Getting A Reading On Our Feelings
The inspiration for this piece, literally came from hearing Annie Lennox singing that cover song in my head from her Album Medusa. The song is about a man lying in the hospital who’s been in an “accident” and the shock of not only nearly dying but the realization it could have been caused by the person he’d mistreated. It seems all too common for people to feel love for each other one minute and then want to hurt them in such awful ways. The feeling or experience of hate seems as powerful as love and I’ve found it interesting how sometimes one can quickly shift to the other and back again, raising the question, how thin is the line between the two?
I recently started counseling sessions because I wanted to feel better about a situation I’d had trouble getting past. My experience of these weekly sessions seems like stepping inside an emotional kaleidoscope, with the questions, discoveries, and ever-changing thoughts and feelings about everything that’s happening now and has happened in the past, which, seems to be unrelated to the event that sent me into the therapist office to begin with. Do people really go this deep? I ask myself. I openly admit to wearing my heart on my sleeve, and to being emotionally sensitive. Whenever something feels “off” or out of balance, I’ll dive right into my bucket of feelings, especially after completing the physical, emotional and spiritual transformation of Yoga Teacher Training during my 50’s. I’m all about riding the Self-Awareness train.
Something my brilliant counselor suggested I do was to allow myself to feel what I was feeling without analyzing it. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been riding the slippery slope of analysis-paralysis when it came to my feelings. I hadn’t considered that it was okay just to feel whatever I was feeling and not to make meaning of it, or look for a root cause by assigning the feelings to a person, place, or thing. I notice that when I’m feeling generally good, I seldom assign a label, like happy, or euphoric, or joy, or pleased. Contrary to when I’m not feeling emotionally good. That’s when I dive into the labels of sad, lonely, angry, hopeless, fear, disappointment, etc., etc. It’s entirely possible I’ve been gradually conditioned to look for clarity on the not-so-good feelings and simple accept the good feelings. Isn’t everyone wanting to feel good, joy, happy, etc.? One of the mantras of spirituality I hear often is “follow your bliss”. Abraham Hick’s entire Law of Attraction platform is based on creating better feeling thoughts and feeling the way to a desired result and creating the vibration of the feeling. Most therapists, counselors, and coaches assign a scale from 1 to 10 on how we’re feeling with 1 being the worst and 10 being as good as it gets. It’s likely most land between 3 and 5 for not so good, and between 6 and 8 for the better feelings. I think the question I’d mostly likely ask myself is when am I most likely to feel a 10 and have it last all day?
Before we move on, I have a suggestion, whenever you’re experiencing a strong emotional feeling about anything, rather than assigning a label (happy or sad, etc.) to your feelings, instead, give it a number between 1 and 10 instead? If the number is around 6, or 7, actively do something for at least 30 minutes to raise the number. I like to listen to upbeat music, go for a vigorous walk, watch or listen to something amusing, or spend time with one of my dogs, etc. This isn’t something to avoid the feeling, rather something to change it. Take another mental note of how you feel after the exercise, and don’t make it mean anything. Accepting how we feel at any given moment is often a good thing. Just like the weather, it’s all temporary and feelings always change.
The Self Awareness Scale
It may or may not surprise you that a fair number of people have little to no self-awareness. Especially those who are heavily invested in social media. The desire to be and stay connected to everything outside of themselves is paramount, as well as making their personal experiences and feelings of everything more important than anyone else’s. It’s been my experience that these folks tend to be more reactive and negatively responsive rather than self-aware. They are aware of how many “likes” or “subscribers” they have and seem to feel good when the numbers are on the rise, and worse when the numbers decline. Social platforms have become such a huge part of society with awareness placed more on swiping to accept, or reject, as well as comparing.
I believe self-awareness takes a deeper dive into our being and our consciousness. A good sense of self-awareness has a tendency to lift us beyond the limitations of our mind and promote a healthier emotional state of mind. The Emotional Scale of Consciousness, based on Abraham Maslow’s work, defines the range of emotions humans experience, according to www.Dreammaker.com. Consciousness is either expanded or contracted, and measures between 1, or the Alpha level and most contracted to 1000, which is the Omega state and ultimate state of consciousness. The emotion of shame is the lowest frequency, followed by guilt, apathy, and grief. Fear is the fifth lowest vibrational frequency on the scale, with enlightenment being at the top and having a vibrational frequency of around 700. If we choose to nurture our self-awareness, we can learn to access the higher frequencies of consciousness. By expanding the consciousness, self-awareness is enhanced and uncovers deeper truths about ourselves and our purpose in life. Self-awareness looks into our psyche and reveals patterns, beliefs, and intentions, and our consciousness expands the awareness and opens us up to endless possibilities.
The emotional scale of consciousness is a measurement of a person’s awareness of themselves and their environment. The higher the value the more awareness there is. This should NOT, however, be confused with how intelligent someone is, or where they fit into society. Emotions are separated into three groups – Positive, Negative, and Neutral. Love, joy, happiness, and harmony, etc., are in the positive group. Fear, wrath, anger, and grief, are not surprisingly examples of negative emotions, and examples of neutral emotions are boredom or indifference, etc. The emotions of guilt, shame, hopelessness, or sadness, carry the lowest vibrational frequency, somewhere around a 1. The feeling of love, according to www.dreammaker.com has a vibrational level of 500, and about halfway along the scale. Joy has the vibrational frequency of 540 and Peace is slightly higher at 600. What I found astounding about this study was that 82% of people are emotionally below the positive frequency of 200, the frequency given to the emotion of Courage. I was surprised that pride is measured below courage, with a frequency of 150. Pride is an interesting emotion because it has the tendency to generate Anger, which can likely to affect our ability to manifest anything higher. With courage we can begin to think in positive terms, that’s providing we don’t spend too much time being stuck on ourselves, letting the ego take over. In today’s culture, pride is touted as being a good thing. People are proud of their material wealth, proud of climbing the corporate ladder, proud of being part of a particular group, like a prominent church. The emotion of pride has the tendency to create separatism, sometimes elitism, and negative judgment. All of which, I believe come from insecurity and the desire to belong. In my own life, the emotion of Pride has certainly been tangled up with the ego. I once held a position with a global manufacturer of beauty products. I was definitely proud to represent them, and proud of myself for being chosen by the founder as the first US member of the artistic team. However, it came with the cost of losing sight of who I was at the core of my being. I developed a sense of entitlement and arrogance and lost sight of kindness and grace. During my exit interview, following a corporate reorganization, the CEO referred to me as a “Diva”. It took courage on my part to swallow that one, mainly because it was true, and required sitting with shame and guilt. These lower frequency emotions don’t feel good to me at all, and the quick-fix to feeling better about things is to serve up blame and excuses, which only serves to make things worse in the long run.
The frequency rating given to neutrality, which is right above courage is 250, and is described as happy and productive, although lacking in motivation. Willingness is the emotion rated higher than neutrality, with a frequency measurement of 310, acceptance is next at 350, and reason with a frequency measure of 400. These are all the emotional frequencies leading to love, which measures 500. Perhaps then, the line between Fear and Love is more a vibrational frequency gap of 400 with the eight emotions (desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, and reason) filling in the gap.
Discovery and Things to Ponder
Having learned all this, my take-away is that it takes a healthy amount of Self-Awareness to reach, and/or work on Self-Acceptance. I also believe what we aren’t willing to accept about ourselves is somewhere in the gap of emotions between fear and love. For me, hating something, rather than someone, is typically linked to something I am not willing to accept about myself. In the past I’ve found it easier to hate something I truly desire because of the fear of not being able to achieve it or being worthy of it. I used to hate seeing images of good-looking, athletically fit men in magazines or on TV who had a healthy physique because I didn’t. I hadn’t reached the mindset of fully accepting my own body and finding myself physically attractive.
Fear, it seems, in modern culture is running rampant. It’s easy to see how the path between love and fear is so well worn. It has literally become a battle to survive on physical, emotional, and financial fronts. Everyone has either a higher-than usual expectation of themselves, or a higher than normal opinion of themselves. It seems to be normal to have an air of arrogance and entitlement, even distain towards others. Road rage is a classic example of this. There’s an overreaching desire to be “right”, making anyone who disagrees “wrong”, and to be seen as being better than anyone else. We may have to look at competition reality TV shows for examples of that. Current world leaders are no exception when it comes to believing they have the right to put themselves higher than other countries. Just look at the despicable tactics used to get elected in the first place. There are very few areas of the world existing today without some kind of struggle or conflict. I believe powerful people have a fear of losing the control, so their my-way-or-no-way with intimidating consequences are used to maintain control. Religious groups who pride themselves on their devotion to worshiping a higher power, use the word of God and scripture to destroy communities such as the LGBTQIA, who are constantly targeted and subjected to violence and discrimination because of the choice about who they want to love. I’ve had that battle my entire life.
This issue isn’t new. Jesus was crucified for sharing the word of God , Mahatma Gandi was assassinated for his views on non-violence and the positive influence it had on human rights, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated for promoting his dream of racial equality through non-violent protests. He believed everyone should share the treasures of the earth equally and it would seem he had a fair number of supporters of it. So how does teaching the world about equality, freedom from oppression and persecution, and acceptance of our fellow human, create so much fear that it breeds hate? That’s the tricky part of human emotions and our conscious awareness of where we, as individuals, stand on social issues.
There will always be people, places, situations, experiences l like and prefer and those I don’t. Some I will love, learn to love, and grow to love without too much fuss or bother. There isn’t too much about life and the people in it I fear. I’ve learned that situations and adventures have an arc to them. They start, continue, and eventually end, some more abruptly than others. Some of these are wonderful, joyful and happy, while others are challenging, difficult, sad, and even hurtful. The happy ones I’m grateful for, and the challenging ones I try to learn and grow from. Everyone is on their own journey, their own path, and having their own experiences. By focusing on the love of mine, I have found joy, and in that I’m content.
Focus on the love in what you do and experience, find the joy in your days and adventures, and you will mostly likely be content by knowing that fear cannot abide where love is present.