Living an Inspired Life

Don't think away your feelings

“When emotions are managed by the heart, they heighten your awareness of the world around you and add sparkle to life. The result is new intelligence and a new view of life.”
-- Doc Childre and Howard Martin

How do you intellectualize your emotions?
Many of us live so much in our heads that we intellectualize our emotions. We analyze, rationalize and explain them away so quickly that we don’t actually experience them.
Learn to honor your emotions at all times by being willing to feel them. Of course, you may need to exercise some judgment over how and when you express them.

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."
-- Joan Borysenko

If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love. THICH NHAT HANH

Working on this and understand the message. A difficult thing to do for a man but not impossible.

Most people can't even name the emotions...I learned there are six: Lonely (this one is disputed, but it is what I learned), Sad, Happy, Fear, Anger, & Shame...and it took a lot of counseling for me to be able to say how I was feeling versus what I was thinking.

I also learned which parts of the body each of these emotions will affect and what happens when someone in a group setting doesn't feel the emotion that is there.

And the two most important things I learned...no one can "make" you feel...saying someone makes you sad or angry gives up your own power to someone else. Also, feelings/emotions are not good or bad, negative or positive...they just are.

Very interesting thread. Causes some deep thinking. Thanks!

Royal Yoga wrote: Don't think away your feelings

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."
-- Joan Borysenko

ComputerBreath wrote: And the two most important things I learned...no one can "make" you feel...saying someone makes you sad or angry gives up your own power to someone else.

Yes, I'm working on that one. Hard concept with those people closest to us.

Have a blessed lunch break and lets be friends, if they can do it, we can do it.

http://www.dogwork.com/ddcv4/

Rockdoc Franz wrote: Working on this and understand the message. A difficult thing to do for a man but not impossible.

I know its not easy especially for men, but isn't it worth the effort????

I like all your responses, advancing on our individual paths is not easy but necessary and very rewarding. Showing emotions - especially the compassionate, loving ones - is very difficult for all of us (fear of rejection? being laughed at? not being in control? ...). Its easier for most people to show anger than love, but it is amazing what happens if we let go of fear - fear cannot exist in the presence of love.

Value the process
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear ... as it is, infinite."
-- William Blake
When we stop and pay attention to ourselves, we begin to see clearly the habits and patterns that have kept us asleep and confused and misled for so long. With awareness, we can choose to shift from the selfish and narrow outlook of our personality to the all-embracing generosity of our soul, simply by changing our perspective.
Change your mind and you’ll change your world.
"You watch your mind to see who you are not. I watch my mind to gain a sense of its content, which has always been my pain. As I watch it, I get a sense of its impermanence. Thoughts come and go as part of a process. I see how content dissolves into process and begin to see the patterns in the process. Realizing it isn’t MY suffering, MY pain, it becomes THE pain. I’ve gone from the tiny, the small, and the individual to the universal. I feel OUR pain. When we do, we go from fear to compassion. Fear is MY pain, compassion is THE pain."
-- Stephen Levine
Power to Tolerate
To tolerate does not mean to die, but to live in everyone's heart with love. No natter how much against you someone is, even if you have to tolerate not once but ten times, nevertheless, the fruit of the power of tolerance is imperishable and sweet.

ComputerBreath wrote: Most people can't even name the emotions...I learned there are six: Lonely (this one is disputed, but it is what I learned), Sad, Happy, Fear, Anger, & Shame...and it took a lot of counseling for me to be able to say how I was feeling versus what I was thinking.

I also learned which parts of the body each of these emotions will affect and what happens when someone in a group setting doesn't feel the emotion that is there.

And the two most important things I learned...no one can "make" you feel...saying someone makes you sad or angry gives up your own power to someone else. Also, feelings/emotions are not good or bad, negative or positive...they just are.

CB, could you share with us what you learned regarding which body parts each emotion will affect? Or where the info is so I could read it? And by any chance, is there anything written about the emotion that we feel when we feel Love? You know, that serene that fills you and makes you focus on only the being that you are loving? Not sure that makes sense, but it is an emotion (I think) that I've never heard a name for. Happy comes closest, but there's more to it.
Thanks in advance!