The Wisdom of our Emotions

Emotions are important teachers of what is required of us to move over, under, around or through a situation that we face in our human experience. If we feel good, we want to repeat that experience, if it feels bad we want to avoid it all costs. We do this by suppressing, avoiding, running away from or pretending it's not actually there. However in order to completely transcend the emotion and gain the wisdom from it-we must feel it through to completion no matter how uncomfortable it is. It's okay to feel as little or as much as you want to feel it before putting it away for a break until you are ready to look at it again. It will continue to show up until you are ready to feel it completely. This is the wisdom of our emotions.

Lately, I had been feeling loneliness, a feeling that washed over me often when I first lost my mother to cancer in December 2018. I actually felt it often my entire life, but she always took it away for me with a few simple words, "it's going to be okay Lolly" I didn't like that feeling of never being able to be with her again in her human form nor hear her words of comfort, so I would turn to external sources to fill the void of feeling alone. I know now, that I am actually never alone because I have a spiritual connection with my mother's spirit as well as others that I connect with daily for guidance and support. I know that I am One with the universe and I am never alone so why was I feeling this extreme loneliness recently? I decided to feel it through to completion to see what wisdom it had for me. When I sat with it, I was shown areas where I still was seeking outside sources to fill my cup and validate me. What an important lesson for me to be shown at this stage of my spiritual growth! I saw where I was making some errors in judgements or making choices that was making me feel lonely because it was separating myself from my true purpose and Self. The choices I made were not of love, but of fear.

I have always had the fear of not being enough or having enough, from as early as I can remember, I was never enough for anyone or anything. I was raised a Roman Catholic and the God I learned about was judgemental, punishing and at times harsh. I know that this isn't the experience of all who have been raised in religion however, this was my experience. I remember feeling like anything I did was going to be harshly judged and I would be sent to hell for it to pay for my sins at a very early age. I am not sure if this is where my scarcity and inadequate feelings came from to start with but I know that once you have that conditioning of self where you do not believe in yourself or your capabilities, you will always see the ways in which this is truth. Even when it's not.

This has led me up until recently, to a lifetime of constantly seeking external validation; even things like raising my first son on my own, graduating from High School with Honours as class Valedictorian, graduating from University with a degree in Sociology and Psychology and obtaining my certificate in Forensic Science after moving myself and my son across the country, never filled that void of me being smart enough or brave enough... I was always looking to see who was proud of me for my accomplishments but I was never able to be proud of myself for the work I put into it, after all, I was the one who accomplished all of it. Of course, other people's encouragement dies off eventually and if you don't have it for yourself, then it's on to the next thing to make other people proud. The temporary emotional high would fall away and I would be back fairly quickly to not being good enough or deserving enough of the accolades. The loneliness would set in once again. Loneliness is created from fear. Fear does not exist if we do not put energy there, instead we can put our energy to loving ourselves and being there for ourselves when we feel lonely, but it's not as easy as it sounds when we have never known how to love ourselves.

What I know now about emotions, and the patterns of them and the situations they arise from, is that if we do not feel them, they will come back in another way in another situation to give us another opportunity to feel them this time. This is where the phenomena of; "why is this always happening to me?" comes from, we feel sometimes we are living in a scene from groundhog day when we wake up and feel dread, anxiety or fear and ask ourselves, why? Most of us go on about our day never even questioning it and just pretending it isn't there or pushing it down to "be strong" for the people around us, or the children we are responsible for. Rarely are we taught that if we feel our emotions, we will be set free from them. They will show us the important lessons we need to learn and each time it comes we can learn to deal with them differently and express them in a healthier way. Essentially, healing ourselves through the feeling. We must feel to heal.

Once we heal, we start to feel the light of peace, joy, love, gratitude and all the feel good emotions that we prefer and want to stay in always but our egos and conditioning will resurface when we haven't fully healed something and dark emotions will show up again. This time we have more experience in the feeling to healing and it isn't quite as scary as it once was. Darkness is simply egos and personas developed by the human mind that refuses to feel negative emotions so it will show up in behaviours and patterns throughout the human experience until they are ready to surrender to the wisdom of these emotions. Some may never be ready due to the discomfort they feel. Too much pride, shame, guilt and the thought of admitting to this is admitting defeat which is too unbearable to even consider facing. They have yet to meet the lessons that show them the strength that comes from the feelings of discomfort. Little do we know that darkness can simply be lit up by allowing the light to be turned on. Darkness is nothing to fear, the moon has dark phases throughout each month and it still stays true to itself. Darkness can be defined as without light, there is nothing in the dark that isn't seen when we turn on the light. This is the interconnectedness of the dark and the light. You can provide the light required to see in the dark, just by being one with the feelings that arise and loving yourself as you do. Love will always cast out fear, anything created from love will always result in good feelings and emotions whereas anything created out of fear will always result in not so nice feelings and emotions. The beauty of it, is we get to choose what we are going to put our energy into. Loving ourselves enough to find the light or fearing the dark.

What are your emotions telling you? Can you hear the wisdom of them or are you choosing to block the messages by suppressing or avoiding them altogether?