Before I discovered the Creative Journal method, I was run ragged by
my emotions. It was often difficult to distinguish what I really felt
from what I should feel and near impossible to deal with conflicting
feelings.
I was also born a
right-brainer and latched on to the feel-good practice of
affirmations before I understood the principle behind them. I believed that simply repeating an affirmation was the
way to move out of sadness. Instead of staying with the emotion of
sad, I tried talking myself out of being sad by masking sad with
positive slogans.
Esther
and Jerry Hicks, authors of Ask and It is Given, say that this
is like putting a happy face sticker over your car’s empty gas
gauge. The Hicks teach that our feelings are indicators of our
emotional guidance system: they are simply there to tell us where we
are on the emotional ladder. The reason why we want to know this is
because of the Law of Attraction. Remember? Sad begets sad, anger
begets anger, joy begets joy. An extremely simplified version of the
Law of Attraction states that the primary feelings that we are living
in this moment will attract feelings of vibrational equality in our
future moments. So yes, we want to feel the sadness as it comes up,
but we don’t want to be stuck there!
It
is one thing to feel and honor our emotions, it is quite another
to become a victim of our emotions. Picture a ladder where the top
rung is joy, and the bottom rung is depression or hopelessness. If
I’m starting at depression and want to reach joy, there are several
rungs that I need to reach in between. And each time I move up the
ladder, I will not only release my feeling of depression, but I’ll
also be closer to joy. But each step needs to be felt, honored and
released.
Before
the Creative Journal process, I didn’t realize there was an
emotional ladder of feeling vibrations, much less where I was on that
ladder. But now that I understand that being with and accepting my
feelings helps release the emotional energy, I am better equipped
to enjoy life and all of its thrilling and contrary loveliness.
Excerpt from My Body, My Car: How to Coach Yourself Through Life's little Accidents by Dorothy Segovia. www.writeinside.com.
