Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FEELING AWARENESS
1. Feelings are real.
2. Feelings are everywhere.
3. Feelings are messages from the self and others.
4. Feelings tell us who we are and what we prefer.
5. Feelings tell us what we are really being and what our real intentions are.
6. Feelings give us valuable information about everything we place our attention on.
7. Feeling words are symbols that describe conditions in consciousness.
8. Feeling words help us to stay conscious and help us communicate our experience.
9. Empathy is the universal phenomenon whereby, through placing our attention on another person, we experience the same or similar feelings as they are experiencing.
CHAPTER 2
"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."
–Nikola Tesla
Feelings Are Everywhere
At birth, we experience shock. When we take our first breath, we are completely disoriented by our newly acquired five senses, grappling to manage them while assimilating into the physical world. After the physical senses are understood, other subtle or intuitive senses have a chance to develop.
Imagine we have an emotional body that gives us feedback much like the feedback the senses of our physical bodies have given us since birth. As children, we used our five senses to learn about three-dimensional reality. We learned that fire is hot, gravity pulls down, how to walk, talk, listen, and judge distance. As all that was happening, our senses relayed some kind of vibrational contrast to our brains. There was light and darkness, silence and sound, scent, stench, sweet, sour, slathers of form and texture, and the absence of it all. Ultimately we sensed pain in contrast with other sensations and then mostly chose to do what we perceived as less painful. This is how we came to survive and thrive in the material world. We learned from our pain and eventually formed a functional frame, which empowered us to navigate physical space.
As we grow older, we develop into more psychologically and spiritually sophisticated beings. Our perception of reality is less physical, and our range of experience becomes more metaphysical. In fact, what we discover is that our reality is quite mutable and is filled with mental and emotional patterns that we have created or adopted from those around us.
Children who are naturally sensitive, and children who have not been conditioned to ignore or repress their feelings, may be more affected by subtle interactions in larger groups. They may have a harder time in school, seem withdrawn, or appear to learn more slowly. This happens because they are processing more information. Iphelia was initially overwhelmed by all the feelings she was sensing and confused by them. She was especially challenged when her father's facial expression was not congruent with what she was feeling from him (p. 20). This is a common way in which feelings are invalidated or contradicted by the adults in a child's life. A parent's own emotional repression or inauthenticity can be an experiential deception that gradually calls into question a child's inner guidance and intuition. "What's wrong, Daddy?" "Nothing's wrong, sweetheart. Daddy's fine," seems harmless and even protective from a "sensible" perspective. But from a process perspective, these simple remarks can plant a seed of confusion, casting doubt on the child's experience of her natural emotional sensitivity.
Feelings are everywhere. They are all around us and inside of us. So it is incredibly important to pay attention to, and validate, the feelings of our children. Our emotions are both the sensors and the creators of our subjective world. Just as our physical senses interpret vibration to help us sense the material world, our emotions are the experience of vibration from whatever we fix our attention to. Emotions give us a sense of contrast between what we are being and what we are perceiving. And they tell us how we are subjectively vibrating in contrast with how we want to be vibrating. They tell us what and who we like and don't like, and they tell us when and how we like ourselves. From childhood on, our feelings are the guiding lights to who we truly want to become. They are the voice of our conscience.
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart."
CHAPTER 3
"There is only one disease — congestion, and one cure — circulation."
–Florence Scovel Shinn
Feelings Are Messages
There is great relief when we allow ourselves to release feeling-energy from our bodies. Sometimes this energy arises immediately in response to new experience, sometimes it builds up over time due to suppression or avoidance, and sometimes it is a freeing of energy that was once repressed because of our inability to process certain, often painful, experiences at an earlier stage of development. Allowing emotion to take motion allows for change. Our perceptions of ourselves, our world, and the challenges we face all change when our energy moves. The way others perceive us changes when they witness this energy move within us. Even the way others unconsciously respond to us changes when we allow our emotional body's old, congested energy to move. When a grudge is held, the grudge is felt and responded to, even if it isn't consciously acknowledged by anyone involved. When sadness or grief are not allowed release, the pain stays and haunts the feeler for life. When healthy anger is not expressed, we feel powerless and eventually become depressed. The volcano of our own expanding worth and self-respect is never allowed to erupt, and we miss all the great realizations that would naturally bubble up.
When Iphelia finally allows herself the release of her anger, she tears her room and drawings apart and a great surge of power runs through her body. After the storm calms, she feels empowered and begins making healthier choices. She grieves the loss of her friendship with Olivia, allowing herself to feel her sadness (weak, p. 62). She goes back to drawing because that is what she loves to do, and rather than pining for approval, she begins to set boundaries with the kids who have made fun of her (strong, p. 63). She ponders how she can repair her relationship with Olivia (doubtful and hopeful, p. 64-65), and even begins to reflect on her behavior and how she has felt about it (right and wrong, p. 66-67). Ultimately, her awareness deepens and she knows this is because she has listened for and received the messages of her feelings. Had she not allowed herself the explosion of anger, she would not have let go of trying so hard to prove herself to everyone. And she could never have come to the series of soul- freeing realizations that follow.
CHAPTER 4
–Helen Keller
Feelings are Real
Feelings are real. Feelings are everywhere. We may not see them, but they are always happening. They happen within us. They happen around us. They happen between us. Before anyone does anything in the world, there is feeling. As everything happens in the world, there is feeling. Conscious acknowledgement of our experience of feeling is essential to finding meaning in our lives and in relationship with ourselves and each other. Moving through life without examining our feelings leaves a void in our experience. It hobbles our ability to know ourselves and connect with others. Without feelings we are blind and clumsy. Without feelings there cannot be empathy. Consequences for the repression of our feelings range from personal dissatisfaction in life and relationships to the pandemic of short-sightedness, which is generating increasing tragedy on a global scale. Genocide, terrorism, torture, slavery, sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, racism, hate, animal abuse, all forms of oppression, all inequities — first-world robbing third-world resources, poverty, hunger, ignorance, and disease all extend from our collective emotional repression.
An insensitive father who was raised to deny his own feelings denies his son the need for praise and affirmation. His son grows callous and compensates for worthlessness by ruthlessly seeking to build a financial empire which takes advantage of its employees, its consumers, and the earth. Another father's suppressed grief perpetuates a longing for vengeance that is transmitted and instilled into his children as justified hate and discrimination.
A mother who learned to deny her feelings of worthiness and power tolerates the abuse of her emotionally wounded husband and transmits shame and guilt to her children. Those children grow up to live lives of fear and subservience. Another mother leaves the abuse but also leaves her trust as she overly controls and emotionally abuses her children who grow up callous and incapable of trust and intimacy.
The scenarios are infinite but the result is the same for all of us. How we relate to each other today is the amalgamation of legacies of undigested feeling. As children, the experiences seem small and their impact fleeting. But over time our defense mechanisms evolve into more intensified versions of their original forms. Left unaddressed, those old wounded parts embed into our personalities as we make ever more detrimental choices for ourselves and the world around us. If we are going to survive, we have to wake up to how we have been affected by what has been and consciously choose what we are going to be. At this time in history, paying attention to and exploring the dimension of feelings is vitally important. Let us begin ...
The images in this book illustrate an individual view of a universal phenomenon. The subjective experience and growth of any individual will determine an alternate visualization of any particular feeling. In this way the images are indeed meant to be understood as examples of actual perceptions of real phenomena. Everyone's experience will vary to differing degrees. One person's experience of sadness might feel and look quite different from another's, but there will also be invariable similarities. Universal arche-types and the contrasting reference of line, shape, form, intensity, space, color, and texture will always illustrate that our consciousness is connected.
The practice of free association, or observing whatever images passively emerge in the mind when it is focused on a particular feeling, can reveal much. When we visualize feelings in this way, we bring greater awareness to the quality of our experience at any given moment. In a sense, we make the unseen seen and with this added information are better able to make wise and healthy decisions for ourselves, our communities, and the world. This is not an unnatural process. It is quite natural. We have only forgotten.
Intention Setting (IS)
Before beginning any introspective process, setting an intention is very helpful. When we set an intention, we declare what something IS. We give trajectory to the action about to be taken. The mind is focused on an intended outcome. We are letting the subconscious part of ourselves know what to do.
Saying intentions out loud works on various levels. It activates the body — we breathe, move our mouths, our tongues, maybe even our shoulders, arms, and hands. It activates parts of the brain that would otherwise not move. We hear ourselves. We declare our intention out loud, making it stronger and dominant over the already-present chatter circulating in our mind and body. In short, when we say the intention out loud, we are making it a part of us. We inhale, exhale, vibrate, and become.
Saying intentions out loud also gives us an opportunity to notice any resistance to our chosen statement. When setting intentions, feelings of anxiety, fear, anger, or judgment about the statements can be an indicator of unconscious resistance. Resistance usually indicates that on some level, we feel fear. The feeling of fear likely means we may soon become aware of something that some part of us does not want to see. Just notice this feeling and lean into it. Set the intention anyway. There is great awareness and knowledge on the other side.
Seeing Feelings (SEER)
Set your intention. Say out loud three times, "I pay attention to myself," "I really want to know myself," "I want to know what I am feeling."
1. Slow. Slow down and begin by being present with your body. Be aware of your posture and position. Allow your mental attention to encompass your body, tracing its surface. See if you can focus all of your senses on your body. Notice your breath and beating heart.
2. Express. Allow the feeling or feelings to move. Let the body move with them. Give the feelings words. What are they saying? What are they doing?
3. Envision. Visualize what you are feeling. Envision the form and texture and color. Envision the movement of the feeling.
4. Record. With colored pencils, crayons, or paint, draw it out. Make it visible. Notice what other thoughts, insights, and realizations emerge as you draw your feelings. Write them down.
The visualization of our feelings is a window's view of the truth. A view of our interdependence. A view to what we are really doing and being. Visualizing feelings gives us a window's view of our abuse, our sacrifice, of our selfish and our selfless. When we learn to allow and observe them, our feelings always tell us what is really happening. Our feelings can even tell us who we really are, and that is everything.
Discovering who we really are is the most valuable lesson attending to our feelings has to offer. There are no shortcuts. Deceptions are mere temporary congestions of the inevitable. A lie is only a delay. Nothing is hidden. All is accounted for. All has effect. Our emotional shadows follow us wherever we go. When this truth is fully understood, our relationships with everything change. We can't help but begin striving to be honest and authentic to ourselves and the world. If we lie in a relationship, our experience of the relationship is puppeted and without trust. If we hide our true feelings, we never feel connected or loved, and we ever-weaken our ability to love. Conversely, when we strive to be true to the people we love in our lives, we build magnificent bridges of light upon which great shipments of love and affirmation can be transported. Then a miracle is possible. Here's the miracle:
We realize the most beautiful version, we can conceive ourselves, and our fellow humans, as being.
Realizing this kind of beauty is discovering who we truly are. Empathy is the key to this realization. Empathy toward the self and others opens us up to the reality we long for. We realize the trust, the connection, the love, the beauty — knowing who we truly are and truly seeing one another — all perceived through feeling. A miracle, only possible through feeling.
But coming to this realization is not one simple "Aha" moment. We have to evolve. We have to become something new and different. For each of us, this emotional evolution is a very personal and mythic journey. And like any good hero's journey, there are challenges along the way.
CHAPTER 5
"We always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent."
–Carl Jung
The Wounded Empath
The experience of empathy is often distorted by the subjective struggles of the feeler. Naturally occurring remnants of childhood trauma or abuse, in any measure, cause suffering in the form of deep-seated shame or inferiority. We each find a way to live with our wounds. For those of us who manage to find power, we may tend to compensate for feelings of inferiority and insecurity by positioning ourselves as superior in our awareness of others. The wounded empath says, "I know better what you are feeling and experiencing than you do." Ultimately, this becomes hurtful to both ourselves and others around us. The capacity to empathize becomes an instrument to more effectively control others. Trust and safety are never realized and real connection is never established.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Iphelia: Awakening The Gift of Feeling"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Erick Kenneth French.
Excerpted by permission of Tyrian Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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