Saturday, February 11, 2012
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Emotion — A Bridge between the Worlds (Relative & Absolute)
Are emotions mental states that arise spontaneously? How are emotions related to feelings? What is the relationship, if any, to love as an emotion, a feeling, and a soul quality?
A general definition of an emotion describes a neural impulse that moves an organism to action. It’s considered to be a psycho-physiological state and really does arise spontaneously and involuntarily.
As physical expressions, emotions are related to feelings, perceptions, beliefs associated with objects or others — even a certain aroma can remind us of someone or an event and “wha-lah” a particular feeling and/or emotion arises instantly. We’re all aware of how the physical body responds to emotions, i.e., changes in temperature and breathing; increased heartrate; tightness in throat, chest, or belly. You may very well come up with other ways your own body responds to specific emotions.
From a neurobiological perspective, emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. These mammalian elaborations use neurochemicals, e.g., dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonim, to step-up or step-down the brain’s activity level.1 These ‘states’ are manifestations of any number of various non-verbally expressed feelings from one end of a continuum to the other end.
Looking at emotions energetically, we experience unpleasant (negative) emotions as energy-draining and pleasant (positive) emotions as energy-calming and sometimes as very alive and exhilerating. Emotions move energy — e-motion (energy in motion) — WHEN we facilitate rather than hinder the movement. Most of us have an automatic tendency (reaction) to “hold our breath” when we begin to experience a negative emotion. By doing the opposite, by breathing consciously, we facilitate the movement of emotional energy through us.
An emotion is experienced as a response to the nervous system and is a part of the Relative-world; a soul (or essential) quality is an expression of the Absolute-world. An emotion needs an “other” in order to arise. An emotion points toward a part/voice that needs something and is somehow trying to protect the self. An essential, soul quality doesn’t point to anything outside of itself; it’s complete, whole in and of itself — it is what it is. There’s no garment or anything covering up what It is. There’s nothing else determining what It should be. Love is pure, unconditional Love. Strength is calm without needing to be inferior or superior to anything else.
Consider this. The Ego rules in the Relative-world and it trys to imitate Essence. From the perspective of the Relative-world, we are our Ego/Personality and from this perspective our emotions often define who we are, i.e., an angry person, a happy person. From the Absolute-world, we are Essence and our essential qualities define who we are — our True Nature, i.e., Love, Value, Strength. From an integrated perspective, we’re able to see both views; and, we’re able to understand compasionately with an open heart what’s being pointed to. We’re not really an angry person. We’re feeling angry and that feeling/emotion is pointing to some part/voice who needs to be heard, who may be feeling unloved, unappreciated, disappointed.
Note:
1 Source: Wikipedia Article on Emotions
For more information about my work Soul Expressions Dialogue®, visit my website at www.asoulconnection.com.
Are emotions mental states that arise spontaneously? How are emotions related to feelings? What is the relationship, if any, to love as an emotion, a feeling, and a soul quality?
A general definition of an emotion describes a neural impulse that moves an organism to action. It’s considered to be a psycho-physiological state and really does arise spontaneously and involuntarily.
As physical expressions, emotions are related to feelings, perceptions, beliefs associated with objects or others — even a certain aroma can remind us of someone or an event and “wha-lah” a particular feeling and/or emotion arises instantly. We’re all aware of how the physical body responds to emotions, i.e., changes in temperature and breathing; increased heartrate; tightness in throat, chest, or belly. You may very well come up with other ways your own body responds to specific emotions.
From a neurobiological perspective, emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. These mammalian elaborations use neurochemicals, e.g., dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonim, to step-up or step-down the brain’s activity level.1 These ‘states’ are manifestations of any number of various non-verbally expressed feelings from one end of a continuum to the other end.
Looking at emotions energetically, we experience unpleasant (negative) emotions as energy-draining and pleasant (positive) emotions as energy-calming and sometimes as very alive and exhilerating. Emotions move energy — e-motion (energy in motion) — WHEN we facilitate rather than hinder the movement. Most of us have an automatic tendency (reaction) to “hold our breath” when we begin to experience a negative emotion. By doing the opposite, by breathing consciously, we facilitate the movement of emotional energy through us.
An emotion is experienced as a response to the nervous system and is a part of the Relative-world; a soul (or essential) quality is an expression of the Absolute-world. An emotion needs an “other” in order to arise. An emotion points toward a part/voice that needs something and is somehow trying to protect the self. An essential, soul quality doesn’t point to anything outside of itself; it’s complete, whole in and of itself — it is what it is. There’s no garment or anything covering up what It is. There’s nothing else determining what It should be. Love is pure, unconditional Love. Strength is calm without needing to be inferior or superior to anything else.
Consider this. The Ego rules in the Relative-world and it trys to imitate Essence. From the perspective of the Relative-world, we are our Ego/Personality and from this perspective our emotions often define who we are, i.e., an angry person, a happy person. From the Absolute-world, we are Essence and our essential qualities define who we are — our True Nature, i.e., Love, Value, Strength. From an integrated perspective, we’re able to see both views; and, we’re able to understand compasionately with an open heart what’s being pointed to. We’re not really an angry person. We’re feeling angry and that feeling/emotion is pointing to some part/voice who needs to be heard, who may be feeling unloved, unappreciated, disappointed.
Note:
1 Source: Wikipedia Article on Emotions
For more information about my work Soul Expressions Dialogue®, visit my website at www.asoulconnection.com.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Friday, February 03, 2012
New Insights into EFT/TFT & the Truth
Anyone who knows me, knows that it's very important for me to know and experience the truth. I love the truth! No matter what it is, as long as it is the truth, that's what I want to experience. I've studied with a number of spiritual teachers and healers, each one offering their own perspective of how to experience and understand the truth. I get the reality of the fact that there are a gazillion levels of truth and that our perception of truth changes as we change.
So, in wanting to know, and being open to, the truth about what happened in my EFT session, I had to sit in the mystery of unknowing for weeks. Just sitting in the unknown was not particularly pleasant for my ego-personality, so now and again I would surf the internet to see what I could find about EFT/TFT and shifts in perspective.
One of the catch-phrases that I heard over and over was "the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system." Those words irritated me and THAT interested me. It sounds too new-agey for me. It sounds like something people just repeat whether they really know what it means or not. And words repeated like that remind me of unconsciously reciting prayers -- or the pledge of allegiance, or anything else that's recited from memory -- from dead space without presence. (Note: I am NOT saying that prayers or pledges cannot be said from presence. I'm saying that I've witnessed many folks doing it without presence.)
So, I continued to be with the not-knowing and wanting to know the truth about that shift I experienced; AND, now I'm wanting to know the truth of that statement about negative emotions being a disruption (blah blah blah). Well, I got it . . . at least some part of the truth and it's still unfolding. Here's what I've got so far:
What we consider as negative emotions are NOT things we need to get rid of nor ignore. Negative emotions are difficult to experience because we've never been taught how to work with them.
visit my website and my FaceBook page
Anyone who knows me, knows that it's very important for me to know and experience the truth. I love the truth! No matter what it is, as long as it is the truth, that's what I want to experience. I've studied with a number of spiritual teachers and healers, each one offering their own perspective of how to experience and understand the truth. I get the reality of the fact that there are a gazillion levels of truth and that our perception of truth changes as we change.
So, in wanting to know, and being open to, the truth about what happened in my EFT session, I had to sit in the mystery of unknowing for weeks. Just sitting in the unknown was not particularly pleasant for my ego-personality, so now and again I would surf the internet to see what I could find about EFT/TFT and shifts in perspective.
One of the catch-phrases that I heard over and over was "the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system." Those words irritated me and THAT interested me. It sounds too new-agey for me. It sounds like something people just repeat whether they really know what it means or not. And words repeated like that remind me of unconsciously reciting prayers -- or the pledge of allegiance, or anything else that's recited from memory -- from dead space without presence. (Note: I am NOT saying that prayers or pledges cannot be said from presence. I'm saying that I've witnessed many folks doing it without presence.)
So, I continued to be with the not-knowing and wanting to know the truth about that shift I experienced; AND, now I'm wanting to know the truth of that statement about negative emotions being a disruption (blah blah blah). Well, I got it . . . at least some part of the truth and it's still unfolding. Here's what I've got so far:
What's a disruption? It's a break, a delay, or an interruption.
What's a negative emotion? A natural human response in the form of a defensive mechanism, i.e., anger. And, what the emotion is defending is a thought, an idea or a belief.
Imagine watching an energy system monitor in real-time (could be similar to a heart monitor or a truth detector monitor). As you watch the monitor, everything seems to have a natural rhythm when suddenly something spikes and you hear warning beeps. What just happened? A human being was just going about her day when suddenly someone said something to her about how slimming her dress made her look! Immediately a thought arose in her head: "You usually look fat but that dress makes you look slimmer." Then, in response to that thought the defensive emotion -- Anger -- arises.
Anger arises because she does NOT want to be seen as fat. She does not want to feel fat. She does not want to even think she's fat. Anger is the response to the real problem -- the lie, the belief or idea, the thought that she's something that she should NOT be. Anger is the "disruption" in the energy system; Anger is also the gateway into the Truth. This disruption says: "Hey, look at me! Be curious about what's happening here. Let's look deeper and see the Truth."My tapping session with Gail did not "get rid of" a negative emotion. It actually acknowledge exactly what was there at the time and only after seeing what was truly there was I able to experience clarity of the truth (a clear true reality). The false image of what was real dissolved because it was replaced by the truth.
What we consider as negative emotions are NOT things we need to get rid of nor ignore. Negative emotions are difficult to experience because we've never been taught how to work with them.
visit my website and my FaceBook page
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Tapping -- The Missing Piece
(Continued from "Re-exploring Tapping Technique")
Fast-forward ten years. Through professional networking, I met someone who is an EFT-Coach. Hmmm. That's EFT, not TFT. Interesting. Now, I find out that EFT stands for "Emotional Freedom Technique." Another hmmmm. It looks like, sounds like, feels like TFT, but it's called EFT. Did the "name" change?
A little research uncovers some interesting information that explains why EFT seemed like TFT for me. Dr. Roger Callahan discovered TFT, Thought Field Therapy over 30 years ago. It has been described as a "Meridian Energy Therapy. Gary Craig is called the founder of EFT, Emotional Freedom Therapy. He studied with Dr. Callahan for years which included his learning Callahan's advanced techniques. My understanding is that Craig went off on his own after realizing his strong difference in opinion with Callahan's insistence that the tapping sequence was imperative.
I wanted to experience EFT for myself but THIS time I had an opportunity to actually work WITH someone who was practiced AND, as an EFT-Coach (I'll use the name Gail until I get permission to use her real name), was someone who helped others work through emotional blocks with EFT tapping. I chose something for which I knew I had a number of emotional blocks associated with it and I wanted to clear them. Here's my experience:
visit my website and my FaceBook page
(Continued from "Re-exploring Tapping Technique")
Fast-forward ten years. Through professional networking, I met someone who is an EFT-Coach. Hmmm. That's EFT, not TFT. Interesting. Now, I find out that EFT stands for "Emotional Freedom Technique." Another hmmmm. It looks like, sounds like, feels like TFT, but it's called EFT. Did the "name" change?
A little research uncovers some interesting information that explains why EFT seemed like TFT for me. Dr. Roger Callahan discovered TFT, Thought Field Therapy over 30 years ago. It has been described as a "Meridian Energy Therapy. Gary Craig is called the founder of EFT, Emotional Freedom Therapy. He studied with Dr. Callahan for years which included his learning Callahan's advanced techniques. My understanding is that Craig went off on his own after realizing his strong difference in opinion with Callahan's insistence that the tapping sequence was imperative.
I wanted to experience EFT for myself but THIS time I had an opportunity to actually work WITH someone who was practiced AND, as an EFT-Coach (I'll use the name Gail until I get permission to use her real name), was someone who helped others work through emotional blocks with EFT tapping. I chose something for which I knew I had a number of emotional blocks associated with it and I wanted to clear them. Here's my experience:
Gail asked me to describe whatever it was I wanted to work on, then she asked me specific questions for clarity and probably to use with the scripts we would work with (note: I do not know if "scripts" is a correct way to describe this). At some point, we begin the tapping. Now this session was over the phone, so Gail was very good at guiding me to the points I needed to be tapping while having me repeat words she supplied for me. She also had me check in with myself now and then to feel the intensity of the particular emotional feeling. We used the typical 1-10 scale with ten being the highest intensity. I've got to admit -- the intensity DID decrease -- AND THEN it was gone. The emotional feeling around the issue disappeared. I was impressed.Since that time I have definitely noticed a shift in my perspective having to do with the issue that I brought up in the EFT session. Now I want to understand the deeper truth of what happened. I am a healing practitioner. I have healing practices in both Graham and Puyallup WA. The healing work I do looks very different from EFT. From a nondual healing perspective, my clients and I ultimately work in a space that's deeper than, prior to, the emotional level. Yet we do go in and out of that nondual space depending on where the client is capable of descending to. (To be continued -- see "New Insights into EFT/TFT & the Truth")
visit my website and my FaceBook page
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Re-Exploring Tapping Therapy
Over 10 years ago, I discovered that there was such a thing as "tapping therapy." The specific tapping therapy that I found was called TFT, Thought Field Therapy -- an energy system balancing technique. I practiced using it myself and found it quite interesting, but it wasn't something I used everyday. During that same time-frame when I was experimenting with TFT, an opportunity arose that allowed me to share TFT with a friend. Here's a quick story:
visit my website and my FaceBook page
Over 10 years ago, I discovered that there was such a thing as "tapping therapy." The specific tapping therapy that I found was called TFT, Thought Field Therapy -- an energy system balancing technique. I practiced using it myself and found it quite interesting, but it wasn't something I used everyday. During that same time-frame when I was experimenting with TFT, an opportunity arose that allowed me to share TFT with a friend. Here's a quick story:
A few of us who were attending a retreat decided to go out to a restaurant for dinner one evening. Katie decided to drive. We had a delicious meal including a glass of wine for each of us. As we were leaving the restaurant and walking toward the car, Katie began sneezing . . . and sneezing . . . and sneezing. She'd laugh in between the sneezes (and we laughed too) but it became obvious once we sat in the car that her sneezing was not stopping. And, it also became obvious that she could NOT drive while she was having this sneezing-attack.
An idea occurred to me and I asked Katie if she was open to trying something "kinda weird" to stop the sneezing." She said she was open to anything. So, I showed her how we would be tapping on certain meridians on the face, collar bone, and under the arm. At the time, I don't think I even remembered the karate-chop and top of the head points.
The words we used while tapping on the specific meridian points were quite simple: "Even though I'm sneezing uncontrollably, I deeply and completely love & accept myself." Sometimes she'd sneeze while we were going through the sequence of tapping and saying these words. And, when that would happen, we'd all laugh and then continue with the process. By the end of the third round, Katie had completely stopped sneezing. As soon as she stopped, she asked "What did you do?!" I laughed and said "I" didn't do anything; YOU did."Another somewhat significant piece of information connected to this story/event is that the three of us who'd gone to dinner and tapped through Katie's sneezing attack were there together because we were all enrolled in the same healing school; and, we were attending one of our weekend retreats. The tapping technique did not feel congruent with what we were learning at the school. Something was missing. For example, in the healing school, we were learning how important it is to see and understand the truth of what's happening in the Present -- to recognize how (when) our history actually colors our view of the Real. We were learning how to experience Presence in a fully embodied way where whole truth arises along with other Essential Divine qualities, i.e., love, compassion, strength, and peace. (to be continued -- see "The Missing Piece")
visit my website and my FaceBook page
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