Fear of Feeling (part 3)

I want to wrap up this series on Fear of Feeling with an explanation of how to get from feeling to healing.

What are Feelings?

This understanding of feelings helps our students and clients discern what their emotions mean, and more importantly, use their emotions to bring healing to their hearts and transform their lives from that day forward.

I believe we come into this world – a part of and eternally connected to a vibration of Divine Love and Oneness. The Breath of the Oneness breathes life into a physical form that is born into a seemingly separate physical body to play out its soul journey on planet earth.

This separate being knows its connection to its Source and knows why it is here. And then, for almost everyone, there is a process of forgetting that happens. The separate one begins to perceive the world through human senses. It sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches. The mind begins to process and store information it receives through the sensory organs. The being is gathering information and learning, and it still knows love at its core.

When the being witnesses something that does not align with the love it knows inside, or something that does not feel safe or true, it has a reaction – the heart experiences an uncomfortable feeling, and the heart’s energy center constricts. This feeling is a signal. It informs the being that what it just witnessed does not align with its original knowing of love, safety and truth.

On the other hand, if the experience is pleasant, the heart expands and the being feels love and joy or peace and contentment. This is also a signal which means that this situation or state is aligned with the knowing of love, safety and truth.

The mind is not the knower

In this early part of the journey, the mind is not the knower. The mind is learning, and it takes in information from the3-D world and interprets it based on feelings of the heart, which are informed by the heart’s deeper wisdom.

The mind is hardwired to protect the body. When the heart says the situation is unloving or unsafe, the mind says, “OK, I’ve got this. I’ll process all the data and activate all systems to get us to safety.” The mind writes instruction sets that the body will live by. It develops a custom survival manual just for you.

For example, if the heart of a young child feels alone and unloved and begins to cry, the caretaker might offer the child a cookie to help her feel better. The offer of the cookie is a sign that someone is there and hearing the child – the child is not alone. Ingesting the sugar stimulates the release of hormones to at least temporarily uplift the mood. Thirty years later, a bad day might result in ingesting an entire box of cookies.

The eating pattern was developed on top of a feeling of being alone and unloved. That original feeling stays there stored in the body, and when something happens to trigger that feeling again, even if the trigger is subconscious, it activates the same protective instruction set that the mind established in the first place.

When the thirty-something-year-old decides to change the pattern, she might engage the mind to disable one instruction set and write a new one in its place – one that is healthier for the body. However, this does not address the feeling that arose in the first place and continues to trigger the response. It just gives you a healthier way to combat the patterns that accompany the feeling.

The feeling of being alone and unloved is one of those soul lessons we all get to learn about on the life journey. At some point in our early years while on the forgetting phase of the journey, we start to feel like God abandoned us here – we lose connection with the love we know inside and we feel separate. This gets to play out in our lives in a variety of ways until we have the opportunity to heal it – to recognize within ourselves the existence of divine love and eternal connection to Oneness.

Healing through feeling

How do we separate, independent individuals heal from feeling alone and disconnected from love?

The knowing of love and oneness remains intact inside of every human being. It resides at the core – the truth of who you are, what you yearn to find on this journey.

No matter what has happened along this human expedition, that knowing remains intact. It doesn’t change. It just gets covered over by all those memories and pictures of life circumstances, and when we can’t see it any more, we rely on the beliefs and instruction sets from the mind.

Later in the journey, toward the end of the forgetting phase, that knowing of love begins to rekindle inside. A flame begins to flicker in the heart and reminds you that there is more to life, something deeper and more meaningful than what you are experiencing on the surface.

Then things start to show up along your path to remind you. You have a knowing, or you feel a yearning. You begin to remember, and your journey changes from learning to cope with the pains of life to seeking to find deeper truths within the painful experiences.

This is when feelings can guide you back home. Instead of looking to the mind to find a new solution to the life patterns that have developed along the way, what if you go straight to the feelings?

So, say I’m feeling a yearning toward something deeper, or maybe toward love that shows up as a new relationship. Then a voice pops in and says, “Don’t do it. It’s not safe. He won’t love you. You’ll only get hurt.” You feel the pain and disappointment in your heart before you even give it a chance. And so, of course, guess what plays out.

On one hand, you might think the situation ends up in hurt because of law of attraction – that’s what you drew to yourself. Another way to look at it is that you are being given an opportunity to explore what is beneath your feelings so you can heal and return to the love inside yourself.

For example, say I’m feeling hurt and disappointed in the relationship. He doesn’t love and respect me in the way I deserve to be loved. It’s natural to list the reasons why and the things that need to change in order to have him treat you with respect. And there is a deeper message waiting to be uncovered.

What your heart truly wants

What is your heart wanting? What is your heart needing? Let yourself be with your hurt, and then travel beneath the hurt into the heart’s deeper yearning.

The heart wants love. The heart needs love. The heart yearns to live in love, honor and respect. Forget the story of how you got here. Instead of outlining the circumstances that are making your heart hurt, take a deep breath and drop further inside. Be with the heart’s yearning – to live in love, honor and respect.

How does your heart even know what this means? It’s likely you’ve felt this was missing from early childhood. Your heart knows love, honor and respect because this is the knowing that resides inside – that has been there all along and remains unchanged.

Let yourself be present to the yearning, and call to your Source – the One true Healer – for the love that you seek. Receive this love deeply into the place of yearning. Breathe it in and allow it to reawaken you to your original knowing and sense of connectedness with the Divine.

This is the gift – the healing that brings true spiritual transformation. The heart is the portal to return to conscious connection to Divine Love – the Essence of the One.

Here is one of my favorite poems from the famous Sufi poet Hafiz:

by Shams ud-din Hafiz
translated by Daniel Ladinsky

 
I am in no way suggesting to torture yourself with your feelings. When used in the way I am attempting to describe, your feelings can tenderize your heart and stimulate your yearning. It is the yearning that draws you home like a tractor beam from your heart to the original light. This is the transformational healing of the spirit – the journey home. And let’s just say, the world looks different from this place.

 
Thanks for taking the time to read this series. I hope you’ve found it helpful. You are welcome to leave comments below, join us on Facebook or, if you would like help in your personal exploration, click on the events and ecourses tabs on the Essence of the One blog, or visit us online.

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