Learning to be with feelings & emotions
The more we start to accept what is instead of what should be, the more radiant and alive our life becomes. We discern between feelings as our immediate reaction to a present situation, and emotions, which were feelings in a passed situation and turned to congested emotions. They were too much for us then and we did not have sufficient support by our social environment. So we pushed the feelings away and locked them up – into our psychological “shadow”, or our “emotional backpack”, we all carry. There are ways to discharge these emotions safely, feeling these antique feelings again and alleviate our backpack within a safe social setting.
When feelings are hidden, life energy will get stuck. Stuck energies breed fear and violence. We aim for a life where feelings and energies are flowing freely; a life where we don't avoid conflicts, but look at them as opportunities to go deeper. We seek a social environment where we are supported to be present with whatever feeling is in us and to stay fluid with it. Will we be present with the pain that we feel, the anger, the fear, the sadness or the joy, and then move on into life?
ZEGG-Forum can offer the fertile social "soil"-building for community.
The power of feelings
All feelings are forces that want to accompany us through life. What would a culture look like where people consciously felt their feelings, expressed them freely and appropriately and took full responsibility for them? A culture in which we would know that feelings are a reaction to my interpretation of what is happening, of what is.
Feelings determine our lives, whether we want them to or not. We invest a lot of time and money in avoiding certain feelings and experiencing others as often as possible. We want to feel "good" and stay in our comfort zone instead of being still (non-reactive) with what just is. We are here to have experiences. The pursuit of feeling good and avoiding the unpleasant is the main driver of capitalist consumption and violence. By consuming things we don't really need, we destroy our environment.
It is important that we realise how often it is our smallness, our fear and our inadequacy that is our comfort zone! That's where we know our way around and feel safe in all the suffering underneath.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
All feelings – even so-called negative feelings – play an important role in our life. They give us orientation and strength, helping us to be appropriate and authentic with ourselves and with our life. Their powers unfold if we really do feel them innerly and allow them to be in us in their own unique way. Anger, fear, joy or sadness or each is a power which wants to be used in a targeted way, when it is needed.
“Most people are not in the least aware of the fact that they create their feelings themselves. For them, feelings are involuntary, irrational surges of sensation which originate somewhere mysterious, deep in their subconscious. In fact, a feeling arises from an interaction between thought and environment.”
Quote from the book “Feelings, How to Use Them Intelligently”, Vivian Dittmar.
