Friday, September 6, 2013

Creative Journaling and the Ladder of Affirmations

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.