Emotional awareness

By watedroplet

In my last post, I discussed the role emotions play in the process of letting go. So, emotions are an integral part of letting go, and we need to be aware of these emotions. AWARE?? We are always aware of our emotions, isn't it? 

How many times have you all said that I don't know why I fought with him/her? or something happened and I reacted in this way? or I don't know why my mood is not good? These all show that we are not aware of our emotions. I have faced this many times, and through hard lessons I have to learn to be aware of my emotions. 

I remember one of my job scenarios where I had to leave my city for the job. Something was troubling me from within, and I don't know what? I went to that place to join. By evening, my peace was totally gone, and I just cannot sit or relax at all. For me, having this job was important, but for my survival, my peace was the necessity. I started questioning myself: Why am I not happy when I am getting a job? I had no answer. Night was approaching, and I had to decide. Finally, I said to my parents, let us go back, leaving this job. They were all shocked because I was the one who fought to come here, and now I was saying, Let us go back. They did not question me, and we all came back.

The moment I reached my home, I felt much relaxed and good. After some time, I got a job offer in my own city, which was much better than the previous one. My brother also moved out of the study peacefully for further studies. Things started happening in better ways. That awareness about my emotions was essential for all these plans of the universe to happen. 

Paul Ekman suggested six basic emotions:

a) Sadness: feelings of disappointment, grief, or hopelessness.

b) Happiness: feelings of joy, contentment, and satisfaction.

c) Anger: feelings of hostility and frustration.

d) Fear: feelings that trigger a fight or flight response. 

e) Surprise: positive or negative feeling following an unexpected event. 

f) Disgust: feeling of being repulsed.

Out of these, either one or a combination of a few would be there playing game in our letting go process. In order to become aware of these emotions within ourselves, we need to ask a simple question: what for? This what for? question will become more meaningful once we know the three key elements to our emotions. They are

a) the subjective experience: everyone experiences emotions in their own way. What might be okay for me might make you angry. Sometimes, we might not just have one emotion but a mix of many. This is the segment that differentiates everything. 

b) the physiological response: the autonomic responses. 

c) the behavioral response: actual expression of our emotions.

So, when we are questioning, what for? We are trying to understand the subjective experience we are going through and its intensity that will ultimately decide our physiological response and, hence, the behavioral response. 

In my situation about this, what for? only was manifested as I left that station before night (the behavioral response) in the effect of physiological response (anxiety, no peace, restlessness). For years, I tried to understand why I was not feeling peace when I was getting my job and money, which was my requirement then. 

When things started happening in my life, then I realized that the universe had destined my life to be there in my city. Since I was deviating from the aligned plan, my peace was stolen by the universe, and the moment I came back to surrender to the plan of the universe, everything started happening peacefully. 


This post is a part of Write a Page a Day at www.theblogchatter.com 

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