We are all afraid of pain and we do our best to avoid it. That is the irony of life. We fear emotions because they can be very painful and uncomfortable. So we avoid, distract, make excuses, project, and engage in a myriad of other behaviors meant to help us avoid the painful feelings. That is our small-self directing us away from our truth in a misdirected effort to protect us. It is the part of us that we most often identify as who we are. In its effort to protect us it inadvertently keeps us stuck. What we fail to recognize is that this attempt to avoid the painful emotions becomes the ground for a grand illusion and ongoing suffering.
What Your Small Self Won’t Tell You
In order to grow and move forward in our lives scary and painful emotions and related feelings need to be identified, expressed, and worked through. They need to be faced head-on. What the small-self does not tell you is that the act of facing your scary emotions and working through your feelings leads to liberation and freedom. It does not tell you that you are more than your feelings.
But don’t be mad at the small-self. It really does not know better. You see, the job of small-self job is to keep you safe. The problem is that it often does not distinguish between true danger and the illusion of danger. That is the job for your Higher-Self, the part of you that knows that emotions will not hurt you and that you can shift your perception of events and in turn change your feelings about them. It is not the emotions that hurt us, it is our reaction and our resistance to our emotions that hurt us.
By working through and feeling our feelings we shift our perception of the events in our lives that caused the problems we are experiencing. This can be achieved in a safe, non-judgmental environment where the small-self can feel safe to let go of control so that the Higher Self can take over. This is how progress is made.
The grand irony is that avoidance of feelings keeps us stuck in the very feelings we are trying to avoid. The treasure is on the other side of the pain but you can only get there by going through the pain; embracing it, honoring it, and accepting it for the wisdom it has for you.
“When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics”. UNK
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