I have recently been feeling a lot of feelings. And I do mean A LOT. And, despite my ingrained resistance, I have been doing my best to turn my focus toward these feelings rather than toward whatever distraction I can contrive. This has been a difficult choice for me to make in the past. But I am choosing to find the ease in it now. Thankfully, it seems to be working. It can be very scary for me to embrace the reality of fully feeling my emotions. I learned at a very young age to bury them deeply within where they couldn’t hurt me so much. I was too young to realize that burying emotions only sets the stage for them to emerge later in a more concentrated form. So, here I am, compassionate smile painted on my face, arms beckoning sweetly, inviting my emotions to sit and chat for a while.
It’s not all dark and dreary, mind you. Many of these feelings are benign, and some even quite nice. But there are some uncomfortable emotional bullies from my past that I’ve wrestled with for years and years and years that continue to taunt me. So, to them I finally say:
‘Hey, you. I see you. I’m not going to ignore you anymore. Tell me your stories. Lay out your grievances. Let’s mend this rift with love.’
According to Abraham and Esther Hicks (The Law of Attraction, et. al.), our emotions are our Personal Guidance Systems. They help us to know when we are in vibrational alignment with our Source Selves (that part of us that is connected to Source or God), and, therefore, with our truest desires. When we’re feeling good, we’re in alignment. When we’re feeling not so good, we aren’t. It is only through this vibrational alignment that we are able to create the reality we want for ourselves. And this Deliberate Creation, as they call it, is the key to living the most blissful life I can live. As you may have guessed, blissful living is important for me. So, I am taking this opportunity to plug into my Personal Guidance System. I am no longer comfortable allowing it to operate on auto-pilot. I am now choosing to interact directly and intentionally with my emotions so I can be sure that I am in control of my destination.
After a lifetime of avoiding this kind of work, I am eager to become a more active player in the game of my life. Here are a few of the tools I’m using to help navigate this work.
I deliberately use my imagination. Every night as I lie down and await sleep I spend some time imagining what my life will be like when my desires have been made manifest. I focus on the feelings I will feel. I paint the picture of what it will look like down to the smallest detail. (Or at least to the smallest detail I can imagine.) I allow that visualization to fill me up as if it was already reality. You know, when I was younger, I would use my imagination all the time. I would daydream about wonderful things constantly. I don’t know when I stopped imagining so much, but I regularly experience a sense of joy and wonder now that I’ve reignited my imagination in this deliberate way.
I express gratitude and appreciation every day. Each morning before I get out of bed, I will spend around ten minutes or so thinking about the things for which I am grateful. I mentally list all the things I appreciate about my life, or my day, or the current moment. I might express gratitude for my family and friends. I might take some time to really appreciate the feeling of the balmy air and the soft cotton sheets against my skin, or the beauty of the pale morning light as it filters into my window through the leafy trees outside my bedroom. Any- and everything I can think of gets expressed during this gratitude monologue. And it helps me to realize just how much of what I desire is already present in my life. This helps me to reconnect with the more positive feelings that I tend to overlook whilst trying to honor and release the darker emotions.
I investigate my darker, less pleasant emotions. Law of Attraction states that whatever we are focusing on is what we call to us for manifestation. But, according to Abraham and Esther Hicks, while it does not serve us to continue to focus on the things we don’t want, contrast is a valuable part of our creation process. It is through this contrast - which produces feelings of darker shades, such as disillusionment, despair, anger, and boredom, to name a few - that we are able to discern what it is we do want. So, taking a look at these contrasting feelings can be a wonderful tool to figuring out what it is I want that isn’t happening. Then I can turn my focus to my newly clarified desire, which, thanks to the Law of Attraction, is sure to allow for its manifestation.
I remind myself that I am not a slave to my feelings. I spent so many years kowtowing to my emotions without giving any thought to whether or not they were working for my benefit. And, since so many of those emotions were on the darker end of the spectrum, they were not working for my benefit. In fact, they were working against me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I don’t have to give my power over to my emotions. They can help guide me to an awareness of whether or not I’m experiencing what I want to be experiencing, but aside from that, they have no other role. Depression is not going to make wise decisions about how best to socially integrate into my community. Boredom is not going to make wise decisions about how best to nourish myself. Resentment is not going to inspire me to see situations clearly. Only I can make wise decisions for myself. Only the part of me that is my authentic, Source-connected, aware, Soul Self is capable of creating a healthy, happy, deliberate life for myself. I am not a slave to my emotions. I am more powerful than that. I can consciously choose how to shift my perspective to find better feeling emotions in any given circumstance. And I’m no longer willing to give that power away.
I forgive myself for not understanding all of this sooner. And I continue to forgive myself, any time I start to feel sad or annoyed or resentful for all the time I lost floundering in the past. I give myself love and compassion and acceptance for where I’ve been and then shift my focus to how blissful it feels to be where I am now. And it feels good.
As I continue to implement these practices into my life I can feel myself becoming lighter. I can feel a sense of ease in my life that I haven’t felt in decades. I can suddenly recognize how I’ve created unnecessary resistance in my life, and as it begins to dissipate, I am left with a lightness of being that feels exhilarating.
I am sharing these tools with you, not because I think they are the only way to work with emotions, but to simply let you know what is working for me right now. If they work for you, too, that is wonderful! If they don't resonate for you at all, that’s great, too, because it let’s you know that you have different desires and needs that you can meet in your own unique way. Maybe this can inspire you to discover your own beautiful path to emotional freedom. Should you discover that you’d like some support finding your unique way, you can always arrange for a coaching session with me. I wish you the very best, Bliss Bunnies. We are all amazing and powerful creators of our own blissful destinies. Happy creating!
xoxo,