency for you. Imagine yourself sitting in the middle of this circle being inundated with the positive emotion as they hold this and send it to you. You can invite as many guides as you would like, even thousands if you feel that your emotional body is especially resistant to positive emotions. You will find this will help greatly in the beginning stages of teaching yourself how to hold positive emotions fully, completely, and constantly.
As a result of changing your emotional state, your whole reality will change. It responds to your emotional state within one month, in just the same way it responds to your thoughts. Your thoughts and mental body will also change by working with the emotional body, for the two are intertwined. Working with one, affects the other. If you work with both your mental body and your emotional body at the same time, an even speedier recovery from a life of depression can be had. Practice having a still mind as much as you can, and teach yourself to hold new emotional patterns. The secret to having a still mind is to simply stop, no matter what you are thinking. The secret to holding positive emotions is to refuse to indulge the negative emotions for any length of time when they come up, and to practice the habit of holding positive emotions.
Changing yourself changes the world. You will affect many as you learn to be less swayed by whatever emotional mood comes by you, whether it is yours or someone else's. Karol K. Truman says in her book Feelings: Buried Alive Never Die (1991), "In the nineties, self examination of feelings and emotions began receiving a focus that is contributing to an emotional cleansing and healing of major proportions. At long last, humankind's willingness to retreat from denial, to own the source of their problems, accept responsibility for them and become accountable for their feelings and thoughts which created them, is establishing an energy that is opening the channels for bringing the inner peace people are so desperately seeking." Your ability to harness and switch your attention from a negative emotion to a positive emotion is your gift to the world. You can be a light in a world that has many depressed and despairing people in it.
Good luck with your continuing endeavors in teaching your emotional body new patterns, and enjoy your new states of happiness and optimism!
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Exercises for Emotional Well-Being
Words To Meditate By
This is an exercise that you can do by yourself or in a group. Pick one word from the list to work with. Sit in meditation with that word for 15 - 30 minutes or even for only 5 minutes. Any time your mind begins to wander, return your focus to the word and the energy that word represents. Imagine that there are angels all around you in your meditation, sitting with you, also holding the vibration and energy of the word. Immerse yourself in what the word means to you. Surround yourself with this energy. Let the energy of the word become you. This is a wonderful way to start the day, end the day, or take a breather during the day!
love
clarity
peace
intelligence
love
beauty
compassion
sweetness
joy
happiness
wisdom
acceptance
forgiveness
purity
harmony
unity
oneness
centeredness
balance
lucidity
humor
surrender
brilliance
precision
illumination
appreciation
gratitude
release
freedom
infinity
reflection
eternal
humbleness
truth
magic
expansion
depth
connection
stillness
serenity
tranquility
silliness
helpfulness
caringness
concern for others
creativeness
allowing
tolerance
connection
desire
non-attachment
vitality
well-being
empowerment
contentment
hopefulness
optimism
enthusiasm
expectation
eagerness
passion
appreciation
intention
Add some more positive emotional states to this list that you think of!
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Using Your Emotional Body To Decide
Sometimes the emotional body response to a new path or choice is the truest way to know what is really right for you when you simply cannot make up your mind. Remember, the mind is always the last to know, and the emotional body is more intuitive than the mind. Somehow, it makes better choices. Find out what your emotional intelligence tells you in this exercise.
First, breathe deeply, let go of all thoughts and relax. Sit quietly for a moment. Next, feel in your intuitive senses what you can perceive about this decision right now. Use the steps below to take a walk into your future to see if you can envision yourself in the reality of this particular decision. Walk into the future of each choice you have, and invite the possibility of a "mystery" choice too! How many choices do you have?
Ask the following questions for each choice:
In the immediate future, about 2-3 months into the future, does this choice make you feel happy, excited, hopeful, relieved... or does it make you feel depressed, unhappy or otherwise negative? Use your emotional body to guide you, and see if you get a yes or no answer through your emotional response. Positive feelings would be a yes answer, and negative feelings would be a no answer.
Imagine the outcome of this choice 6 months or a year from now and see what you feel about this choice. What sort of emotions are present? What kind of personal growth has happened up to this point? Has your life gotten better? Have you experienced an acceleration in your healing and awakening? Are you still happy with this choice?
Don't forget to explore the "mystery" choice, one where you have no idea what to expect. There may be something you haven't thought of yet concerning this decision. If the "mystery" choice seems to be the most highly charged emotionally, then you must wait for more information to come in before making your decision!
This is a terrific way to make choices when you have several options open to you. I have found that my emotional body always makes the best choice, even though my mind might chose something else.
Find an exercise to help you relax and improve your emotional health. Read about this emotional body technique and see if it's the meditation exercise for you. Learn how to have more positive emotion and improve your health. If you can find more ways to relax you will have a healthy body. This meditation may help you with feeling emotion and make you more positive. Meditation technique helps in many ways.
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Finding Out Your Patterns
Be honest with yourself in this exercise and find out what your particular emotional patterns are. On a piece of paper make two columns. The left column would be wide enough just for one word, and the right column would be wide enough for a description. In the left column right down the emotion that you find yourself feeling most often. If it is a negative emotion, this is fine. The purpose of this exercise is to find out where you are right now, so that you can then proceed from here. In the right hand column, list any thoughts that might accompany this emotion. These might be the triggering thoughts that cause the emotion to begin with. You might hear this dialogue after you feel the emotion, but it did precede the emotion even though you may not have been aware of it. These are the thoughts that you will need to work with in order to also change the emotional body. The two go hand-in-hand. Do this with all the emotions that you feel most often. Find out what the mind-emotion connection is.
To further this exercise, on a separate piece of paper describe the childhood situation where you think this emotional pattern may have been learned.
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Changing Your General Emotional Tone
Look at the list presented by Esther Hicks to determine your emotional tone. Where do you fall in this chart between 1 and 22 as far as your general emotional tone? What is it that you feel the most often? You may want to look at the first entry on your list in exercise 3. Wherever you end up on the chart, try to change your emotional pattern to at least the number above it, if not higher.
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Giving Your Attention To What Feels Good
Think of a situation or person that is highly irritating to you, or makes you unhappy. You have a very good idea of everything you don't like about the situation or the person. You also have a very good idea of how this makes you feel. Now, notice all the things that are good about the situation. This might be hard to do at first, but there is something there that is good. The situation does have some good aspects about it, even if it is only to teach you what you don't want, and show you how the universe brings to you that which you focus on. The person has at least some good qualities, for no one is completely bereft of redeemable qualities, and the situation has good aspects as well. Notice how your energy changes as you focus on what does feel good, versus what doesn't feel good. For instance, if you hate driving to work in your car on a particular route because it has a lot of potholes, take your focus off the potholes, and notice what is beautiful. There might be some lovely houses or natural scenery that you might have never noticed before. If you hate your living situation, or you hate your house, see if you can find something good about the situation. For instance you might now know what kind of house you don't want to buy, or what kind of neighborhood you don't want to be in. Even though you have experienced dislike of your home, see if you can find what is good about it. For instance, it is warm and cozy in the winter, and shelters you from the elements. Perhaps your bedroom has been a sanctuary for you, a place to escape from the world. Perhaps your cat enjoys a particular window sill and watches the goings-on outside all day long from there. There is definitely something good about your home even if you have disliked it for a long time.
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Making A Plan Of Action
One of the secrets to success is making a plan of action ahead of time. Anticipate that you will feel a negative emotion once again, even if you're not feeling it in this moment. Write down exactly the steps that you're going to take the next time this negative emotion comes up. Is there a particular activity you could do that would put you in a good mood again? Is there a particular person you could talk to who makes you feel good? Is there a particular thought you can have that will alleviate the negative emotion? Would it help to count from 1 to 10, and on the number 10 the emotion disappears? What positive emotion are you going to replace a particular negative emotion with? Find creative ways to take action next time this emotion shows up. Make a plan.
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Feeling It As If You Have It
What is it that you want? More money? More love? More security? More friends? More skills? What is it that you really want? For five whole minutes, feel what it is like to already have it. If the mind tries to come in and tell you that this is not true, and that you don't have it, dismiss the mental activity immediately. The universe does not recognize whether or not you have something yet. It only reflects what you are feeling and thinking. If you feel as if you have it for only five minutes, you have already started the process of causing it to come to you. Physical reality is only here to reflect your consciousness. The reflection begins to build immediately upon a change in your consciousness. Just because there is a delayed reaction between thought, emotion, and physical matter in full manifestation, this does not mean that the process is not happening. If you can feel it more than five minutes, then you have created even more momentum toward having a manifestation of what you want. If you can feel it for a week, and even a month, well… sky's the limit!
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Which Thought Feels Better?
In this exercise you can examine which thought feels better. Think of a situation that causes you to have negative feelings. For instance, you might think of your partner and how he or she neglects to do anything romantic without prompting from you. Perhaps you would like a rose once in awhile, a card, or perhaps even a little trinket. You may have asked your partner several times already to do something romantic occasionally. Now you may have reached a frustration point. On a piece of paper write down your thoughts and feelings about the situation. You may find all sorts of dialogue connected with this issue. In fact, you may find feelings that are triggered by the situation, but far outweigh a rational response to the issue. For instance, you may find yourself writing statements that have nothing to do with the situation at hand, and have everything to do with childhood issues:
As you ponder each of your statements, label them as to which feels good versus not good on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 would be the worst feeling, and 1 would be the better feeling. Ask yourself which of these thoughts feels better, and eliminate the others.
I need more romance in my life. (6)
My partner doesn't really care about me. (10)
My partner is going to leave me. (10)
My partner doesn't really love me. (10)
My partner is deliberately trying to make me feel unloved. (10)
It is important to me to feel loved. (3)
I wish I had a romantic partner. (9)
He/she should understand why it is important to express love. (3)
Maybe I should get a different partner. (8)
My partner doesn't understand me or my needs. (4)
Maybe I should explain my needs in different ways. (1)
Maybe I should lead the way, and start giving romantic gestures without reciprocation for awhile. (1)
Maybe my partner is seeing other women/man, and this is where the romantic energy goes. (10)
My partner never listens to me. (7)
My partner is unromantic, and should change. (6)
I am envious of so-and-so who has a great romantic partner. (6)
Etc.
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Recovering Your Natural State Of Well-Being
When you were a baby, you did not have any emotional patterning. Yes, you did have certain tendencies that were decided before birth, but for the most part none of these have become manifest in your emotional patterning. These are learned patterns as you became more and more familiarized with physical reality and circumstances of your life. Just because you might have had a rough life, or had many failures and disappointments, this does not mean that you cannot recover your natural state of happiness and well-being that you had when you were a baby.
Imagine that you have just been born, and you are a newborn baby who has never had a day of experience yet on the earth plane. You have never had a failure, disappointment, or fearful experience. You have known nothing but the happiness and joy of being one with the source. You can have that right now in this moment. You do not have to wait until you die to return to this level of happiness. Do this exercise for at least five minutes every day, just so that you can remind yourself what it is like to be free of all history, all experiences, with no preconceptions about what life is all about. Recover that innocence and natural state of well-being that you had when you are brand-new baby, and had no jaded ideas about the human life you are about to live. You can live through everyday as a newborn baby, without history, without trauma. Pretend that you die every night when you go to sleep, and that you are born every morning, and just arrived here on Earth.
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Examine Particular Situations For Feelings & Beliefs
(This exercise was taken from the book Create Your Own Happiness (1988) by Nancy Ashley)
After reading each situation listed below, think about whether it feels pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral to you. Then for each item that feels unpleasant, ask yourself what beliefs underlie the emotion. Ask yourself if you want to keep these beliefs and, if so, why. If you don't want to keep these beliefs, think of other more positive habits of mind. Imagine the feelings you would have if you acted according to these new habits.
- asking for help
- helping
- taking care of
- being taking care of
- announcing something that's important to you
- comparing
- being challenged
- telling off someone
- being unable to choose between possibilities
- having someone try to lay a guilt trip on you
- tidying up
- showing off
- seeing someone do something well
- seeing someone get laughed at
- being publicly honored
- keeping a secret
- trying to be diplomatic
- looking for housing
- coming into a new group
- trying to convince somebody of something
- being puzzled
- being alone
- having to meet a deadline
- reprimanding of worker
- being on welfare
- applying for a job