How Emotions Invoke Personal Evolution

Remember the last time you were angry, confused, frustrated or fearful. How would your life be different if you could use all that energy, all that power, all that force in a positive way?

You may have been taught to believe that your emotions are dangerous, something to be denied, suppressed or ignored. Or you might have learned to hide them from others, and also from yourself. This is especially true if they weren't nice emotions, like fear, anger, frustration, confusion, despair.

Sometimes you might have fallen into the habit of using the power of your emotions to justify your expression in the world, regardless of how it could affect others. Either extreme has its consequences. Neither one embraces emotions powerfully and authentically.

What if it emotions held the seed of tremendous power? What if you approached emotions in general as e-motion – energy in motion? What if your body, in its infinite wisdom, were trying to stir you into awareness? What if positive and negative emotions are just polarities of one another, the presence of one mirroring the absence of the other, and really a clarion call for evolution?

“Listen. Watch. Be aware. And by and by a different quality of being arises in you which is neither the body nor the feelings nor the thoughts. A different pillar of flame starts gathering within you and becomes more and more crystallized.

As this awareness becomes crystallized, for the first time you will feel more and more that you are — the feeling of being. And then moods will become more and more irrelevant. They will come and go, but you will remain unperturbed. The climate will change around you, but you will remain unchanged.

Whatsoever happens on the outside will not in any way change you within. The within remains absolutely pure and uncorrupted.” Osho

If emotions are wreaking havoc in your world, you might be engaging them at the level of ‘effect,' instead of examining the underlying cause or the meaningful message that it carries. Don't be hard on yourself. Chances are you picked up the habit of avoiding emotions, or suppressing, them very early on. Sometimes creating an elaborate coping mechanism might have made the most sense at the time.

However, dealing with emotions at the surface level – survival, fight or flight – is very much like thinking the tip of the iceberg is the whole thing, you don’t have the complete picture. How do you find out what’s really going on? How do you get the FULL picture of it?

The quickest way to come to this knowing is through your body, it has access to information that you might not be consciously aware of yet. This kind of knowing is not found in your intellect. It is an expanded awareness. How do you access this awareness?

1. Suspend disbelief. Consider that you’re not just a tiny speck of matter, tossed about in a sea of your emotions. You’re actually vast energies of consciousness and creation.

2. Breathe, Relax and Expand. Awareness happens in a simple breath and with it comes all you want to know, do or be. The simple exercise of breathing, relaxing and expanding your energy field will connect you this space.

3. Invoke Emotion's Potential. If you're in the habit of shrinking back from, or avoiding, the energy of  ‘negative emotions' you might want to tune into the greater picture. You can choose the path of power and choose to expand and become something more. You can opt to explore the continuum of possibility nestled in that intense emotion. Consider that ‘negative emotions' are gateways to power, undoubtedly they grab your attention. How else could they serve you best?

Negative emotions are a pathway to personal evolution. These power tools are the body’s primal communication system. It's your expanded being, guided by your body’s intelligence, trying to stir you into awareness and action. Emotions are your partners on the adventure of awakening. You are living consciousness. The more you expand, the more embody your presence. Expand, connect and embrace your magnificent nature – life yearns to be expressed through you.

 Image: Golden Moment, Alice Popkorn