Sadness? Grief? Loss? Who wants to think about those things?
But, if we are committed to living a Conscious Life, then we must be aware of our feelings for they do represent important guidance for us along the path of personal growth. How comfortable are you with those feelings in yourself? How about in another person? Is it hard for you to experience another’s grief or sadness and really be present to them when they are feeling those feelings?
I know it can be hard to stay with what is uncomfortable but that great growth is the blessing in learning to do this. There is always Light on the other side of that which appears to be darkness. The Light is in there somewhere. Searching for the Light requires that sometimes we must make peace with the darkness. It is like allowing your eyes to become adjusted to the lack of light in a room. Once you have adapted, you can see far more than you could see initially.
It’s the same with feelings that we might be tempted to judge as ‘dark.’ When you stay with that feeling, keeping your eyes open and seeking what is available within the feeling to help you grow, you will become immersed enough for your vision to clear and show you the lesson.
A good friend will be present with you when you are feeling these feelings. A really good friend will hold you in a healing space and help you to stay in the feeling long enough to learn the lesson. The temptation to joke or lighten up the mood takes us away from the honesty of what we are feeling. And honesty is the necessary quality in order that we might go deeply enough into our feeling to learn the lesson that lies there.
Can you give yourself permission to be honest with yourself? Can you suspend judging yourself and those around you for feeling what feelings are coming up? Learning to recognize feelings and to work with them becomes a part of the process of personal growth. A very important part.
Feelings emerge from a place deep within us. Often feelings look as if they are about something going on around us at a particular time. But sometimes those feelings are attached to something from the past and we are fooled into thinking that they belong in the present moment. If you have suffered a hurt in the past and something arises that brings up that past hurt, you might be tempted to react as if the past and the present events have merged into one. This can increase the feelings so that they are no longer appropriate for that one moment.
Losing someone can be linked, in the unconscious mind, to previous experiences of abandonment and the feelings of loss can be increased because of this linkage. Becoming conscious of the source and depth of our feelings puts on in a place where we can be effective in learning from the entire experience. If we know that there might be something in the past that is still begging for our attention so we can learn the lesson then we owe it to our self and to our personal growth to stay with that feeling until the lesson is revealed.
But all of this does not mean that we must wallow in sad feelings and cling to them while ignoring the life around us. As in all things, we must find balance in our lives. Clinging to feelings without doing the processes of working with the feelings, learning the lessons, is a form of self-centeredness that can drive people away from us. Feeling the feelings, working with them, moving forward in our personal growth – this is the path with the most reward. For when we choose to actually DO the work of growth then we can move through and beyond the feelings that we are feeling. It is in refusing to do the work that we become stuck.
Decide today to choose growth over being stuck in your feelings!
________________________
Please feel free to re-post this article and share it with your readers. All I ask is that you include the following information when you do:
Mystic Messages 
MUSE-INGS: You’re #1 [Priority!] by Rosemary Bredeson
December 28, 2010 — RosemaryHow often do we hear that we are supposed to love ourselves? And how often do we NEED to hear it?
When we get really busy, around holidays or our work’s busy season, for example, we tend to put taking care of ourselves on the back burner. For whatever reason, and we can certainly come up with some good excuses, we just don’t get around to that ‘taking care of ourselves’ stuff!
So today I am going to ask you to join me in moving forward in the commitment to put taking care of Self at the top of the priority list.
Do you make lists? To-do lists? Shopping lists? Gift lists? Who determines the priorities on those lists? From my studies of neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis I’ve learned that our unconscious mind is in charge, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. We can write a list of priorities that look the way we consciously want them to look or as we feel we ‘should’ prioritize our values, but it really is more important to determine what really matters and what really motivates us. The list might look different, and usually does, when we work with our unconscious mind to determine our values and our priorities.
So what can you do to make sure that loving yourself makes it to the top of your priority list? Decide. Commit to yourself. And do the work to examine your unconscious mind and its priorities. Keep track of your activities one day. Watch how you spend your time. What is so urgent that it bumps other things off your to-do list? See if you can put something on the list that is only about taking care of yourself. Does it get done? Does it stay on the list or does it get pushed aside by emergencies? Just notice. This is not about beating yourself up but about becoming curious about exactly where your motivating forces reside within you.
Now try scheduling that ‘me time’ that you need. What would you do with an hour, a half-hour, 15-minutes of ‘me time’? Make an appointment with yourself for this and keep that time sacred. It could start with a simple 5-minute meditation or a walk around the block or 15 minutes without answering emails or the phone. I frequently take ‘tea time’ for myself. I make myself tea and get a piece of fruit or a graham cracker and sit with a book and sip tea. I don’t jump up to answer the phone. I step away from the computer. I’ve learned that everything that tries to intrude on my ‘tea time’ can wait a half-hour to be handled.
It might take some practice to ignore a ringing phone, but we do have caller ID now so, if it is an emergency you can probably detect it. You can set certain times each day that you check email and facebook and keep to that schedule so that those activities are not eating up your ‘me time.’ What activity really feeds your spirit? Do you like to write or read or play piano or make jewelry? I like to do all of these things and sometimes I just need to go to the piano and play one song to give myself a break from pondering a problem or getting things done. It’s like a meditation to get lost in the music for a few minutes.
Decide what feels good to you and then do it no matter what else tries to claim your attention or your time. You’ll find that the energy you gain from taking time for yourself makes you more productive in your other activities. If you break away from doing for others for a bit you can be more fully present to them when you move back into that shared space.
Let’s make Self-Love a priority and do the work it takes to keep it at the top of the list!
________________________
Please feel free to re-post this article and share it with your readers. All I ask is that you include the following information when you do: