It may seem that when you are experiencing
strong emotions that this is reality-for sure! You get angry, your body
responds, your heart beats faster, your thinking stops…we all know the
experience of overwhelming negative emotions. However, these feelings are not
the truth of the situation, they are your interpretation of the experience.
That experience is interpreted by past conditioning and other influences such
as ancestral shadows, environment, culture… the list is almost endless. The
same experience can illicit very different emotions, with many different
meanings, from different people.
For example, when my husband comes home, the
first thing he does is turn on the radio. He isn’t always listening to it, he just
likes the noise of someone talking in the back ground. He was the eldest of
three boys, in a house hold that was loud and raucous. He likes the sound of
people talking, it makes him feel comfortable, at home, even relaxed. The
moment I walk in the door, the first thing I do is rush to the radio and turn
it off. The sound is irritating for me- I want the noise off before I can start
to think about having a conversation with him, or anyone. I was raised
virtually as an only child because my older sister left the family when I was
six. I was raised in a house that almost silent, my father was sensitive to noise,
like me. My mother was always tired from her long days of work. So I learned to
entertain myself, quietly. I can’t listen to more than one voice or sound at a
time, but I listen with all my attention to that sound. So either I put on the
radio and lie down and listen to classical music or I turn it off because then it’s
just a horrible distraction and irritant. Who is right? Whose emotions are
‘right”? Whose experiences are ‘true’?
Perhaps we link our emotions to values, and
then we feel even stronger about them E.g. He
was rude to me because I’m a woman, that makes me really angry because I
believe strongly in gender equality. In fact, that may the habitual tone
that person when he talks with everyone. It may have nothing to do with my
being a woman. And of course, there is ample room for vast plays of
transference. E.g. My ex used that tone
with me when he was about to hit me, so now I’m really pissed about this
conversation.
It takes some self-reflection and awareness to
notice that the emotional reaction we have to events, is not the ‘truth’. It is
perhaps a ‘truth’ that our emotions reflect or interpret a truth. There is some
kernel of truth in the emotion that arises with an event. But to get to the
reality of the experience, we have to proceed with caution and kindness, both
to ourselves and others. World Metaphoric Transformation can be helpful. The
first and second tenant of WMT relates to emotions: remember the story is never about the story and the story is always about
me. Or, for emotions we could say, emotions
are never about the emotion, they are about me. So following the bread
crumb trail back from where the emotion arise, to where it originated within
soul is how we can liberate ourselves from false premises, sticky negative
thinking and manifest our souls more holistically.
Try This!
1.
The next time a strong negative (or positive ) emotion comes up,
be
curious about where it came from. Be aware, it may not the truth, it is
probably an interpretation of the truth. E.g. This morning when I was picking hollyhock seeds in the garden I felt a wonderful
sense of lightness and fun.
2.
Now really notice, step back from the interpretation of the event and
instead focus on the environment of the experience. E.g. This was in my garden, the sun was shining, I was harvesting seeds from
an unusual hollyhock flower, The seeds were incredible, when I looked at them,
they were incredibly intricate, which ridges and the even the seed pods were
fascinating to me because of their design and, shape and textures.
3. When you have captured the essence
of the event, not the emotion of the event, then bring it home. E.g. I was looking forward to putting the seeds
into my own hand made seed packages and giving them to my friends and family.
4.
Now find soul in the event which your emotions have responded to. E.g. The seeds represent wisdom and knowledge for
me. I love to give wisdom and insight to others, which is like giving them
seeds. They can do with the wisdom what they want, plant or not plant, where
they want. It is up to them whether to care for them, fertilize and water the
flowers, enjoy and then gather their own seeds to give away. That is my aspiration
with this activity. It is a metaphor for my soul’s work as a spiritual
counsellor. This explain why almost inexplicably I felt a great surge of joy
arise in me. I lifted up with a World Metaphoric Transformation.
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