Stumbling Blocks
This week and next we’ve been asked to consider how we may use fear, hurt feelings, anger, guilt, and/or unworthiness to expand our comfort zone.
Emotions, whether we consider them positive are negative, are neutral. We make them “good” or “bad” by the Law of Dual Thought. We attach an idea to a feeling, and the attachment of that label shapes how we experience what we feel, or think.
Feelings, like thoughts, carry important information.
Often times our feelings bring information from a part of ourself outside our conscious awareness. Going into observer mode helps us draw out, or educe, what we are trying to bring to our awareness.
What wants to be known next?
On Sunday, when I first considered how these emotions or feelings help expand our comfort zone, I thought in terms of turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones. When we don’t look, or avoid, or deny a feeling that we think feels uncomfortable, it becomes a stumbling block. We trip over it, it blocks our path, or energy. We contract, rather than expand.
However, if we look at these blocks, observe them and learn from them, they become instead stepping stones.
I thought of how mistakes show me the next thing I need to learn. Fear, hurt feelings, anger, guilt, and/or unworthiness can do the same.
Stone Gate Threshold
On Monday, I started thinking about this in terms of the Hero’s Journey. I thought of how the threshold guardians test the hero and when the test has been met, the guardians may then become allies to the hero in her journey.
Then Tuesday, I remembered a time when my daughter was about 3 years old. She developed a fear of snakes. I’m not sure why, or how, but it had become palatable to her. It was quickly becoming an almost irrational phobia. I didn’t want this to take hold of her so I did some thinking about what I could do to help her with this fear.
Keeping in mind that often what we fear is what we don’t know, or understand.
I bought some books about snakes. We visited places where she could observe snakes in aquariums. We looked for snakes while out on walks in nature. Very quickly her fear turned into understanding, fascination and appreciation for snakes. For years, she would come home with shed snake skins, and skeletons that she found while out playing in a field close by. She had become attuned to the beauty of a snake. I figured this is why she seemed to find so many snakes in nature.
I’ve seen other people do this with Native American arrowheads. Or rocks of a particular type. We do this in *MKMMA with colors and shapes, and virtues.
Stepping Stones
Law of Growth. What we focus on grows.
There’s a statement that Davene made in Sunday’s webinar, and I really love this. She talked about how instead of bracing our selves for these feelings and emotions we can embrace them.
I remember making a decision to do that when I was a teenager. For most of my life, I have been what is called, “ultra-sensitive”. What this means is that I feel way too deeply and intensely for my own good. I have what one doctor called a highly-sensitive nervous system.
Lots of people like me, will often turn to self-medicating to deal with this. Instead, I decided to do something different. I can’t say why I made that decision, I just did.
I decided to embrace the pain, to move into the uncomfortable feelings.
Rather than try to avoid them, or push them away.
I decided to feel what I felt.
Maybe this is how I discovered how much information lies in these feelings. And by embracing them and moving into them, especially with a neutral observer eye, I discovered how much I can learn about myself, and what is happening within me, my inner life.
I used what I learned about myself to learn new skills in managing my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings.
In this way feelings, comfortable and uncomfortable, were transmuted from stumbling blocks into stepping stones on my journey of self-discovery and learning.
This has certainly expanded my comfort zone with the world within.
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* Master Key Master Mind Alliance (MKMMA)
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* Affiliate
Image Credit: Association of Research and Enlightement (ARE)
Originally Posted @: Edina – Master Key
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