Feelings 101 - The Language of the Heart

It is amazing to me how little we are taught about our feelings. As a child, I spent hours figuring out how to add two numbers together and practising the skill repeatedly. But if you ask me what a feeling is, I have to draw on my experience with holistic health and spiritual teachings, most of which I gained as an adult. Feelings are so integral to our everyday life, I think it makes sense to learn as much about them as we can.

I guess we don't learn about feelings because there aren't easily explainable and there are so many different theories about them. Quite frankly, people can't even seem to agree upon a definition for feeling nor how it differs from an emotion. There are different linguistic, neurological, psychological and spiritual definitions. Since, I'm going to talk about feelings, I'm going to have to give a definition, and it's going to be my own. I've seen similar definitions to my own elsewhere but I can give no scientific evidence for my definition - it's just one that works for me.

Physical feelings are your brain and body giving you information about the world around you. Emotional feelings are also information about the world around you, but instead of giving you the perspective of your body, your basic emotional feelings give you the perspective of your heart. In other words, your feelings are the language of your heart. Remember that none of the feelings are bad or good in of themselves. Each type of feeling, when treated respectfully, creates a different type of heart-based reaction. For example, fear keeps us safe, anger creates motivation, and grief allows us to let go. Now before you start telling me that your feelings are not giving you accurate guidance, let me explain one more piece of the puzzle.

I used to be really confused about feelings. How can I trust my feelings when I know that they can get me into trouble? How do I know my fear is reasonable, when I can be afraid of something as simple as picking up the phone and calling someone? How can I make a choice based on my joy and excitement when I have been excited about things that have eventually created such pain for me? It took a lot of introspection for me to come up with an answer. It seems that your feelings can only give you accurate guidance when your mind is focused on the present. So often though, we observe something clouded with our past experiences, or we make up a future story about what something will mean. I'm afraid to make a phone call, not because it is dangerous to me but because past phone calls have been painful to me. And the joy I have felt about a choice was not a reality of the choice itself, but an indication of how I feel about everything I imagined that choice would lead to.

Some teachers give the name emotion to these feelings mixed with thoughts. But whatever you want to call it, most of the feelings the average person has are based on some sort of past or future bias. It's no wonder we don't trust our feelings! I imagine that once a person has the ability to truly live in the present, that person can fully rely on their heart to guide their lives. So what does that mean for the rest of us in the meantime? When you want to know how you feel about something, be aware of how much past or future bias you have about it, and focus on the present reality of the thing. And if all else fails, we fortunately have another indicator that can be helpful. This is where the gut feeling comes in. Your gut can give you a quick yes or no feeling on whether the object of your attention is in service to your heart or not.

It takes time to learn to listen to your heart. Both your feelings and gut instinct have a wonderful role to play in helping you towards that goal, as long as you understand what they are and how to use them.

Image: Iamnee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

© Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A Useful Engine

If you have ever seen the children's show Thomas and Friends, you may have noticed how obsessed each of those vehicles are about being a "useful engine." It seems ridiculous how much time and effort the engines spend in the pursuit of "usefulness," and yet it is something I see playing out just as intensely in the world around me. For example, when we meet someone new, one of the first questions we ask is: "What do you do?" It's as if we think we can get a good sense of who someone is by knowing what he or she does. Once we know someone's occupation we instantly decide how useful we believe that particular "doing" to be.

Like many others out there, I have trouble feeling useful. I'm not a particularly high-energy person, so I tend to take it easy. I don't fill my days with too many activities, and when I am working I take a lot of breaks. I'm a stay-at-home mom, and while most people will be politically correct and say that I work as hard as anyone else, I still get a sense of being "less" than someone with a "real" career.

Why are we, as a society, so obsessed with usefulness? Beyond the historical and sociological reasons, I think we have created this hook between self-worth and usefulness. If I contribute to society in measurable and tangible ways, then I know I am good enough to be on the planet and consume the physical resources that I do. I have this constant need to prove that I deserve to be here.

And yet, those times when I do feel useful, my self-worth is not really any more enhanced. Any peace I get for having accomplished a large to-do list is often quickly followed by thoughts of what more I could have done or of the recovery time I might need to "waste" the next day. I will even criticize the quality of my usefulness, thinking that while I did manage to clean the bathrooms, I didn't save a life or make a dollar to feed my family. On the one hand, I am so convinced that I my worth is increased by doing, and on the other hand, no amount of doing is ever enough to increase my self-worth.

Before you start telling me that I am worth being here simply by the fact that I exist, let me tell you that I know that. I have been studying spirituality for years and, mentally, I know that I am worth something and I have something to offer to the people of this planet. I understand that every cog is needed for the clock to run, that God makes no mistakes so I am no mistake, and that like the moon, I make waves just by being me. No matter what the explanation or the metaphor, I know it, but I do not feel it (at least, not yet).

When I look to my future, I want to be able to teach and heal others, and I know that I don't want to need to fill my schedule wall-to-wall with clients to feel like I've been useful. I feel that it's time to accept myself no matter how much I appear to get done, to stop trying to change myself into worthiness, and to stop doing things for no other reason than to feel more useful. So, I'm sending love to the piece of me that needs to feel useful, and I'm sending love and compassion to my laziest parts. I am giving myself full permission to stop trying so hard to be useful and to start being worthy as I am.

Background Image: satit_srihin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

© Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.