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Can you remember the intensity and range of your childhood emotions? Many of us were acutely aware, whether consciously or unconsciously, of our family dynamics. The family (in any form) is where our emotional lives incubate. Whether you had a mostly emotionally functioning home or a blatantly dysfunctional one, you likely experienced strong, keen, painful emotions and at some point had to learn how to shut them down to protect yourself.
Here is the secret at the heart of all human life: Emotional shutdown is the source of your limitation and pain. Emotional freedom is the source of your possibility and prosperity.
Emotional Pain, Spiritual Power
Oh, how emotions can hurt us! And oh, how they can induce such euphoria! The range of feeling is not to be underestimated.
From the deep shame children so often feel when they think they’ve disappointed their parents to the glorious glee of those memorable childhood “best days ever”; from the wrenching feeling of having your heart yanked out of your chest by a lover’s betrayal to the ecstatic highs of freedom; from the terrifying pull of fear at the thought that someday this will all be over to the euphoria of being totally and completely present in a moment of awe at the beauty of life — for better or for worse, emotions rule us.
We all have emotions, but I believe (with some exceptions) that women feel them in a different, more intense, dare I say deeper way than men. Yes, we are wild, feeling creatures. Let’s own that! It’s a strength, not a weakness, no matter what some might say. But when we lack awareness about what our emotions are trying to communicate to us, we can become completely controlled by them, unable to choose a rational thought because the emotion is so overpowering.
Do you know that feeling? I sure do. And when it happens, what do we do? We run from it, and it chases us down and forces us to do things we wouldn’t do in a calmer state of mind. So we fear it. We look away. We bury it.
So many of us have no idea what to do with our strongest emotions, and we don’t really know what they mean. But we do know that it seems like they control everything. They can feel inescapable, threatening, embarrassing, and incredibly inconvenient.
Have you ever tried to enjoy a beautiful, sunny day with friends, but you can’t stop thinking about what your other friend said to you last night? Your mind is replaying a scenario, causing you to stir with unwanted feelings.
Or have you ever tried to be happy at your friend’s wedding, but you can’t shake the feeling of grief and sadness that “the one” is not by your side for this special event?
Or have you ever had a lovely, bright start to your Monday and then checked your bank account and felt a crawling dread inch up your spine without warning? Or have you ever woken up and stepped on the scale and suddenly felt the whole day turn into a shame spiral?
Emotions Transcend Time and Space
Our emotions are a central part of our human experience — and they are so precarious, so easily triggered, so volatile! They’re an automatic response caused by chemical reactions in the brain. Most often, we can’t choose them. However, what we can do is choose how we respond to them, and that, my beautiful friends, is the secret to emotional mastery.
Emotions are essentially energy in motion. Think of them as swirling energies, not bound by time or space, that live inside of you until you clear them out. They exist in layers — light, transient ones; familiar ones that come and go; and those deep, heavy ones that have been with you for years, that shift seismically every so often, when you least expect it.
But they can all be cleared. The ones that plague you, those you can coax to the surface. To do that, though, requires going into the past to heal. Those deep emotions don’t care that they were created when you were five years old, even though now you’re twenty-five or thirty-five or forty-five or even a hundred and five. Once they enter you, they become untied from their triggering event, and they settle in and live there until you kick them out. They transcend time and space.
I’ve spent much of my life feeling confused and distanced from my emotions, but that’s not the way to clear them. The sadness, jealousy, anger, embarrassment, doubt, and insecurity I held inside of me felt like a disease in my body. I hated being hijacked by a feeling and not knowing how to change it, and I couldn’t even see how much those stuck emotions were limiting my perceptions and abilities in life.
It still happens to me often, and it can be frustrating if it’s something I feel I’ve worked on time and time again. The difference now is that I know there is a gift for me inside of every emotional trigger, a new pathway to accessing more of my power — if I’m willing to feel and heal.
I also couldn’t see an important truth: emotions are not a weakness — they are actually a superpower! They limit you only when you refuse to process them. A free emotion is strength. A suppressed emotion can undermine everything about your greatness.
Emotions Are Signals
When was the last time you felt totally hijacked from reality by an unwanted emotion? When did an emotion last make you say or do something you didn’t want to say or do? Did you clear it, or is it still in there somewhere, waiting to hijack you again?
When an emotion disrupts us, it’s not because we let it out, even if that’s how it feels. It’s actually because we are fighting it, hanging on to it, grasping at it, or trying to push it down. We are holding on instead of letting it blow through us like the storm that it is, then allowing it to move on.
Emotions are signals. They are what we feel when our brain chemistry is alerting us to something important, whether it’s something wonderful or something terrible. They come from a complex alchemy of hormones, like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol, and epinephrine, that are tied to safety and survival and that rise and fall according to our brain’s perceptions of reality. They are signs that we should do something, or that we shouldn’t do something, or that we should pay attention. They arise within us for good reason.
But what do we do? Instead of listening to the message at the heart of the emotion, we fight it, or we get scared or threatened by it, or we hold on to it like we don’t ever want to let it go. Whether it’s love or hate, anger or joy, so often we get the signals all wrong.
If you want to grow in this lifetime and tap into the infinite field of magic, prosperity, orgasmic pleasure, and adventure, you must be willing to explore the forces of emotions, as daunting as that may seem. You must be willing to feel them fully, and you must also be willing to let them go.
Neither one is easy.
Feelings Are Meant To Be Felt
If you knew how to remove the single greatest obstacle to having it all in your life — the body, the wealth, the relationship, the freedom — wouldn’t you choose to do it? What if I mentioned that there is a cost? Would you be willing to pay it? The exchange is that you are going to have to start feeling your feelings, even when you think they might kill you. Then you are going to have to let them go, even if you think you’ll die without them.
Feelings are meant to be felt, and then they are meant to dissipate. We aren’t supposed to pretend they aren’t there, and we aren’t supposed to hang on to them like they are the answer to all our problems.
To refuse to feel is to suppress, and that makes emotions get stuck inside. To refuse to let go is to get stuck in a repeating loop, and that makes emotions get stuck inside, too. To feel and release will free you from every heavy emotion and mental torment that keeps you stuck. It will open you to an inner freedom, full of power and pleasure beyond your comprehension.
So How Do You Do It?
Awareness is the path to healing. In order to access awareness, you must be present with your emotions and allow yourself to feel, even when it’s uncomfortable — especially when it’s uncomfortable. In our fast-paced lives, it’s far too easy to stay distracted from feeling.
You’re going year after year, running at life, to some invisible finish line. Guess what happens when you get there? Often, a huge letdown when you realize that you’re not as happy and fulfilled as you imagined you’d be. Has this ever happened to you? Or have you seen this happen to someone you love? This is your invitation to slow down, to feel, and to commit to your healing. I promise you, it’s worth it.
Copyright ©2022 by Jolie Dawn.
Excerpted with permission from the publisher,
New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
Article Source
Empowered, Sexy, and Free
Empowered, Sexy, and Free: Discover Your Unique Brilliance and Dare to Be the Creatrix of Your Life
by Jolie Dawn
A delightfully fresh and irreverent take on living well, based not on changing you but on fully being you. This refreshingly authentic book will help you recognize and release whatever energetic baggage is weighing you down, from difficult relationship dynamics to financial challenges to feeling a lack of clarity in purpose — it’s all here for you to discover.
The daily practices and tools the author offers come from her lived experience of successfully transforming her life from the inside out. You’ll discover the power to radiate your inner light, dare to be your truest self, and expand the heart of every human who witnesses your divine feminine essence.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Jolie Dawn is the author of Empowered, Sexy, and Free and creator of the Dare to Prosper Challenge, the largest women’s prosperity meditation gathering online, attended by women in more than fifty countries. She specializes in helping women awaken their prosperity consciousness, embody their deepest truth, and reclaim personal freedom and creativity.
Visit her online at JolieDawn.com.
