You know what it feels like to hold
a burning piece of paper, maybe even
trying to read it as the flames get close
to your fingers until all you’re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
That’s how I feel now.
~Dean Young, Belief in Magic
At times it seems there isn’t a single feeling in the available repertoire that I actually want to spend time with. Where did they go, those delightful companions?
Joy. Bliss. Love. Compassion. Playfulness.
Anger. Frustration. Impatience. Despair. Fear.
Why can’t I only experience the good stuff? Oh, that’s right, nothing is good or bad, right or wrong.
Unfortunately, I can’t parse this issue of good feelings and bad feelings without edging into duality of one shade or another.
I came across some thoughts on the subject of experiencing “good” vs. “bad” emotions in a recent reading I had with Dr. Peebles.
Dr. P: You (and all human beings) are learning about emotions and the fact that there are no goods and bads. That there are no such things as “emotions that need to be transmuted” and “emotions that need to be attained.”
No such thing. Emotions are neutral. You don’t experience them like this, but they are nonetheless. So when you’re having an emotion right here and right now, can you pause, before immediately trying to ground it or immediately trying to transmute it, can you pause to get to know it for a moment?
Making the acquaintance of an emotion appears to be key to accepting and acknowledging it and in the process, allowing it to lose its charge. In a sense, it peters out from lack of fuel. Neutrality in observation is a key.
Most of us know various methods for the observing, accepting, acknowledging, and releasing processes. For me, it’s not so much, “How do I do this?” as it is, “Remember, I can do this.” The processes and tools are available; I just have to remember to make the effort to access them.
*****
A bit later, I asked about the apparent need to encourage high-vibration feelings and ways of being within our lives. It seems a paradox that we need to feel our feelings…but not too much of the “bad” ones.
CV: I feel I’m processing a lot of emotions. I try to “allow.” But it also seems it’s important to “keep my vibration high,” in order to help shift the human collective into fifth dimension, as many channels insist. This seems like it conflicts with my higher self and soul agreement to feel all my emotions, many of which are unpleasant and low vibe. How can needing to experience and express low vibration emotions while also aiming for a higher vibrational state be reconciled for me or for anyone?
Dr. P: Wonderful question. The trick of the trade is to remember that emotions are neutral….If you are feeling an emotion that feels like a low vibration emotion, such as sadness, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, overwhelm, do your very best to interrupt the pattern by noticing what the emotion feels like….Then interrupt the immediacy of the mind to want to change it or extend it.
This notion of interrupting the onslaught of the emotion, while easier said than done, does give me a clue as to how to experience less distress when I’m distressed.
Dr. Peebles adds later, about experiencing an emotion like overwhelm:
Dr. P: [Ask yourself,] let me be aware of it. Where do I feel it in my body? What happens in my body when I feel it? Who is feeling it in me? The Higher Self? The Inner Child? My mind, my heart? When I feel overwhelmed, do I feel like it’s always going to be there, or do I feel like it’s temporarily moving through me?
Just begin to be aware of it. And what will happen is that in your awareness, like this, of what you would have previously called a lower frequency emotion, or vibration, you’re actually experiencing it at a high level…
There’s not a need to be completely in love at all times in order to assist the planet Earth in its Ascension….What we would encourage is that you would let go of the comparisons, of right and wrong and good and bad. We quite understand [about] the channels…that are saying, “Don’t wallow in things that are not vibrationally high.”
Don’t insist that you have to stay there [in the low vibration]. But also don’t insist that it’s wrong and you have to change it. Get to know it. Another way to experience this or to talk about it is to say, let go of resistance.
*****
No matter what the emotional smorgasbord places before me on any given day, I can accept the offering in the spirit intended. It’s all for my experiencing.
My choice is in how I experience it. And that, like so much else, comes down to how I elect to view the experience in the first place.
Perhaps the best advice I can give myself is the reminder that whatever it is, it isn’t forever. Wait an hour or a day, or a year, or a decade, and chances are excellent that I won’t even remember that “negative” feeling I had on a given Wednesday in a certain town with a certain person or situation.
Time—that thing that doesn’t really exist, they tell us—in this case is indeed a human’s best friend.
Dr. Peebles through Natalie Gianelli, nataliegianelli.com