Emotions – our generic experiences that we attach to a specific situation. Emotions – part of our expressions. The wonderful innate ability that distinguishes even further from animals, yet we can perceive emotions as being negative. Negative emotions – you know those negative emotions: Anger, fear, sadness, hurt, and guilt. Negative huh..? Is sadness negative or highly appropriate when one is at a funeral? Or is happiness/laughter very in-appropriate when one is in pain and hurting?
Emotions are only negative if they are constantly resurfacing and hindering our development, hindering our goals and basically stopping us from what we want to do. Society and indoctrinated beliefs project this thought process that anger, fear, sadness, guilt etc are negative emotions; however, having the ability to express these emotions is not a negative thing. It is acceptable to be happy yet unacceptable or almost embarrassingly “ssshed” if one is unhappy…
So what do we do?
We tend to suppress these “negative” emotions. We push them way down until we can’t feel them anymore… or so we think. What explains the constant confusion? What explains the feeling of emptiness? Unfortunately we are led to believe that it is inappropriate to feel “negative” emotions. As adults we find it perfectly logical and reasonable even to suppress or deny that these uncomfortable feelings ever took place or that they are continually re-surfacing again and again.
Notwithstanding all the other tasks, our mind is programmed to clear the crap constantly. We feed it crap, but it’s constantly trying to get it out. If we continue to suppress this process by continually back-loading crap, it can lead to really uncomfortable situations later.
Our minds are masters in time management. There’s a basic rule in the blueprint of how the mind functions at its optimum: Feelings of a similar resonance essentially group together. We may decide to release a feeling or emotion, but with the intended release comes all of the other resonant feelings, even if they weren’t necessarily meant to. Let’s call these other feelings “bad data”. All of these bad data thought forms/feelings were undoubtedly fashioned and created through our environment and other people’s beliefs, and even the perception of what we thought we saw. Those things that you thought you heard, or knew you misunderstood – the bad data – gets mixed up with all the good data, which causes all that confusion.
Emotions are a means of communications – a process whereby what we are thinking directly affects how we feel. Emotions are our own personal barometer into information about our experiences and what we are doing with them. The average human will go about life denying these emotions and storing them away in their house of cards… but we all know what happens there.
The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘emotions’ as: “A strong feeling in the mind”
If we change what we see, or our perception of what we see, will we get a different feeling? How is it that two people who both attend the exact same function, interact with exactly the same people come back with different emotive thoughts about their experiences?
Yes, your environment, your upbringing, attitudes and beliefs shape this, cement this and anchor or trigger particular emotions. But, are they your thoughts, your beliefs and your attitudes?
Honour yourself, and even though it may not be appropriate to burst into tears because you are at a meeting, promise yourself that you will take some time out to get introspective and acknowledge that feeling. It’s a communication of some form or other. The beauty is that when it is acknowledged, the emotion will be released and the internal struggle which causes so much stress and energy in holding it will simply go.
