The whole and its parts

The whole & its parts

Information and energy

It’s what emotions are about. They are there to give us information and to change our energy to enable action.

The information emotions provide us with is simple. It’s information helping us to assess if our needs are met and if we are on track towards our goal. The shift in energy emotions help us achieve is based on this information.

Sensing sadness is there to tell us that we’ve lost something. The available energy is there to allow us to do something about the emptiness or sense of loss that we experience. It’s about initiating healing.

Sensing anger gives us the information that something isn’t as it should be and needs to be changed. The energy that unfolds is there to help us change whatever needs to be changed. Remember this broken handle you constantly had to deal with until you repaired it?

Joy invites us to see that something nice happening and that there is something we want to hold on to. The energy that unfolds is there to build on that experience and continue to create whatever it is creating. Think about the friends you are reconnecting with because it is so pleasant to be with them.

Fear is providing us with the information that there is something that we want to avoid. The energy fear triggers is one that can either tell us to just get out of there but also to reach out for help. Did you ever slow down because the driving suddenly was too fast?

This might sound too easy. It actually isn’t.

The hurdle is somewhere else. It’s in identifying the emotion and in allowing it to be present.

Most of us have heard ideas like “boys don’t cry” and “girls don’t get to be angry”. It’s one of the ways we’ve been taught to avoid emotions. By suppressing them we’ve learned to either transform them into something else, which may be to feel angry instead of sad or vice versa. It may also be to engage ourselves in self-talk about these emotions, thus transforming the emotions by minimizing them, making them all important, or judging ourselves for having them.

But emotions are there to do a job.

As long as they haven’t achieved their job, they’ll continue to appear and push us. Either by amplifying the self-talk, pulling us into the emotion, or using all the denied energy to become uncontrollable.

Avoiding them doesn’t work.

The art is to see them when they appear, that is before we engage in self-talk. Or to see through our own self-talk.

Once the emotions become visible, the art is to sit with them and let them tell their story. When the story unfolds, the energy becomes clear and describes your next step. It might not be what you wanted and often it will be challenging. Still, use that energy. It’s there to address your needs and move towards your goal.

If the emotion doesn’t dissolve, it hasn’t done its job yet.

Something remained unfelt.

Go back to listening.

 

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