Pain is a signal.
From your body? It’s a signal that should lead to rest, rehab, reflection, recovery, TLC, behavior change, and/or the seeking of professional help.
From your emotions? It’s a signal that should lead to, well, rest, rehab, reflection, recovery, TLC, behavior change, and/or the seeking of professional help.
Pain is not a signal to speed up—it’s a signal to slow down or stop altogether.
Don’t ignore signals.
Deep within each of us is an ocean.
An ocean of emotion collected over a lifetime of exchanges that sits at the core of our being.
When suppressed, our emotions, as water, run their way down our inner landscape from the heights of our conscious mind to the deepest parts of our subconscious. From the top of the clouds to the bottom of the ocean. From source to storage.
And with that storage comes a heaviness, like the ocean, that can’t be denied.
Many people look at that heaviness as a burden. As a collection of undesired, painful emotions that do nothing but weigh them down and cause them suffering.
But, what if I told you that all of that emotional water that you’ve collected was the very substance required to sustain and nourish inner life?
What if I told you that what the arid, drying, and dying landscape of your mind was craving was some of the very water that you backwardly have been suppressing and vilifying?
What if that ocean of water wasn’t a burden at all? What if it was the very source of your power, your insight, your wisdom, your creativity, your individuality—your life?
What if all you had to do was tap into it, like a well, and start pumping the water out to both nourish surrounding life and alleviate the weight that’s been holding you down?
I find that the best moments often closely follow the worst ones.
If you find yourself in some of your worst moments, hang on. Allow the depth of the experience to move through you. Let it deepen your roots into the ground.
Remember that, eventually, your worst moments will be no more. They will pass as all moments do—best and worst alike. And, more solid into the ground, you will be able to reach higher into the sky than ever before.
How do I know this? Because it’s how great heights are only ever reached. Not in spite of the worst moments—as a result of them. Not without deepened roots—precisely because of them.
Do you ever get those days that just feel, heavy? That’s how the past few days have felt for me. I’m not quite sure why. Nothing obvious seems to be triggering it and I can’t seem to easily shake it. My instinct is to fight it or vilify it because it’s an undesired feeling, but maybe there’s a better way.
After thinking about it more deeply, it seems to me that vilifying an emotion is exactly what turns an emotion into a villain. After all, if it’s seen as a villain, called a villain, treated like a villain, and thrown aggressively into the darkness like a villain—how could it not become a villain? Maybe a better approach would be to allow it. To give it space. To let it move when it arrives. To give it the light of consciousness rather than the darkness of ignorance. To treat it with compassion.
Think about it. What happens when you choose to fight a passing by emotion? It’s precisely what causes it to stop in its tracks, put up its guard, and throw down against you and your will.
And it’s not like there are any “emotional police” who can come to break up the fight. It’s a battle to knockout or submission. And if one beats the other, then what? Hand shakes, inner peace, and lightness? I’d argue that the more likely outcome is resentment, begrudging, and spiraled darkness. And so the recurring battle against “heaviness” is born.
I believe that fighting an emotion—any emotion—will only negatively magnify it. Allowing an emotion to move is how it passes. Maybe this is why the “light” days seem to pass so quickly? You give them the space, path, light, and compassion to move comfortably forward and with ease—and so they do. Maybe that’s exactly what we need to do for our “heavy” days, too?
“Feel all of your feelings but don’t assume to know what they mean. Allow the truth of each feeling to be revealed to you.”
Maryam Hasnaa, via MoveMe Quotes
Within each of us is an entire community of emotions. We are never composed of just one emotion. Our inner community is made up of happy emotions and sad emotions; excited emotions and anxious emotions; hopeful emotions and fearful emotions; loving emotions and hateful emotions; and so forth. And how we treat each of these emotions—each community member—will determine our overall spirit.
By expanding our inner workings from just “how we generally feel” to a community of individual members with different needs, we can start to honor each of our inner members with the attention, energy, and respect they deserve. The tendency, when focusing just on “overall feeling,” is to honor the feelings of happiness, joy, pleasure—and to suppress and vilify the feelings of sadness, upset, and hurt.
But, feelings of sadness, upset, and hurt don’t just come from nothing—they’re sourced from pain and are there to communicate crucial insights about your inner community.
When those community members are disrespected, blown off, and demonized—it makes things in your inner community worse. Eventually, as it happens in life, those community members start spewing hate, anger, and upset at other community members until—inevitably—there is an uprising. This is when breakdowns, explosions, and life-halting crisis happen. And it’s what will cause them to continue happening until the uprising has been properly dealt with and those community members have settled.
We have to look at ourselves as the presiding ruler of our inner community—because that’s what we are. We are not just one person who has one emotion at any given time. We are one person who is looking after many, many community emotions inside. And how we treat any of those emotions—community members—is as noteworthy and important as how we treat any of the others.