Author: Arline Rowden
Most of us have seen the satellite pictures of hurricanes as they have been moving across the water. It’s an amazing sight to see a large hurricane with a well defined eye holding the bands of water and wind in circulation around the eye. Over water, especially warmer water, the hurricane becomes larger and stronger. We notice that when the hurricane begins to travel over land, the water and wind damage land and everything else in its path. After some time the hurricane dissipates and disintegrates. But another hurricane forms in the future and the process is repeated.
As humans, can we learn something about our own nature by watching what unfolds in nature?
We might consider water to be symbolic of emotions, wind of our mental nature and land and physical structures could be symbolic of our physical body. So we could consider that our emotions and emotionalized thoughts could be the swirling bands of our personal hurricanes when we are very upset about something that’s unfolding in our personal environment.
Emotional healing is a process that happens over time. I want to share some beginning steps that can be helpful in stopping the swirling of one’s personal hurricanes. Whenever you feel the swirling of emotions the following process can be very helpful.
- Identify what you are feeling. Such as: “I’m feeling frustrated.” “I’m afraid about —–“
- Then ask yourself: What is this doing for me? For example: “When I get lost in the swirling, I don’t have to address a difficult, confusing or fearful situation.”
You might need to talk to someone who can help you focus when you are new to this simple process. But when you stop to think about what you are feeling and identify the feeling, it stops the overwhelming, swirling experience. And you have taken a big step towards emotional healing.
Now I want to go a little deeper into our emotional nature. Why do we hold onto our emotions and emotionalized thoughts? When we are emotional, aren’t emotions released? If that was true then we wouldn’t keep getting emotional about the same issues again and again. At some point, we would finish releasing the emotions and healing and balance would be restored.
It seems that in our nature we feel there’s something of value to be learned when we become emotional but we aren’t sure what it is or how to sort it out. So when we have been emotional in a situation, we tend to gather the energy of all of our emotional feelings, everything that we sense through our senses, all of our connected thoughts, judgments and conclusions. Then we tie it all up in an energy bundle and connect an energy cord to the bundle and keep it in our aura, generally around our feet. This is often referred to as emotional baggage.
These bundles tend to have a certain vibrational theme to them. So the next time a similar situation unfolds, we bring up that related bundle of emotions, everything sensed by all the senses, all connected thoughts, judgments and conclusions and launch it out through our solar plexus chakra and it gets added to all of the current related energy. Then we again gather all related energies from the present and past similar situations and bundle them up and keep them in our aura. Have you ever looked back on an emotional experience after it was over and wondered why you became as upset as you did over the situation? Did it seem like you overreacted to the current situation?
Have you ever noticed a pattern to your emotional upsets? In other words, the people, places and situations change but the issue seems very familiar. So that’s when we want to examine the eye of the hurricane. The eye is a fixed belief, judgment or conclusion. It’s something that we have not confronted to see if the belief, judgment or conclusion is reality or still true.
Let’s look at an example. A child is abused in some way, perhaps by a parent. As a result of those experiences the child decides that they are unlovable or that people who should love and care for you hurt you or that you can’t trust anyone. So the child grows up and begins to have experiences in adult life where their original belief is validated. They have been unconsciously using a defensive program created by past experiences. And after years of these painful experiences, they are certain that their belief is true. But they are miserable and want life to be different.
One day they may notice that someone they work with has a happy relationship and they wonder why they don’t have happy relationships. Perhaps they begin to go to a therapist, read some self-help books, go to classes about relationships, begin to meditate, go for energy sessions, etc. And they begin to challenge their belief. They begin to learn how to determine if another person is treating them with respect and make better choices in relationships. They begin to realize that their life experiences can be more positive; they are lovable and can learn who and when to trust.
This process is about sorting out their wisdom from the emotional bundle they have been carrying around with them. They begin to release the old emotional energy since they have realized what they needed to about the experiences of the past. The sunlight has come out after the hurricane has dissipated and they can see more clearly now.