Welcome to our third blog in the series Everyday Guidance from Spirit.
In our last blog we talked about Joy as Spirit’s compass, it tells you when you’re in alignment, not just with Spirit but with yourself and with the people, places, things and thoughts that are for you.
If joy is Spirit’s yes, then our other emotions are the rest of the conversation!
Emotions are energy in motion. E-motion.
All of your emotions are messengers, carrying valuable information about your alignment, needs, and next steps. When we label emotions as “wrong” or “negative,” or when we try to resist them, or make ourselves wrong for feeling the way we do, we cut ourselves off from the guidance they carry.
What then are the ways we can listen to and better access the guidance we are getting through all our emotions? At the Vision Workshop we do a deep dive on this and I’d love to see you there if you’d ready to learn how to apply these teachings to greater effect in your life.
For now, let me explain it this way.
Spirit communicates with you, through all your emotions, to support you in knowing
- what is for you, that is to say, the dreams, goals, intentions that will support you to be your best self
- whether you are on or off track with what is for you
This is how it works.
When you want to know what is for you, what direction you’re being called to move toward, pay attention to what is showing up as your longings and discontents respectively. Both are emotional signals, but they show up in different flavours!
Longings as emotions typically carry an expansive, upward, hopeful quality, a pull toward possibility. They often feel light, energising, and future-oriented, like a heart-tug pulling you forward.
Discontents as emotions tend to carry a constrictive, heavy or restless quality, a resistance to what is. They can feel tight or draining, and they are showing you where something is out of alignment.
Here are some examples of each:
Longings are more of Spirit’s “yes” emotions and discontents are Spirit’s “no more” emotions. Both are Spirit’s way of guiding you toward your highest good: longings pull you in the direction you are being encouraged to go towards and discontents push you to release what no longer serves you.
Once you have used this guidance to determine what to move towards, Spirit continues to guide you as to when you are on or off track in terms of moving in that direction.
Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash
On-track Emotions feel expansive and uplifting. They are signs that you’re aligned with your soul’s path, that you are going in the right direction. Take some time to notice the people, places, things, thoughts, activities, that inspire or generate uplifting emotions – love, gratitude, peace, excitement. Everything that generates these types of emotions supports you to be on-track.
Off-track Emotions feel contractive. They are indicators that something in your energy, perspective or environment needs attention. Again, take time to notice the people, places, things, thoughts, activities, that trigger or generate emotions like fear, resentment, sadness, frustration. Everything that generates those emotions indicates that you are off-track.
Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash
I hope you’re seeing within these explanations that emotions are neither good nor bad, they are all simply messengers. You don’t want to make it bad that you are feeling challenging emotions, you want to celebrate that you notice how you are feeling and can understand why. Take the inherent information, from all of your emotions, and let it guide you to what’s going to best serve you.
The best way to work with your emotions and to stay out of resistance to any of them is to simply allow yourself to feel them. This can feel way easier to do with the more expansive feelings but even with contractive emotions, the thing to do is to be with them. Our emotions carry information, and they’re meant to be felt.
Research tells us that when we can simply be with an emotion, it will rise and ebb in 90 seconds. The trick is to simply allow it to be experienced, without adding any story.
By that I mean, for example, if you are feeling sad about a particular situation or condition in your life, if you can allow the saddness to be felt it will be processed in 90 seconds. The reason most of us experience those emotions staying around LOTS longer is that we add story. We tell ourselves it isn’t fair, that others in the situations should be doing something different in some way, that these things always happen to you. When we are ruminating like this, we are adding a story to the emotion and that spikes the emotional charge again and again.
Photo by Brock Wegner on Unsplash
To sit with and allow your emotions to be would look something like this:
- Pause when an emotion arises.
- Locate where you feel it in your body.
- Breathe into that space, without judgment.
- Allow the feeling to expand so it can be fully felt.
I want to fully acknowledge here that this can be very challenging to do with uncomfortable emotions. That’s why it is so helpful to know that it will typically only last for 90 seconds! And you can tolerate a lot for 90 seconds! If it helps, set an alarm so that you know when the 90 seconds is up. Until your alarm goes off, your job is to simply pay attention to the sensations you are feeling and breathe.
Afterwards, when the feeling has subsided, you can ask: What is this emotion here to show me? Pay attention to any patterns that you become aware of. What are you being guided towards or away from? Are there any choices or decisions to make or actions you want to take based on this new awareness?
Every emotion is an invitation from Spirit:
- To appreciate what’s working.
- To notice what’s out of alignment.
- To move toward what nourishes you.
When you listen to your emotions instead of resisting them, you let Spirit speak more fully, and you open yourself up to the guidance that is always there to support you in being your best.
Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash