Recently, I found myself explaining, in one of the workshops I facilitated, my approach to emotions. Why, unlike many places in the spiritual world, I do not choose how to feel, but rather agree to feel – and to feel it all. Here are the main points of what I shared:
“I don’t believe we have the freedom to choose emotions. On a certain level, I can choose what to do. I can choose how to react. I can make very concrete choices in my daily life, but in my inner world, I do not choose what to feel.
“What I learn and teach on my path is to go all the way with what I feel. To surrender to the emotions, to the situations. If I’m sad now, I feel it. If I’m happy now, I feel it.
“Of course, sometimes there are emotions that are harder to feel, and then we ‘escape’ to other emotions. I might be sad because I’m afraid to be angry. I might get angry because I’m afraid to be afraid. I might feel guilty because I’m afraid to feel good or think it’s not okay to feel good. That’s why it’s important to examine, in every case, whether there is something beyond the current emotion. In other words, the surrender is not blind surrender – it’s conscious surrender. I surrender while asking questions, what Tohar calls bringing awareness and healing. I am present with what I feel, allowing myself to feel it, and at the same time, I stay open to discover what this emotion is telling me and where it is leading me. In this way, what I feel becomes my teacher, and that, to me, is the greatest choice I am learning to make on my spiritual journey.
“Instead of telling myself how I should be, I learn from myself who I am. What I feel now – that emotion is my teacher. If I’m afraid now, then fear is my teacher. If I’m frustrated, then frustration is my teacher. If I’m sad, then sadness is my teacher. The emotions are my teachers.
“When I approach an emotion as a student, it opens up fascinating worlds, opportunities, and possibilities, and it can change my entire life. If a person chooses what to feel, they create a split in their consciousness. They split themselves from themselves, because in that moment, they are telling themselves, ‘I want to be someone else’.
“I am feeling emotional pain right now. What’s the problem with that? I don’t want to choose to be happy – there’s nothing wrong with being in pain. It doesn’t bother me; it even intrigues me. I also know that the pain I feel is a result of healing, and if I surrender to the feeling, a deeper healing occurs. I know this might sound strange, but I truly feel a kind of inner joy right now, because when my heart hurts, I know my heart is opening. Processes of opening are painful processes. It makes me happy because this is the reason I came to Earth – to open my heart.
“I am a person whose moods change between three and seven times a day. There are days when I’m in the same mood all day, but generally, my moods shift several times a day. I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m calm, I’m irritable, I’m afraid – I move between emotions and states all the time. This is the natural movement of my soul. I’m not busy being happy, I’m busy being human, and that means having the opportunity to experience all these experiences.
“I grew up, like all of us, in a society that teaches that there are good emotions and bad emotions. I grew up being told that I have a tendency towards mood swings and that it’s not okay. I’m happy that today I have an inner experience of ease with this tendency. I enjoy being within myself because I am – me. I’m not trying to be a certain feeling, but instead, I experience inner freedom. This is why I am on this journey – for this freedom – and this is what I teach”.
