Day 57 - A Year of Spiritual Awakening - We May Be Grounded
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Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash
Lesson 57: We may be grounded...
“Lesson 57: We may be grounded in earth body, but our heart is what rules us. Our emotions are mutable, changeable, fickle, not to be trusted. Yet, at the same time, they are deep, profound, breathtaking. Our emotions always change, shift, move, like breezes in the wind, waves in the ocean. There is no time this is not true.”
Today is about thinking about how we use our feelings. Are they controlling us? Are we controlling them? Do we have the ability to let it wash over you or do you let them sink in? Then we are to look at emotions always being in “State of flux” and we must use them differently to that of a static tool.
To start off, I’m not sure about the line involving that our emotions are “not to be trusted”. That would insist that people need to have certain emotions towards things when in fact, it’s their reaction to a certain situation which is uniquely their own, given the circumstance. It’s a product of a person’s reality and therefore no one should be telling someone else what emotional reaction to have. I really hope you reading this makes sense – it makes sense in my head but may not be conveyed. I get what the lesson is trying to teach, but to specifically say not to trust your emotions, doesn’t seem like good advice in my opinion. Everyone is entitled to an emotional reaction that is comfortable and/or uncomfortable to them.
Moving onto feelings and emotions. I find them to be two different things though they are always intersected with one another. They definitely go hand in hand but are actually two different things. Emotions are your body reacting physically or instinctively where as feelings are thoughts in our minds created through experience. This table taken from http://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/feelings-vs-emotions/ really sums it up.
Feelings vs Emotions
So in identifying the differences, is this exercise about emotions or feelings? Or both? I feel like feelings are more in a state of flux and these are what can wash over you or sink in based on an external circumstance. I didn’t mean to go into this type of depth with today’s lesson, but I felt it needed to be addressed. We can control our feelings I think. We have the power to let it absorb into our mind and/or work with it in recognising it’s there and move it along if needed. If I’m feeling bitter for instance, what caused this bitterness, is there a lesson to be learned and can I move on from it? If someone held a gun to my head, that triggers my emotional fear response in which my body reacts to. I don’t necessarily feel like all feelings should be washed over you. For instance, I’d like love to sink in. I mean, it could wash over me as well as sink in because I wouldn’t want it to just go away.
Clearly I have struggled with this lesson because my mindset is just different to what it’s trying to teach. I feel like I disagree with some of the things that are said. Obviously some of the bad feelings should be a wash over and you have the power to control it. However, the good feelings should be here to stay, wouldn’t you think? I think we are the holders of the tool of our feelings and we should definitely work with what feel. It’s up to us how much we let feelings take over. Sometimes I think emotions cannot be controlled because they are deeply rooted in our make up as humans. It’s more so that some people have different levels of emotions to different things and subsequent feelings take over after the emotional response.
Hope I haven’t confused people too much.
