“This is my crier,” said my second grade teacher to another teacher passing by, as I was taken outside the classroom for once again spilling my emotions, tears running down my face. The other teacher clicked her tongue and shook her head, as if crying was a bad thing.
Years later, in the workforce, after a particularly frustrating day, I was near to tears. My boss at the time, another woman, came to me and said, “never let them see you cry. If you cry, you are weak to them.”
All my life, people have seemingly withdrawn from me, sensing that I’m an emotional person. “You wear your heart on your sleeve,” they’d say, or “you just feel it all, don’t you?” My life was spent trying to resist and suppress my emotions so as to fit into a patriarchal world. I went through quests, trying to find ways to suppress my emotions even further, trying to figure out how to live as an automaton, even exploring any possible means to ridding myself of my emotions. I became a practitioner of half a dozen different energy healing modalities as part of my quest… including NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Reconnective Healing®, TFT® (Thought Field Therapy® – a meridian tapping technique) and EFT® (Emotional Freedom Technique® – another meridian tapping modality), Reiki, and ThetaHealing®. As a Divine channel and an intuitive empath, I also received yet further healing instruction from my guides and Spirit, and I also became an expert in nutrition for metabolic restoration, as well as mind and body detoxification. What I’ve discovered through these many healing modalities, throughout my journey, is a significant key to life, to enlightenment, to spiritual awakening: Our emotions are much more important than we can possibly comprehend.
I’ve walked through walls of fire, layers of darkness, lifetimes of trauma, grief, abandonment and loss… and in the process of living my own hell that I contrived and misconstrued, I found my emotions to be the most intimate companion. Rather than trying to suppress them any longer or rid myself of them, I embraced them – no matter what they seemed to be, no matter how much they hurt. Integration of our emotions, rather than resistance to them, is key. And finally I got the secret.
Our emotions are our fuel. They power this dream we think of as life – this universe… this multiverse. Thoughts based on beliefs direct the dream… but emotions are the fuel.
We spend our lives trying to rid ourselves of our emotions, to stop feeling… Messy things, emotions – or at least – that’s how we view them. Why? Because emotions are our indicators of our thoughts. They flare up and feel uncomfortable when we think something unTrue. They tell us of our thoughts which lead to: Beliefs. Oh how dare we go there! Our beliefs are sacred to us. And we must be right about our beliefs! Emotions therefore challenge our beliefs… and to the ego, that is treading on sacred ground. Do. Not. Disturb. Emotions lead to thought examination which leads to belief challenging. They may also lead to painful memories which we repressed in early life because we could not, as young children, understand and process the things that happened to us. Perhaps, even our parents punished us for expressing our pain, with words such as, “if you keep crying I’ll spank you harder,” or “be quiet now, or you’re going to get a time-out.” Many of us were programmed to suppress our emotions right from the time we were born. Many of us were, indeed, taught to believe that our emotions were dangerous, when in reality, the opposite is true.
What happens to our suppressed, repressed and rejected emotions? Where do they go? What do they do? If they are the fuel, then what are they powering up? Our happiest dreams, plans and goals? Or are they, perhaps, fueling our sickness, our traumas, our fears, our darkest illusions?
That’s what gets all our fuel, while we sit and wonder why we get sick or fat or broke, or keep attracting the same guy over and over again – why we stay stuck in hurtful patterns of survival and existence, rather than the life we dream of. We give all our fuel away to the darkness that we’ve judged and spend our lives trying to run away from, all to avoid being wrong about our beliefs, to avoid being judged by others, to avoid being guilty of something, or shameful down to our core, something so wrong with us… for feeling our own emotions.
Patricia Reed
Author, Spiritual Teacher, Healer, Intuitive Coach
What if we realized that all emotions are ultimately Love? What if we just love feeling, no matter what it is? What if we realized the great and vast treasure we already possess, that which we already are, and embrace our emotions, no matter what they feel like? What if we understood that our emotional body is our Divine Feminine power? Would we continue to suppress her? Deny her? Resist her? Judge her? Abandon her? What if instead we understood her, accepted her, supported her… Loved her? What if we embraced our feelings, and accepted them as part of us? What if we were simply just okay with feeling whatever comes up to express itself to us? This, I have found, is the secret to happiness and true self-love and acceptance.
This is our next step in evolution. To feel. To love feeling. To embrace ALL that it means to be human.
This is the Goddess awakening. This is the Goddess igniting.
