Follow Your Feelings
The single most effective healing tool I’ve found during the course of my awakening is the art of following my feelings.
As I wrote about in my last post, the deeper we go in to the darkness within the more we discover about the truth of who we really are. We deny these aspects of ourselves and try to avoid seeing them because we fear what they have to say about us and what that would mean for our lives going forward.
The feelings of guilt and shame that I was experiencing emanate from the core belief ‘I’m not worthy’. There is no bottom to the depth of where these core beliefs originated. It could be childhood trauma, past lives, genetics, anything really and honestly it isn’t that important to know where these limiting beliefs came from, what’s important is to know that we have core beliefs that aren’t rooted in the truth.
Sometimes we mistakenly label our dislikes as core beliefs. For example, when someone says, “I don’t like public speaking” this person not liking public speaking isn’t a core belief, in fact it is just a reaction to the core belief ‘I’m not good enough’.
Here is the real key I want to share with you guys about diving deep in to our shadows. It is all about ‘following our feelings’. Let me explain.
When we feel a negative feeling or negative emotion arise our first instinct is to escape it. Our ego desperately wants us to avoid feeling those feelings at all costs because it thinks that the feelings will obliterate it. It is a protective mechanism.
Our society supports these protective mechanisms by promoting escaping these feelings with pills and various other prescribed medications that numb our feelings. A lot of mental health services think that there is no way these difficult feelings could be good to feel and simply provide remedies to help us not feel.
If we are truly seeking wholeness and healing we must understand that we are feeling the negativity for a reason. The negative feelings are providing us vital feedback about how out of alignment we are with our higher self. Any time we are feeling poorly it is a direct message from our higher self to go within and follow the feeling.
Here is a text that I sent to someone close to me regarding their fear of not having enough money:
“Just stay with the feelings that the stories of not having enough money bring up. Follow the feelings as they change within you. Allow yourself to be completely and utterly overwhelmed and immersed by your feelings. They may bring emotions or images or colors. Sink in to to the feelings that the emotions, images and colors bring forth. Let those feelings arise fully within you and around you and just keep following the feelings layer after layer and allow them to transform on there own. You don’t have to do anything but have the courage to remain present with what you’re feeling at all times.”
The mind will try to create a story about your feelings and emotions in a bid to keep you from feeling your negativity completely. Every time this happens and you allow the story to take you away from your feelings just recognize it, open your eyes and then start again from what you are feeling now.
The anxiety you initially felt may transform in to panic, and then extreme irritability and then anger and finally at some point you may start feeling the underpinnings of peace and joy.
The key is to just continue to follow your feelings until you find a present moment that is more satisfying to you. There is really no end to this process. A common end for most is when they start to feel a little lighter and more uplifted. But don’t make this your aim.
Your only goal should be to just allow yourself to feel what you are feeling uninhibited and to follow the feelings as they transform. You don’t have to do anything. The feelings and emotions will transform by themselves. All that is required is that you observe and witness them without judgement and expectation.
