Wandering upon the affective terrain

[rva_jeremy]

Hey y'all, I wrote a piece on some insights I wanted to explore.  If you were at homecoming you probably heard me run on and on about this.  Would be interested in any thoughts or feedback.

http://www.socialmemorycomplex.net/2016/...e-terrain/

[native]

Great insights Jeremy. I've come to many of the same conclusions. What I've found is exactly what you mentioned; that emotion (making use of feeling in general as well) contains information that can't be accessed rationally because of its link to intuition.

The way of distortion.."It is the way of distortion that in order to balance a distortion one must accentuate it." If we don't express/accept ourselves, new information or perspective can never be gained. It's as if the mind is focused on one particular area, unable to let go and look around and be receptive to something new. I've found that when dealing with others, just letting my thoughts come out created new perspective instantly that I was unable to see before. So while Chaldron suggests learning to sit with emotions, I agree but I say that comes in time. You really have to let things fly, and over time you learn things and refine your approach, requiring less of an outward reaction.

What is mind? If you search mental/emotional..you'll see Ra lumps the two "mental and mental/emotional."

Also, Ra's definition.."The mind is a complex which reflects the inpourings of the spirit and the up-pourings of the body complex. It contains what you know as feelings, emotions, and intellectual thoughts in its more conscious complexities. Moving further down the tree of mind we see the intuition which is of the nature of the mind more in contact or in tune with the total beingness complex."

The thinking mind delineates and organizes..it looks at pieces. Our intuitive faculty feels into the whole. Ra says most are dominated by intuition here, yet once we learn to value rationality, it seems reasonable to feel back into thought, because thought has an emotional quality. Feel, think, feel, think. What's interesting is the link to the body, which we typically associate with feeling/movement/sensing, as well as the spirit described as a shuttle..so everything is entwined. "The fool steps into space without regard to what comes next."...a nod towards intuition leading the way. "The function of intuition is to inform intelligence."

[octavia]

Hi Jeremy, I liked your article.

This is a significant topic for me seeing as I have the tendency to experience emotions, particularly anger, quite powerfully.

In the past, when I have felt anger, I have tried to reflect on the emotion and intensify it. Unfortunately, for me personally, all that came of this activity was a genuine intensification of the anger to the point that I found myself having undesired thoughts that would not otherwise manifest, and feeling quite physically unwell. I found myself unable inspire the antithesis of that anger within myself, such that it could not be intensified, and thus balance could not be achieved. Anyway, calling anger the "fire of aggression" is definitely a great way of putting it!

(Apologies if this was too tangential a comment.)

(By the way, there's a tiny transcription error in the last paragraph. I think an ellipsis got turned into a "…" somewhere along the way. Sorry, the fussy side of me couldn't help but mentioning it.)

[Nicholas]

I love this bit, "(if slow moving projectiles)" relating to our intent to be tolerant and patient in the face of seeming chaos.


I think the reason why the balancing exercises have always alluded me is because I have analysed the process too much. I suspect it's a query on most of our minds, "How do we balance something that we have not truly grasped?". In other words, we need to hold something fully in our hands in order to appreciate it's counter weight. But the mind likes to count and measure, before we get the chance to feel the full force of it.


Totally with you this one. 

[Nicholas]

I love this bit, "(if slow moving projectiles)" relating to our intent to be tolerant and patient in the face of seeming chaos.


I think the reason why the balancing exercises have always alluded me is because I have analysed the process too much. I suspect it's a query on most of our minds, "How do we balance something that we have not truly grasped?". In other words, we need to hold something fully in our hands in order to appreciate it's counter weight. But the mind likes to count and measure, before we get the chance to feel the full force of it.


Totally with you on this one, thanks for sharing

[Patrick]

 
Real good stuff !

Thank you for sharing.

It's something I often try to explain and this article does it really well. 
 

[rva_jeremy]

Thanks so much for all the kind words; it means a lot. I hope those of you who (like me) struggle with the balancing exercises will read the Pema Chodron article in addition to her other articles on LionsRoar.com.  It is _precisely_ because the article gave me other ways to think about how to deal with emotion that I found it so useful.  How, indeed, would we ever be able to wrap our fingers around an emotion enough to intensify it or negate it if we cannot at least be patient with it?

Octavia, thanks for pointing out the typo!  And I agree with you about the overwhelming nature of anger.  I'd only point out that, in my personal experience, what I find is that sitting with the anger tends to have the eventual effect of decoupling the emotional resonance from the proximate cause.  It is at that point that you start to see what those of Ra mean when they say:

The entity polarizing positively perceives the anger. This entity, if using this catalyst mentally, blesses and loves this anger in itself. It then intensifies this anger consciously in mind alone until the folly of this red-ray energy is perceived not as folly in itself but as energy subject to spiritual entropy due to the randomness of energy being used.

I emphasized the part that really stands out to me.  Once one perceives that this random energy is just energy, I feel two things happen that are of immense value.  

First, you have placed before yourself the possibility of dealing with the proximate cause of the anger on its own terms, without the necessity of the emotional charge.  That doesn't mean you can just dispassionately deal with the situation and leave anger behind.  All it does is gives you the possibility of contemplating what it might feel like to do that.  And once you have an idea of what you're aiming for, you're no longer wandering blindly towards balance--you have a direction to walk in.

Second, you can learn how to abide the discomfort of anger on its very own terms, without the necessity to have it be justified or explained or wrapped up in some experiential narrative or memory.  If you feel the anger deeply, and can feel it as anger qua anger instead of anger because of A, B, and C, then what you get is a hole straight down into some really deep wounds.  It does not surprise me one bit, Octavia, that you encounter undesired thoughts by intensifying anger; I, too, encounter this.  Nasty stuff that scares you, that you don't want to own even a little bit.  But here's the thing: is it any escape from these thoughts to ignore the emotion?  And you may find that if you pull this ravenous wolf of thought into a loving embrace, if you make a leap of faith and trust yourself to be open and free with your shadow side, you come out of the other side with the strength to do more balancing, and the knowledge of yourself that gives you more reason to take more risks like this.

None of this is to minimize your experience at all, Octavia--quite the contrary.  It is a matter of severe gravity.  And it is also your affair, not mine.  But just that you're able to bring it up and articulate it kind of demonstrates that, however halting your steps are, they are moving in the direction of acceptance.  So go easy on yourself.  And don't take my word for any of this.

I cannot imagine a less tangential reply to my piece; thank you so much for sharing it.

[Billy]

Emotions have been a source of great confusion for me.  There are so many different opinions as to the nature of emotions and how to best work with them, that I have kind of just given up on them for the time being.  I'm definitely guilty of suppressing a great deal of emotion as I often find them too overwhelming to deal with and make sense of. 

One thing I am trying to do, and seek to get better at, is to feel my 'inner body' whenever unpleasant emotion shows itself.  Not much reflection as to it's source, just the attempt to feel it fully.  I have noticed that by magnifying my focus on the emotion in the body, more often than not it tends to dissipate rather quickly.  I can't help but wonder though if I am just fooling myself into thinking I am processing the emotion when in actual fact it is just more suppression.  How can you truly know when you have dealt with an emotion or just suppressed it?  I don't generally express my emotions, or more precisely those that I label as unpleasant, but also the more positive ones.  I laugh and joke and smile quite a lot but almost never express anger, hostility or dislike.  Do these things need to be expressed or can they be worked with entirely on an internal level? 

Ra's balancing exercise I have as of yet been unable to apply in any meaningful way in my life.  Having tried it, I have found that I often end up getting caught in thought and wondering if I am doing it correctly or not.  Perhaps perseverance and faith are required.  I'm glad you have had insights into these things Jeremy, they are quite wonderful when they occur.  

[rva_jeremy]

One thing I am trying to do, and seek to get better at, is to feel my 'inner body' whenever unpleasant emotion shows itself.  Not much reflection as to it's source, just the attempt to feel it fully.

This is exactly what I'm doing, if I understand you correctly.  It's a big commitment, and it militates against years of numbness and perceived safety.  I don't think you can balance until you have a grip on what it is you're balancing.  Even if you could balance by instinct, it still wouldn't deliver the same experience to the Creator via the roots of mind.  There's something about your conscious attention that certifies it and rounds it out.

I can't help but wonder though if I am just fooling myself into thinking I am processing the emotion when in actual fact it is just more suppression.  How can you truly know when you have dealt with an emotion or just suppressed it?

Yup, this is something I struggle with.   One of the downsides of the Law of One material is that sometimes the overly technical nature of how those of Ra articulate matters makes things seem cleaner and more discrete than they actually are.  We should not expect a time/space-y experience of emotions, where they are likely much more concrete objects to apprehend.  This is gonna be sticky and uncertain, and I'd be worried if it wasn't like that.  In fact, I had an opposite sort of experience as you: when I had the tiny breakthrough with my emotions that I described in the article, I was worried I was misperceiving it precisely because it was so tangible!  One gets so used to vagueness that one doubts when insights actually materialize. 

Just like meditation, the best thing you can do for yourself is stop worrying about whether you're doing it correctly.  So where I've landed now (I may yet again change my mind) is that it's not important to figure out whether you're suppressing or otherwise attempting to resolve the emotion.  What's important is to pay attention to the experience.  If you're suppressing, pay attention to that.  If you're lashing out, really pay attention to the way that makes you feel.  If you're doing neither, well, what does that feel like?  What does the feeling of resistance to doing any of this feel like?  

We need an emotional vocabulary so our minds can be allies in this process rather than constantly doubting it, and the only way you can build that vocabulary is with primary first-hand experience.  I'm not saying we need to reason about emotional matters; I'm saying that, at least for me, in the same way that recognizing language is ultimately something deep down in your mind that you just get used to identifying, recognizing emotion is something deep down in your heart that you just get used to identifying.  That means I have had to be really honest with myself about feelings, and allow myself to go down to the roots, and have compassion and patience for myself when I cannot do this.  Daily meditation is very helpful here.

I'm reading the Channeling Handbook right now, and the more I do, the more what I'm describing above seems like a twist on tuning.  You cannot tune an instrument without hearing its initial pitch.  We have to get a baseline of emotional registering before we can work on it--that's what I mean by a "vocabulary".  So if you feel like I do--a n00b with emotions--the first step in working with it, as far as I know, is to simply acknowledge them.  That in and of itself is incredibly difficult for guys like me.

[Infinite Unity]

I would agree, the instrument can only be tuned through the experience, of listening to it. Do not worry the instrument plays and endless volume of notes, and accordingly songs. So overtime the balance comes, but there are always more notes, and more to learn. I have a very rough time with orange and yellow ray energies. Sometimes I can let my energies/emotions from those two block up my heart. I can literally physically feel it, it feels like one of my heart valves is clogged. If I meditate balance and clear those lower all the way to the heart. The blockage will decipitate. To me the emotions are not just generated/contained within orange, yellow, or green. I believe it is a total mean of your overall vibration, from each chakra, However not separately but in a symbiotic communion. I believe DNA is not just Orange or yellow either. I believe DNA spans the entire spectrum. I would say that the DNA that are human scientist dictate as the protein producers to be of orange/yellow ray as an example. The junk DNA as it is called, lie within other domains/influences of other chakra or energy types, and or hubs. I believe all the rays manifested with DNA is a delievery system/communication relay from the etherical body to the physical body.

[Jade]

One thing I am trying to do, and seek to get better at, is to feel my 'inner body' whenever unpleasant emotion shows itself.  Not much reflection as to it's source, just the attempt to feel it fully.  I have noticed that by magnifying my focus on the emotion in the body, more often than not it tends to dissipate rather quickly.  I can't help but wonder though if I am just fooling myself into thinking I am processing the emotion when in actual fact it is just more suppression.  How can you truly know when you have dealt with an emotion or just suppressed it?  I don't generally express my emotions, or more precisely those that I label as unpleasant, but also the more positive ones.  I laugh and joke and smile quite a lot but almost never express anger, hostility or dislike.  Do these things need to be expressed or can they be worked with entirely on an internal level? 

You are not fooling yourself: By experiencing the emotions you are letting them "vent". This is a good thing. This is why repression is as bad as it is and acceptance helps so much:

Firstly, after I read this article, Jeremy and I talked about the realization that I had that emotions were a body complex phenomenon. It's not something I had considered much, but I think we're inclined to think of emotions as happening in the mind. But actually, our experience of emotions is the body - we have endocrine (hormone) glands that release chemicals that flood our bodies/brains and cause reactions of a physical nature and also reactions in how our brain (physical body) processes things. "Coincidentally", we have endocrine glands that go with each of our chakras, for instance, the red ray is the testicles/ovaries, the blue ray is the thyroid, etc. When we are working with the body, we must recognize when something has potentiated the matrix - i.e., when something alters the "Homeostasis" of the body complex, there is a reason for it. If we suppress any infliction upon the body, the mind is telling the body that there is no problem, that nothing is wrong. The body readjusts its homeostasis and continues functioning as if nothing were wrong - but then starts growing that "wrongness", say, that anger, into a tiny little bubble for it to fester quietly for a while. If the mind says "Oh wait, what is this? Is this something that might need healing?" Well, then the body goes into "healing mode" - as it is now aware and being informed that there is something to be healed - and healing can then occur. It isn't until one fully accepts that there is catalyst to work with, that one can alleviate that catalyst. Repressing/rejecting emotions, I believe, works this way.

So yeah, just feel it. This is why Ra says the proper thing for an entity to do is react in the moment, and then process it afterwards. Yeah, you might blow up on a few people, but eventually, sooner than later hopefully, you will realize the true folly and unimportance of the anger that you've been so afraid of experiencing, and that emotion will become a very rare friend indeed.

[Billy]

I think I understand where you are coming from Jeremy, but to try and make things clearer I will give an example.  For the past few days and especially tonight, I have been feeling quite intense despair and hopelessness.  I went for a walk earlier and really tried to put my focus on what was going on inside my body.  I felt a tightness and sickness around my torso and especially around the heart.  As I kept my awareness in that area there was a lessening of the intensity of the feeling.  I imagine that the more one does this sort of practice the more you will build or strengthen your emotional vocabulary, as you put it.  Certain feelings you will be able to identify almost immediately, just how we can identify a tree or a car.  You can even do this without attaching labels to the emotion, as the emotion itself will have its own familiar signature. 

I've realized that there is always something happening inside of you.  If you don't have much awareness of what is happening inside of yourself, then it usually takes pretty intense emotion to grab your attention.  The more skillful you become however at monitoring yourself the more and more depth and nuance in your feelings you will become aware of.  You become more sensitive to your emotions.  With enough practice you could probably get to the point where you could pinpoint exactly where certain emotions start to manifest in the body.  I imagine this aligns with the energy centers but maybe not always.  Can you imagine being aware of your every feeling, in all their depth and colour?  Such a state of being seems incomprehensible to me with where I am right now, and would probably be nightmarish.    

What I struggle with more then feeling an emotion is trying to disentangle it.  That is where the most resistance is for me.  It feels impossible often.  The obvious question of 'why am I feeling like this?' often has me shutting up shop and then distracting myself with whatever (eg. movie, music, eating).  It is the classic reaction of being afraid of what I will find if I probe too deep.  I can feel the resistance as I type.  I think just acknowledging the emotion, trying to feel it as much as I can, and even having a vague sense as to why I feel that way is good practice for someone as emotionally constipated as myself.  I do wonder how necessary analysis is when it comes to understanding the roots of ones emotions or if by simply allowing them to be and experiencing them as fully as you can, you will yield insights without needing to question.  Feel the feels.  

[BlatzAdict]

"Two alternatives to acceptance occur to me: either (1) repressing this energy by ignoring it, locking it down and using discipline and control to keep it at arms length, or (2) expressing it in a kneejerk, reactive manner that so often seems to leave us worse off but at least lets the energy flow onward. Both paths, turning emotion further inward and turning it further outward, seem to have as their end a desire for finality and resolution, to dislocate the emotion. The urgency of emotion compels us to react in one of these two extreme manners, neither healthy."

There is a third alternative, incorporating both points which you mention at the end that I agree with. For example when doing math and multiplication and division, we're always simplifying the equation in order to have less equation to worry about. So we can see the act of repressing, just one of the many sides of control, while allowing can be one of the many sides of acceptance. Regardless of the actions and the situation itself, it is bringing people to the same point of discomfort. At some point thoughts will go through the reptilian part of our brain concerned with fight or flight, and literally raising our conscious awareness above that, above running away, and above confrontation, but simply being present. Similarly one can allow an emotional without acting on it, but allow the experience of it, to be felt, just as oppositional someone can allow an emotional experience and then totally act on it in an empowered, or disempowered way.

A disempowered individual has further choices and lines of actions, from paranoia, to victim, to bully. The empowered individual can take the same situation, and act in good faith, and see/ manifest/ encode a particular thought of victory. What I'm saying exactly is to allow emotions, but not to let them drive you either.

It's the difference between using and not using tact which I had to learn the hard way, how it can more easily trigger someone rather than getting them to think of the illusory antithetical nature of reality. Which is to say seeing things in black and white, encodes duality and enforces there to be two oppositional sides and two opposites. Unity consciousness would have to entrain a balance of both viewpoints allow, repress into one singular viewpoint, no longer seeing two sides but rather creation in various stages of mixture and cohesion between the two forms of thinking. One is from the heart, and the other is intellect, rationale, the cold logical side of ourselves.

Funny how much we agree when I read your article. It is very well written, and it's the main reason why I am a little miffed at why Wilcock keeps blaming his deep rooted issues on his pot addiction, when really all it did was make his mental catalyst more pronounced for him to face. If speaking words is just one dimension to this multi dimensional reality, then it is these emotions that comprise of a large number of dimensions that are left untouched by manner of intellectualist driven academia and establishment.


Eckert Tolle really was one of the first to really bring forward the notion of being present with yourself to find a transcendental inner peace. I know you don't really follow Wilcock, but something that i found discusses these same things is his contacting your higher self video set. I really recommend this one if you can afford it: https://divinecosmos.com/amember/cart/in...t/id/54/c/

It's his most hard hitting stuff on the heart of self, and has nothing to do with the stuff he's doing now. I knew about some information before I saw this, like breathing excercises and other visualization techniques, however he really compiles a great deal of stuff in one set of videos.



Tell you what just after I finished LOO, a friend who had this Chihuahua for the 3 years I knew them, it would always bark at me every day and even so much as bite my hand or me if it got the chance. One day I decided to try a thought experiment and to stop giving fear to this dog, instead I just gave love, no matter how much it barking made me feel, I just responded with love. For the first time after 3 years with nothing but being barked at, this very nervous dog that jitters a lot due to it's size, licked my hand for the first time.

I had a very big revelatory experience not understanding why it was that simple, why all I had to do was pay it forward with love, and the rest works itself out. Upon later years I realized it's because in science we say there is heat and an absense of it. We don't see cold as a thing, it's the absence of heat. Therefore there is love, and then there is the absence of love, there is no such thing as fear, and it serves to create further illusion rather than further reality. Dogs just subconsciously incorporate that to their actions and personality, so they bark whenever someone is scared of them, they can feel the fear more intuitively.

[BlatzAdict]

I think I understand where you are coming from Jeremy, but to try and make things clearer I will give an example.  For the past few days and especially tonight, I have been feeling quite intense despair and hopelessness.  I went for a walk earlier and really tried to put my focus on what was going on inside my body.  I felt a tightness and sickness around my torso and especially around the heart.  As I kept my awareness in that area there was a lessening of the intensity of the feeling.  I imagine that the more one does this sort of practice the more you will build or strengthen your emotional vocabulary, as you put it.  Certain feelings you will be able to identify almost immediately, just how we can identify a tree or a car.  You can even do this without attaching labels to the emotion, as the emotion itself will have its own familiar signature. 

I've realized that there is always something happening inside of you.  If you don't have much awareness of what is happening inside of yourself, then it usually takes pretty intense emotion to grab your attention.  The more skillful you become however at monitoring yourself the more and more depth and nuance in your feelings you will become aware of.  You become more sensitive to your emotions.  With enough practice you could probably get to the point where you could pinpoint exactly where certain emotions start to manifest in the body.  I imagine this aligns with the energy centers but maybe not always.  Can you imagine being aware of your every feeling, in all their depth and colour?  Such a state of being seems incomprehensible to me with where I am right now, and would probably be nightmarish.    

What I struggle with more then feeling an emotion is trying to disentangle it.  That is where the most resistance is for me.  It feels impossible often.  The obvious question of 'why am I feeling like this?' often has me shutting up shop and then distracting myself with whatever (eg. movie, music, eating).  It is the classic reaction of being afraid of what I will find if I probe too deep.  I can feel the resistance as I type.  I think just acknowledging the emotion, trying to feel it as much as I can, and even having a vague sense as to why I feel that way is good practice for someone as emotionally constipated as myself.  I do wonder how necessary analysis is when it comes to understanding the roots of ones emotions or if by simply allowing them to be and experiencing them as fully as you can, you will yield insights without needing to question.  Feel the feels.  

You know I've come in my own life to realize whenever you feel that glut of despair and hopelessness, sometimes it's not all entirely even your own emotions. I feel like sometimes it's intentionally sent to the earth as a cloud of consciousness, or it is the reverberation of the masses combined blocked energy, being sent out, and getting filtered through all wanderers for the purposes of raising the planetary vibration.

At some point you keep clearing and clearing, you start to realize hey wait just 5 seconds ago I was completely grounded and calm, and now all of a sudden I'm being triggered or I'm feeling lost and alienated. Sometimes it's not even your energy, it's the empathic ability that gets activated once you start to allow inner silence from which to better listen. It is also the practice of allowing emotions that one is better able to recognize when emotions being felt are coming from someone else. Sometimes you just have no reason to be or feel sad and you just feel sad. Sometimes I just tear up for no reason, I don't even know why. 

It's because we're starting to transmute and raise the vibration of not just ourselves, but everything around us. I have to say you're on the right track, and to keep thinking about why you may feel a certain way.

Also pay attention to the weather outside, usually it is a visual representation of blocked energy that has been sent out by people in your immediate vicinity. I dare you ask random people how they are feeling during overcast, during clear skies, during cloudy, during rain, and you always get the same pattern of answers. Plus it's fun teaches you to know the creator and ultimately yourself better. 



---------------------------------

Also Jeremy I posted your article here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/copitsot...365946609/

And you got a comment already from Jerry - he says "thanks Jeremy, that was interesting and helpful for me to read. I really like the example of being controlled, it helped me get a grasp on the balancing exercise idea."

[rva_jeremy]

What I struggle with more then feeling an emotion is trying to disentangle it.  That is where the most resistance is for me.  It feels impossible often.  The obvious question of 'why am I feeling like this?' often has me shutting up shop and then distracting myself with whatever (eg. movie, music, eating).  It is the classic reaction of being afraid of what I will find if I probe too deep.  I can feel the resistance as I type.  I think just acknowledging the emotion, trying to feel it as much as I can, and even having a vague sense as to why I feel that way is good practice for someone as emotionally constipated as myself.  I do wonder how necessary analysis is when it comes to understanding the roots of ones emotions or if by simply allowing them to be and experiencing them as fully as you can, you will yield insights without needing to question.  Feel the feels.  

Dude, there is so much you've described in your entire post that seems part and parcel with my experience.  Especially the tightening around the heart.

Emotions are designed to overwhelm.  They happen to us--this is something I really had to come around to.  How does Steven Tyman put it in A Fool's Phenomenology?  Oh yes:

Affect is a subtle thing, is it not? It is upon me before I am aware of it, and it flees in the face of every attempt to capture to preserve it.  It would seem, then , to be a vagabond, feckless as an April afternoon, elusive as a wanton virgin.

And another quote that deals with balancing that I think is apt to your--our--situation:

One who has gazed full into the abyss of self will face the inevitable recoil of disgust and experience at once the draw of mystery. A balance is struck.  This balance is the measure of the intensity of the seeking. But there is generally little point in focusing directly upon the question of this intensity. Yes, let it be admitted that there are ways of augmenting this intensity, and that there are good occasions for so doing. But one is not well advised to go faster than can be reliably sustained. Emotional balancing is delicate work. To outrun the often slow process of healing is to invite disaster. Men in white coats will take one away if one is not careful.

 
My emphasis.  The takeaway for me is to have patience for one's own unique journey.  These things within us got wound up over time.  It will take time to pull each thread separate.  And don't go further than you can handle.

There is this idea that intelligence contributes to the efficiency of figuring things out.  Smarter people solve problems faster.  I would argue that we have to dispense with such reasoning when it is emotions which are at issue.  Go easy on yourself.  Recognize how much you are suffering, that feeling these things will take a toll on you.  It is ok to want to have a say in how these feelings get unwound.  You won't always be successful because "it is upon you before [you] are aware of it".  But if you can have compassion for yourself and, as Carla used to say, fall in love with yourself in the same way you fall in love with other flawed people, this becomes something rather worth doing in my experience, instead of a chore we torture ourselves with.

Actually, here's a Q'uo excerpt that made a world of difference for me.  It is one of my favorite Q'uo passages of all time.

We would say to the questioner that it is well to come into a relationship with the self in which there is no fear, no tension, no judgment, and no tendency towards discouragement. The days of an incarnation are very limited and it is well to win freedom from the judgment towards the self that compromises that relationship of self to self. This instrument has often described the desired result of such work as falling in love with the self. When you are in love with someone, they can do no wrong. They might make an error, but it is a small thing. The essence of that person is so appreciated and seen in such a strong and clear light that there are simply ways to love that entity based on their imperfections as well as their perfections.

It is easier for the thoughtful and sensitive seeker to love another with that kind of romantic glow than it is to love the self with that same aura of deep appreciation and respect and yet, dear one, you deserve it. You have earned it over and over. You are worthy.

You might make an error, Billy, but, it is a small thing. I never understood this quote until I actually recognized what it meant to fall in love with somebody else. Now I'm starting to get it. This is the quality of love that is needed to guide you on this journey, in my opinion.

[YinYang]

It always starts with the self. Forgive the self, and then you can forgive others. Release guilt from the self, and then you also don't blame others anymore. Same with regret, rejection... all the yucky stuff. We are very complex beings, and it's quite difficult, at least for me, to articulate these things sometimes.

The obvious question of 'why am I feeling like this?

Billy, a very necessary component of this process of release, is honesty with the self. You have to acknowledge things first, before you can forgive it and release it. As an example, memory affects a lot of our emotions, so when you go back and find the source of some pain, acknowledge everyone's role in the event, including your own, and then you've taken leaps in the healing process.

Stuff like rejection and betrayal goes very deep. But we are all things. If you have been betrayed, and if you think really hard, you'll likely be able to think of a scenario where you were the betrayer. For some reason we always remember what was done to us, and forget what we have done to others. Memory is funny that way.

We have been betrayed/betrayer, rejected/the one doing the rejecting, lied to/lied to someone else, etc. For me that's part of the balancing process, finding it, looking at it, acknowledging it, forgiving it and releasing it.

I hope I didn't jump to assumptions, but I just felt like sharing the honesty, sometimes brutal, that goes into healing and recovery. Most never go there, because it's difficult and unpleasant.

The "shaman" (he won't like the word shaman) I'm going to drink Ayahuasca with, within the next year (maybe...), is also a blogger, and he wrote a great piece which relates to what I wrote here:

I am Nathan.... and I am not a lightworker!

I have played all these roles.

I have been the hero, I have been the enemy.

I have had betrayal on my lips and I have spoken pure healing.

I have brought souls to their knees and I have lifted them to the skies.

With each role I understood more and more that which I truly am.

I am all things... and in this perfect dance, we forever grow!

[Nicholas]

So yeah, just feel it. This is why Ra says the proper thing for an entity to do is react in the moment, and then process it afterwards. Yeah, you might blow up on a few people, but eventually, sooner than later hopefully, you will realize the true folly and unimportance of the anger that you've been so afraid of experiencing, and that emotion will become a very rare friend indeed.

I really like this. One gripe I had with Ra on balancing was their comment, bolded here.

42.11 Questioner: How can an individual assess what energy centers within its being are activated and in no immediate need of further attention and which energy centers are not activated and are in need of immediate attention?

Ra: I am Ra. The thoughts of an entity, its feelings or emotions, and least of all its behavior are the signposts for the teaching/learning of self by self. In the analysis of one’s experiences of a diurnal cycle an entity may assess what it considers to be inappropriate thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and emotions.

The first time I read this I was like, "huh!? That's the most effective feedback I have ever got, certainly not the least!". As time moves on I have become more mindfull but initially I felt like a right "I need an intro to the beginners guide" if 'behaviour' is the least effective signpost. For me at least, my greatest insights have come from the manifestation of my own blockages, and thank goodness for being blessed with forgiving participants!

[Sacred Fool]

Hey there, yours truly.

I guess I come at this from a different slant.  To me, your article--which I did enjoy reading--comes off like a puritan who's just realized that sex can be dangerous, but also somewhat useful, even beyond the procreative aspect.  So, I would suggest here that emotions are not only strong energies to be acknowledged, but, in addition to the negative varieties, there are also sublime emotional ways of becoming aware of self which beckon one's cultivation.  For example, there is compassion.  Perhaps more significant, I would aver, is the will to serve--a most critical component of spiritual unfolding--which is also highly implicated with emotion.

I'm presenting this not to be critical, please understand, but only to encourage you to follow the currents of your explorations out into the deeper waters of Transcendent Beauty and Comradery of Spirit and Elegance of Service, all of which, from my perspective, offer very pleasing experiences of emotional being.

[rva_jeremy]

To me, your article--which I did enjoy reading--comes off like a puritan who's just realized that sex can be dangerous, but also somewhat useful, even beyond the procreative aspect.

Ha, that's pretty accurate. I did focus more on the negative than the positive, it's true. But I would certainly agree that painting with darker colors yields an appreciation for the lighter colors, too. It's certainly been my experience, but like most people I tend to focus on the stuff that's hard. Thanks for reminding me of the pleasant stuff!

[Jade]

I think that's an interesting insight. It makes me wonder about the Enchantress: She wears the birds on her head. In my conceptualization, the lion is the "scary part of the body complex that we must some how learn to work with" - in this discussion, emotions. Are the birds the "positive" or "balanced" emotions, that one carries without thought (yet the still affect the "weight of the head") - those that are already "cultivated"? And the lion is that which must be dealt with yet. If an emotion or experience does not feel unbalanced, then it does not need work. Those things that are bothering us are what need attention.



The lion is that which, ultimately, causes us fear. But logically, if we think about it, this fear is merely learned and not substantiated in any actual physical reality - none of us will ever likely die in the jaws of a lion, yet we still think of it as a possibility. Humans work and cohabitate with lions all the time - in fact, they are actually quite docile and lazy most of the time. We've even tamed them into a tinier, more manageable version to keep in our houses because we're so fond of them. (In blatz's case, it was a tiny wolf ) Yet, some people fear what the lion can do to them, and subjugate that lion, and force it to submit to them - which is when the lion can become very dangerous, a ticking time bomb really. The snake on her brow shows that one needs balance and wisdom to be able to take on this task - which really just takes Experience (!), as how can you know what to do with a lion if you've never handled one?

Gotta make friends with that second density body complex. We shouldn't be afraid - we have more resources to deal with these things as a third density entity than second. And again, to refer back to peregrine's point, this is The Enchantress - what Enchants us with this physical experience more than the extremely visceral emotional reactions that we have? - joy, excitement, pain, pleasure, grief, anger, lust - these things "take us away" from our perfectly balanced selves for a more visceral and dynamic experience, seemingly out of our control. That lack of control of course is the illusion. But I think an analogy could be like the enjoyment of a rollercoaster - the simulated danger that our bodies are thrown into. A dog would likely not enjoy the roller coaster. From the perspective of a third density entity, we can enjoy the thrill that floods our terrified body complexes!

[Sacred Fool]

...but like most people I tend to focus on the stuff that's hard. 

I hope I'm not being picayune here...but, uh...I think you're imagining a skewed dichotomy between, let's say, the lion of the visceral drives and tweety bird of the finer emotions.  Is mastery of the latter truly easy compared with making friends with the former?  I suppose one could view it that way from the perspective of what one might receive from each (wild confusion vs. like, bliss, man), but I would challenge you to consider the artistic options available in tweety-land.  Function there, likewise, takes a lot out of one in the sense that knowledge of self must deepen mightily as contact with Divinity is deepened, and that sort of personal refinement feels a lot like work, I would aver.

Anyhow (steeping off the soap box now), that Temptress icon strikes me as a depiction of skillful sts developement.  You condition a relationship with your animal vitality (rrrrrrrRRRRRRRR!), then you receive the snake bite at the brow (the biting is actually an ancient Greek motif, the Egyptians were more demure about it), which is to say, you learn to do work in spirit, and you bliss out in tweetsville.

It's telling, if you look at it, that her right arm crosses over her heart.  This is to say, the balance depicted here shows no use of love.  It's a clean, elegant summation of balanced self love....um, but are you really loving yourself if you conceal from yourself a critical, vital, integral element?  You decide!

[Sacred Fool]

One who has gazed full into the abyss of self will face the inevitable recoil of disgust and experience at once the draw of mystery. A balance is struck.  This balance is the measure of the intensity of the seeking. But there is generally little point in focusing directly upon the question of this intensity. Yes, let it be admitted that there are ways of augmenting this intensity, and that there are good occasions for so doing. But one is not well advised to go faster than can be reliably sustained. Emotional balancing is delicate work. To outrun the often slow process of healing is to invite disaster. Men in white coats will take one away if one is not careful.

 
The takeaway for me is to have patience for one's own unique journey.  These things within us got wound up over time.  It will take time to pull each thread separate.  And don't go further than you can handle.

I certainly take your point above, but I would dispute the sentence I emboldened in this sense: it may make no sense for Prof. Tyman to focus upon the will to serve or the intensity of seeking, but it surely does make great sense for others.  How else do you develope this:


Actually, here's a Q'uo excerpt that made a world of difference for me.  It is one of my favorite Q'uo passages of all time.

We would say to the questioner that it is well to come into a relationship with the self in which there is no fear, no tension, no judgment, and no tendency towards discouragement. The days of an incarnation are very limited and it is well to win freedom from the judgment towards the self that compromises that relationship of self to self. This instrument has often described the desired result of such work as falling in love with the self. When you are in love with someone, they can do no wrong. They might make an error, but it is a small thing. The essence of that person is so appreciated and seen in such a strong and clear light that there are simply ways to love that entity based on their imperfections as well as their perfections.


How else do you learn to appreciate the essence of a person, how else do you know your own self so deeply that doing this becomes reflexive?  Is it by self-brainwashing or waiting for the co-incident alignment of internal forces or could it be by more sincere, more coherent amplification of the will to serve or intensity of seeking signals (to borrow your SNR metaphor)?

By the way, tying into my previous diatribe, the sentiments quoted by old Q'uo above fall very much into the category of refined emotions, I would suggest, and spinning them suckers into gold, I repeat, can feel a lot like work.

[rva_jeremy]

I hope I'm not being picayune here...but, uh...I think you're imagining a skewed dichotomy between, let's say, the lion of the visceral drives and tweety bird of the finer emotions.  Is mastery of the latter truly easy compared with making friends with the former?  I suppose one could view it that way from the perspective of what one might receive from each (wild confusion vs. like, bliss, man), but I would challenge you to consider the artistic options available in tweety-land.  Function there, likewise, takes a lot out of one in the sense that knowledge of self must deepen mightily as contact with Divinity is deepened, and that sort of personal refinement feels a lot like work, I would aver.

Yeah, it feels like a daunting amount of work. Nothing I've written above or in the blog post should be taken to indicate anything but a beginner's foray into these matters. The "tweety-bird" of finer emotional balancing strikes me as rather advanced, at least for my position on the scale. I do appreciate the artistic options of the finer emotions, but to abuse your metaphor, I'm finger painting at this point. I'm just celebrating getting my hands dirty, because that in and of itself has been a breakthrough.

I think for some people, the wider-band emotions are so discomfiting, resistance to them so ingrained and reflexive, that they have to train their attention on those and use the sledgehammer as some sort of first step into appreciating subtler affect. There's a lot of mental conditioning that needs to be backed out, I think, just to start registering finer emotions in useful ways -- to get useful, consistent, dependably available feedback. As an example: how can I possibly have a start in feeling compassion when I feel permanent threat of domination from without? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but the obvious approach traces a path through a genuine experience of vulnerability into one that realizes nothing genuine is lost in feeling fragile. And even this model I've described is thoroughly coarse and simplistic.

Let's revisit the idea I mentioned above of a parallel between tuning for work on self and tuning for channeling work. The way I see this, much of what I'm discussing is a way of tuning the self to channel one's own highest vibrations and best report of emotional condition. But tuning doesn't happen all at once--you start out with coarse corrections and narrow in on finer corrections. I think your point about appreciating the finer emotions and not making it all about really edgy stuff is well taken, but I would like to think that the route to the former is through the latter, at least for somebody who is opening up to a real emotional experience for the first time. And not just opening up, but trying to institute a practice of being open to these feelings, using the tool of time to hone and refine how I process this data.

Thanks so much for sharing with me, peregrine. I take your advice to heart.

[rva_jeremy]

I certainly take your point above, but I would dispute the sentence I emboldened in this sense: it may make no sense for Prof. Tyman to focus upon the will to serve or the intensity of seeking, but it surely does make great sense for others.  How else do you develop this:

Actually, here's a Q'uo excerpt that made a world of difference for me.  It is one of my favorite Q'uo passages of all time.

We would say to the questioner that it is well to come into a relationship with the self in which there is no fear, no tension, no judgment, and no tendency towards discouragement. The days of an incarnation are very limited and it is well to win freedom from the judgment towards the self that compromises that relationship of self to self. This instrument has often described the desired result of such work as falling in love with the self. When you are in love with someone, they can do no wrong. They might make an error, but it is a small thing. The essence of that person is so appreciated and seen in such a strong and clear light that there are simply ways to love that entity based on their imperfections as well as their perfections.

How else do you learn to appreciate the essence of a person, how else do you know your own self so deeply that doing this becomes reflexive?  Is it by self-brainwashing or waiting for the co-incident alignment of internal forces or could it be by more sincere, more coherent amplification of the will to serve or intensity of seeking signals (to borrow your SNR metaphor)?

The excerpt is significantly out of context, to put it mildly; any clumsiness should only reflect on my use of it, not his authorship.  The surrounding chapter is one that delves deeply into what it means to be a self, what it could mean to have an impetus towards spiritual seeking at all.  The Neitzschean "abyss" he speaks of is more than just inward looking; he's grounding emotional work in broader questions of being and experience.

I repurposed the gist of his passage to apply the "not should-ing all over yourself" (is that Carla's phrase?  I can't remember) concept to this issue of emotional confrontation.  I mean, it never was something that made sense to me until I was able to have a real, tangibly identifiable experience of it, so there's no reason to think that some essay some dude wrote would make any difference.  That said, I saw the passage's value as one of communicating the nuances of pacing emotional work.  I sort of see Tyman's point as similar to "not taking your spiritual temperature" but instead shining a light on the universal perfection of the struggle to make sense of these feelings that move from the corner of your eye and then slam into you or breeze by with nothing but a faint aroma.  That's hard to deal with, and as you point out, it's subtle work to apply the same introspection to both coarse and fine affect and construct a coherent self and experience out of it.

[Sacred Fool]

Yeah, it feels like a daunting amount of work....

I'm finger painting at this point.  I'm just celebrating getting my hands dirty, because that in and of itself has been a breakthrough.....

I think for some people, the wider-band emotions are so discomfiting, resistance to them so ingrained and reflexive....

...but the obvious approach traces a path through a genuine experience of vulnerability...

Let's revisit the idea I mentioned above of a parallel between tuning for work on self and tuning for channeling work.  The way I see this, much of what I'm discussing is a way of tuning the self to channel one's own highest vibrations...

There's nothing wrong with finger painting and slopping around in the area of unprocessed emotions, and I wholeheartedly support your endeavours.

One view is that digging up past energetic deformations and suffering through them again in an effort to resculpt them is a lot of hard work.  Learning to process catalyst when it speaks in gentle tones--prior to the hard knocks--is likewise hard work.  And, of course, these are undeniable.  I just want to add a little something.  A different posture one could emphasize is that each effort to know the self more deeply brings one a single step closer to that experience which is wholly transformational, namely, the experience of the radiant magnificence of what you truly are.  Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I find the latter a far happier standard to follow through the field of folly.  The discomfiture, the vulnerability, the tuning, these are just exercises to get you hungry for the main dish...which is you, amigo, in all your finery and flummery.

[Billy]

A different posture one could emphasize is that each effort to know the self more deeply brings one a single step closer to that experience which is wholly transformational, namely, the experience of the radiant magnificence of what you truly are.  Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I find the latter a far happier standard to follow through the field of folly.  The discomfiture, the vulnerability, the tuning, these are just exercises to get you hungry for the main dish...which is you, amigo, in all your finery and flummery.

This is pretty awesome.  Thank you peregrine

[rva_jeremy]

A different posture one could emphasize is that each effort to know the self more deeply brings one a single step closer to that experience which is wholly transformational, namely, the experience of the radiant magnificence of what you truly are.  Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I find the latter a far happier standard to follow through the field of folly.  The discomfiture, the vulnerability, the tuning, these are just exercises to get you hungry for the main dish...which is you, amigo, in all your finery and flummery.

That's really what I'm trying to, y'know, celebrate in my piece: the hunger. I don't want to make the transformation the criterion for judging this process because it's not really under my control. I want to put one foot in front of the other and build faith. But it's important to remember that I need to keep an eye out for the fine print and not just the flashing neon signs. Thanks for making sure I appreciate the subtlety of this, peregrine

[Jade]

Let's revisit the idea I mentioned above of a parallel between tuning for work on self and tuning for channeling work.  The way I see this, much of what I'm discussing is a way of tuning the self to channel one's own highest vibrations and best report of emotional condition.  But tuning doesn't happen all at once--you start out with coarse corrections and narrow in on finer corrections.  I think your point about appreciating the finer emotions and not making it all about really edgy stuff is well taken, but I would like to think that the route to the former is through the latter, at least for somebody who is opening up to a real emotional experience for the first time.  And not just opening up, but trying to institute a practice of being open to these feelings, using the tool of time to hone and refine how I process this data.

We are constantly tuning ourselves so that we can play whatever leitmotifs that the Creator needs of us in each perfect moment. This includes indulging blockages that cause emotional reactions. But as you said, it's a slow process, getting comfortable with this type of expression, but being deliberate and aware makes the process move much more quickly.

[BlatzAdict]

I think someone once made a post about sub densities within each chakra somewhere and got into a lengthy in depth discussion a few years back about sub densities to each chakra. For the purposes of this conversation i'm going to focus on soley the third ray as it's the most complicated ray.

I've found that this guy's book through his own research has mapped out all blockages from Yellow red to Yellow Violet.

All of it has to do with varying levels of disempowered coping mechanisms for shame, anger, and depression.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-...0425191656

I always wondered why you could essentially write entire reams of books on the third chakra alone, maybe it's because to get to 4th or 5th dimensional thinking mindsets, a lot of emotional clutter comes in the way to be cleared. I always think of the creator that created everything including the impetus to turn away from the creator. You have this love, and this other version of you doesn't love you, but you can't help but love it but at the same time you don't want to get burned, you don't want anything you care about or anything dear to you, to be threatened by anything having to do with this shadow mirror.

The first reaction is always to run away, instead of run towards. Part of the subjective human experience is that the emotions themselves are subjective as if they are the turn signals as our consciousness drives down the same emotional, mental pathways.


"how can I possibly have a start in feeling compassion when I feel permanent threat of domination from without? " The bottom line to this is that this physical experience is limited, and temporary, but the number of times you can come incarnate it's virtually infinite. That being said Creator gives individual souls as much time as they need to experience all catalyst that is needed in order to progress. I'm trying to say that at various levels of realization this threat is illusory though also very much a situation on the game board that one needs to work with since it is all of those situations and tools for identifying it, that is part of the 3rd density experience.

We'd have to redefine this permanent threat not as an external factor but start to identify the mirroring, how does this concept poses in a way that may allow oneself to see how it could apply personally, rather than personifying or identifying a concept as external to the self. All is one, and as a result we all share the same mind and akashic record.

"Let's revisit the idea I mentioned above of a parallel between tuning for work on self and tuning for channeling work." It's almost like one needs to revisit their entire life, recall the difficult experiences, and then try to redirect how it's perceived. Sorry I don't have a more technical way to communicate these ideas. You change your present by changing the attitudes of your past, since the past informs the present. Most people relive those situations over and over making the same choices, and then it becomes kind of a karma because you can meet new people but invite the same emotional complex problems.

Kind of like the idea where you stop talking to someone often times you meet what seems like cooler version of that same person. Due to your vibration having risen slightly, your vibration entrances to it a similar mirroring of the self. I hope my ideas don't sound all over the place, I spent my past year studying shadow work and the tarot solely much assisted and inspired by the work of Jodorowsky.

[Sacred Fool]

That's really what I'm trying to, y'know, celebrate in my piece: the hunger.  I don't want to make the transformation the criterion for judging this process because it's not really under my control.  I want to put one foot in front of the other and build faith.  But it's important to remember that I need to keep an eye out for the fine print and not just the flashing neon signs.  Thanks for making sure I appreciate the subtlety of this, peregrine

I had to check myself before responding here because I felt like I'm hammering you for some reason.  Here's what I found in my checking.

It saddens me to see you--as I perceive it--going about this project with eyes downcast, particularly when you're such a jolly fellow at heart.  It feels to me that you're dutifully dragging along a few unnecessary millstones, and I was just trying to encourage you to uplift your downcast eyes and maybe wave to the sweet chariots over head which are not swinging low for you at this moment, but to whose glory you are heir.

So, like, don't make me sad, dude, lighten your heart for me a little, cut loose some of those millstones and write yourself a "get out of jail free card."  I don't know offhand what ancient burdens you're laboring under, but please do consider applying here your pre-existing bias: traveling light, as it were.