Many experience negative emotions such as discouragement, hopelessness, anxiety, or depression without knowing how to transform them or how to separate from them.  This difficulty presents itself because emotions are rooted in the body.  They are felt as bodily sensations that seem impossible to ignore.  In addition, most emotional states communicate themselves to the mind as ‘inevitable’, that is, they seem entirely justified by the circumstances one is dealing with or the situations one has lived through.  This sense of inevitability concerning what one is feeling must be overcome in order to separate from emotions and to know that a choice is possible with respect to what one feels.

It is a great learning to understand that choice is possible in relation to feelings.  Such learning comes from a threefold awareness:

First, that negative emotional states can be amplified by habits of the past that create easy access to certain feelings.  It is therefore more likely to feel such feelings in many different situations, even when they are not warranted.  This is the ‘karmic picture’, and it heightens certain emotions, even when they are unwanted.  Such well-worn pathways are often what the body and personality inherit at the time of birth. 

Second, negative emotional states can be amplified by oppositional energies operating within the self or coming from outside the self that seek to separate one from their spiritual center, the center of truth and light. Such energies intensify the sense of depression, discouragement, hopelessness, etc., creating a sense of entrapment within the emotional field, accompanied by the perception that there is no way out.  Energies of opposition can also create emotional states, bringing up feelings and thoughts that are not really one’s own, or amplifying the habitual feelings that one is most familiar with.  (See ‘karmic picture’.)

Third, although emotional states are most often part of the personality structure that one has incarnated with, the personality structure is not, and need not be, what one identifies with, especially during times of trial.  One’s connection with God and with the Divine core of one’s being can be what one identifies with, clings to, and trusts, even in the presence of difficult emotions.  Here, it is not a matter of denying what one feels, but of knowing that another perception, feeling, or response is possible.   Turning in trust to the Divine core of one’s being can offer the alternative to negative emotional states, and a path to greater freedom.    This is especially true to the degree that one can affirm:

 

“I am not the emotion passing through me.  I am my inner being, connected with God.”

This truth of the soul can be reached for even in the presence of bodily sensations and repetitive thoughts that seem to suggest there is no other way to feel.  Its presence  lives in the eternal oneness within each soul.  Therefore, its truth is always positive. 

All of the above suggests the great need for spiritual anchoring in the presence of painful emotions.  Such anchoring makes possible the presence of choice. It makes possible the understanding that the truth of reality may be vastly different than what one is feeling, and that this truth can be held onto through holding to one’s Divine essence that lives in God.  

It is this inner relationship that creates an alternative to painful emotions.  Such a relationship allows one to ask:

What else could I be feeling right now? 

What other way might be possible for me to respond?

The Divine blueprint for one’s soul will always answer with a positive response, no matter what the external circumstance one is dealing with.  It will always affirm that there is another way to feel which involves trust.  This Divine blueprint belongs to each and every soul.  It can be turned to again and again as the need arises, holding the deeper truth of Divine reality against the rising tide of any emotion.

Related Writings:

Anchoring in Love

Connecting with the Heart

Affirmations of Light for a New Consciousness

Article Section -  Purification

"Maintaining Alignment With Light"