Using Our Emotions As Another Sense

Our senses help us explore our physical environment. Our feelings are connected to what those senses gather but are not limited to sensory information alone; feelings are also connected to memory and experience. The items we remember can absolutely generate an emotional response.

Feelings can open us to the subtleties of life at the intersection our environment and ourselves. These feelings can act almost as an overlay over our daily life, highlighting potentials and resistance.

Certain things and places produce an internal response even if those things and those places are non-existent or not even here. When we try to link the way we feel emanating from something specific, we make a mistep in awareness. The feeling is not coming from outside of us; that feeling is telling us something.

If we attempt to label and separate emotions into positive and negative camps, we attempt to ignore a rich source of information. These emotions are just like physical sensations we receive from nerves firing throughout our body.

It is not bad that we can feel our fingers being burnt by something. The feeling of being burnt is not pleasant, but it is critical to limiting the damage to our fingers. We pull away with our hand because we know something is wrong.

Our feelings act in a similar way. If we feel sad, we feel anxious, we feel happy . . . our emotions are telling us something about this moment. To not listen to those emotions is like having nerve damage in your fingers; you don't feel the fingers burning until it's way too late.

Trying to block unpleasant emotions will produce similar results in your life. The damage that blocking emotions can create is much more difficult to heal and recover than burnt fingers. All of that emotional damage is usually not something you can point to and simply apply an ointment or cream. It embeds itself into your subconscious network like an emotional cyst. It's below the surface, and if you don't take care of it, it can create a real problem down the road.

We create these emotional cysts throughout our lives. The first key is to limit new cysts from forming within us. This means increasing our awareness of this moment. Then, once new damage is limited or cut off, it'll be easier to uncover these emotional cysts and heal them appropriately. Small steps.