It’s Not a Problem - It’s a Message

Looking into how relating to our emotions as messages, as arrows pointing the way, can provide us the means to take a step towards manifesting solutions which lead to wisdom. 

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It's Not a Problem - It's a Message

No life is perfect. To be human is to live with the ever-weaving tapestry of things in progress, things completing, other things starting or trying to start. Which sounds smooth and beautiful, but humans and human lives are complicated so along with the pattern we want to be creating there are also the things which come up out of nowhere and add themselves in uninvited. There are things which are forced on us by others, intentionally or otherwise, things which create magic and opportunities, things which lead us in completely different directions, and things which act like an asteroid plummeting through it all and leaving just bits and pieces for us to start over with.

And now, as we culturally enter into this new phase of recognizing trauma, PTSD, triggers, and the need to deconstruct from abusive structures (family, religions, cults, corporate career paths...) we are coming to realize the 'that's just the way I am's’ are not true and the old wisdom to see them as our burden to carry or lessons to learn are often just a way to keep us abused. 'That's just the way I am's’, which can include triggers, coping mechanisms, self-sabotage, as well as repeated negative relationship patterns, are problems we deserve to heal. 

But to heal them we first need to understand what they actually are.

Currently, the most common spiritual wisdom is to work to release these problems and there are a myriad of ways to go about this ranging from simple to so complex they can take days or weeks. 

Releasing has become a cure-all within the Spiritual community and has even spread as a concept within more general therapeutic circles. Somewhat like Windex in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" it is used for everything from old habits, to eating patterns, PTSD to a desire for stylish hats. If there is something we don't like about ourselves, which seems to be holding us back or out of harmony, then we'll need to release it in order to recover our natural rhythms and move forward with our best life.

However, releasing isn't a universal remedy. Too much releasing can be harmful. Just ask anyone who has had food poisoning, diarrhea, or whooping cough. It can even be deadly if it comes in the form of Cholera. Releasing can also configure your energy to manifest more releasing including in the areas of finances, relationships, and opportunities.

Releasing is the perfect solution to things which actually need letting go. I liken this to grocery shopping. Say you have 10 bags of groceries in your car. They are the plastic bags and are a bit full, but not overly so. Unfortunately, you can't park at home, and you can't find a spot close so it's a couple of blocks to walk from the car to the kitchen. You grab 5 bags with one hand and 5 bags with the other and for the first little bit your focus is just on keeping things from bumping and bouncing so nothing gets damaged or falls out. After a bit longer, you realize the cumulative weight is starting to hurt your hands. You may try to shuffle things around a bit or have to take a couple of breaks, but in the end you gut it out, squeezing your grip tighter and tighter to counteract the pain and keep you from dropping anything. Meanwhile the weight has pulled the bag handles tight and thin, so they are pressing deeply into your hands, slightly cutting off blood flow.

Once you get into the house the first thing you want to do is set down the bags. But this is easier said than done because over time and with so much concentrated effort, plus the lack of blood, your hands have kinda cramped into shape. You get the fingers to release, but the pain doesn't subside right away, and the marks of the bag handles take even longer to fade. Shaking, rubbing, and flexing the hands all help to get them back into working order so you can then put the groceries away.

In this situation releasing is the best option to resolve the issue. You can do this before you take the bags home by retrieving something to load the bags into like a stroller or call your neighbor to meet you at the front door so you can offload them and then park. Alternately you can choose to carry them all the way and then deal with the aftermath. Either way, letting go is the only way out when you've picked something up which you don't want or need to carry any further.

Releasing is also amazing for dealing with things which have been handed to us with or without our consent. Many of us have been gifted hyper-vigilance, co-dependence, perfectionism, the role of mediator, and the need to overachieve along with a whole lot more. Over time we can come to recognize these are not personality traits such as being an empath, but behaviors given to us in order to facilitate the needs and dysfunctional systems of others. Releasing these as well as the aspects of our identities which they formed and fostered can not only provide healing but allow us to unfold our true natures and manifest from our higher self.

No matter what issue you're working through, releasing is often the first of several steps in a healing journey. It is not uncommon for a person to become aware of their need for healing or where they should start by noticing what they have carried around with them through sheer effort and determination, possibly for years. Or, if they have been aware of it, to finally reach the moment where they are ready to change themselves in order to move forward. So, they release the need to stay the way they are or to just keep coping with the problem. 

Releasing often only brings temporary relief due to the underlying cause of the problem, which is the person never got what they needed, the way they needed it, in the amounts they needed in the first place.  Releasing therefore becomes more abuse, not healing.  Therefore, the true remedy starts with indulging, nurturing, and putting things in rather than forcing them out.

Hence the problem or symptom, the 'That's just the way I am', changes from an obstacle to a message. It morphs into an arrow pointing at where you need to start helping, supporting, and being loving of and to yourself. The message can come in many forms from physical to behavioral, from mental quirks to emotional reactions, and often it comes in combinations of these.  While they are all problematic to varying degrees, they are also direct messages of your body/soul.  The behaviors aren't things which need to be othered and released, but communication from the deep self.  And if they are you, then the next steps are to listen to what you actually want, need, and deserve.

The best place to start with this is with our emotions or how we feel about the problem.

If facts are the truth about the world around us, then emotions are the truth about the world within us. They are energy expressed in order to communicate information about us. This could be about something which is manifesting from within or an interaction we had/are having with the world outside us.

Because of this, it's important to realize all emotions are good. 

I think it's important to note, before we go much further, there is a big difference between emotions and the actions we take because we are having an emotion. Feeling angry is not the same as punching a hole through the wall. Feeling depressed is not the same thing as eating an entire pan of brownies. Feeling pain and fear is not the same as cutting your arm with a razor blade. 

Emotions are energy. They are the unique truth of who we are and how we are being in the moment. None of them are wrong or bad. Some feel more powerful than others, some are incredibly uncomfortable, and there are those we wish we wouldn't have to go through because they aren't fun or are inconvenient.

However, all of them have wisdom and are aspects of ourselves.

Having an emotion is not the same as expressing an emotion, however this is one of the things we are taught by our families. We don't tell children to express their anger, grief or fear in appropriate ways. We tell them not to be angry or sad or afraid. We don't teach children how to identify what they're feeling and find a way to express it positively and appropriately or to problem solve what has caused the issue. Instead, we teach children to repress the "bad" emotions and enhance the good ones.

Emotions tell us the truth about ourselves and how we're interacting with the world. They have no reason to lie, don't have any interest in logic, risk benefit analysis, best practices or 'shoulds'. They are the song our soul sings to us about who we really are and the path we are meant to walk in this lifetime.

Emotions aren't random. They don't just come up like the Loch Ness Monster or Sasquatch and then disappear again. They are truths which emerge because of things happening inside us due to internal or external interactions. However, emotions can also be a means for us to protect ourselves against other feelings, memories, information and awareness which seem too big or too dangerous for us to handle.

If you have access to your emotions, the next step in relationship building and to start receiving their wisdom is to ask "Why?". 

And, to be honest, it's not unusual for people to ask Why? when they are having strong emotions. The problem is, they aren't asking themselves in order to find out their own essential truth, but instead asking external forces why this is happening to me or being done to me. They are looking for pain relief, remedy, and escape rather than an unfolding. And fair enough.

However, if we ask ourselves 'Why?' with the object being for our emotions to tell us the truth, we will receive an answer. Often many.

While most people would like the answers to be straight forward with a list of action items to do which will make everything all right and the problem go away, this process can be more like unwrapping a package or removing layers of old paint. The top layer isn't the point, what is under it is. Hence the problem is an arrow which keeps pointing. In working with emotions, it can help to practice what is called 'Dropping Down' which means to see the current emotions, habitual coping mechanisms or behaviors as ways of protecting yourself from deeper feelings. Dropping down means allowing yourself to set aside those means of protection, connecting with the deeper feelings, and speaking from there.

The hard part is most of us already know the truth in the deeper emotions. This truth is the reason we work so hard to not have them. Because our emotional truths have a tendency to shatter all of our carefully constructed logical reasoning for why we're doing something, not doing something, or working to be something else. And like a bell calling us to mindfulness, once we allow ourselves to know this truth, we can't unknow it. And once known it takes a tremendous amount of energy to ignore it again. Sometimes it's not even possible.

The reason why western culture works so hard to get us to repress and control our emotions, in part, is they are the fuel which propels the manifestation of our divinity into the world. Emotions point out where things are unhealthy for us, threaten us and the good of others, try to force us into being a resource rather than a being, and much more. They point to where we have gotten off track on our path, where we should say emphatically No or enthusiastically Yes, and guide us through options in a way which doesn't necessarily support an economy of consumption.

All of these negative messages about our emotions, trying to force them to be problems, point out an unspoken truth, our emotions are powerful forces for good if we allow ourselves healthy relationships with them and learn to channel their wisdom.

To do this it's important to think of the process somewhat like learning to drive a car or text on your smart phone. You didn't originally know how to do these things, but you learned and now it's second nature. At the beginning it's all awkward, takes a great deal of attention, you make mistakes...a lot...and you learn from them and see progress all along the way. 

So, once you've started to hear the why of something, start allowing this why to be important enough you take a positive action concerning it. I guarantee you won't have to invent that action. The wisdom in the emotion will point you towards it like a huge road flare. The message will be clear. The hard part will be to allow yourself to take the action without your mind interfering. Our internal monologue is adept at making us feel bad for wanting to do or be things our emotions are guiding us towards. We're not allowed because we can't afford it, it's childish, we have too many responsibilities, it's not practical, there are bills to pay, it would take too long, we're not good enough.... the list of reasons to deny ourselves is endless.

Emotions are energy therefore containing their own propulsion mechanism, as it were. If we allow ourselves to know their message, to see problems as arrows pointing the way, they provide the means to take a step towards manifesting solutions which lead to wisdom. If we allow ourselves to move even a small step in this direction, the positive effects are usually immediate and exponentially good.