It is not the fact that some emotions are painful to feel and experience that keeps them stuck and “trapped” in the body. It is normal for us, humans, to experience the full spectrum of emotions and feelings on a daily basis.
It is how we perceive the painful emotions and how we react to them by tensing up, rejecting them, trying to avoid them and push them away that creates the "stuckness". When we assign value to them as “good” or “bad”, amazing ones and terrible ones, we limit ourselves and the ability to really perceive them.
We are meant to experience complex and often contrasting emotions and feelings. It is all part of a human experience and can be seen as beautiful, if we look at it objectively. It is possible to miss someone so much, it hurts but also enjoy and laugh with those around us.
Those things, even though opposite in experience, are all layers of the same energy and actually create one another. For example, how could I miss someone if I never loved and enjoyed them so much? One can not exist without another and it creates the opposite.
Knowing this, we can look at the wholeness of our experience as humans, and see how marvellous it is for us to see. When we can hold space for all of our experiences without judging them as good and bad, the energetics of emotional release of chemicals in the body becomes like a flowing stream: always changing, always complex. We can then look at it and also live it and be grateful for being able to experience it all. Pain and pleasure. Life and death. Both exist simultaneously and are not separate.
This year I choose to see the complexity of my human experience in awe of how miraculous it unfolds anew, in each moment. The “I” that I perceive as the one experiencing it is also part of this ever changing process and I am surprised by how I am becoming in the present moment.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself for not being able to be with my parents this Christmas, I am grateful to be able to experience the feelings of love and missing them so much because I know if I miss them, it is because of my great love for them.
Knowing it’s not easy, I can take steps to ease myself into those feelings, creating space for the experience. I can allow myself to be cared for and give myself grace in going through grief, loss and sadness while also not drowning in them, seeing and feeling it together with love. It is all part of a love, but I have misinterpreted it as separate. Being able to miss my parents is a gift, a gift of being a human.
Perhaps the scenario of feeling sorry for those who experience negative feelings and emotions is an outdated one?
What if we changed our perspective and felt amazed by their ability to feel so deeply, because we know it stems from a deep love?
Instead of feeling sorry for them (and ourselves), which reinforces the scenario that something is wrong and bad, we can hold compassionate space for all of the experiences to exist on many levels.
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