Learning to Feel

The first time I remember hearing anything about feelings in relation to my spiritual growth was in Conversations with God. I believe the quote was "feelings are the language of the soul."

With where I was at that time in my growth, I thought, "Hmm. That kind of makes sense...because I do have feelings sometimes that tried to guide me this way or that way. Maybe my feelings are that little voice inside my head."

Again, for where I was at that point in time, it was a start. But in really learning more about my feelings...about the Language of Feelings...I wasn't even close.

In Hu Dalconzo's, Self-Mastery: A Journey Home to Your Self...he pulls in every piece of relevant information about feelings from every teacher he could find. And in coaching me to learn how to feel my feelings, I realized that I had really never felt my feelings that much. I had thought about my feelings, but I hadn't really felt them.

Now I understood that feelings were things like happy, sad, peaceful, hurt, etc. I knew all of that. But for most of my life, I had actually repressed my feelings and so what I really knew was when I was supposed to feel these feelings. And I had learned how to just feel them on the surface...just a little bit.

I didn't feel the depth of what was there unless it was an overwhelming rush of emotion. If it was a fabulous high from something I had achieved...or a tremendous low from a loss of something I held dear...I felt that.

But for all those feelings in the middle, I only waded into the water up to my knees.

And in all honesty, I had long ago forgotten that any of it was there anyway. I had long ago accepted the programming that I was given as a child that I wasn't even supposed to be feeling my feelings.

As a child, any loud emotion was discouraged. It didn't matter to my parents whether the emotion I was expressing was joy or anger, laughter or sadness...they wanted me to tone it down.

I heard Bill Cosby say in a comedy routine once, "Parents don't want justice...they want silence!"
And the last part is what is applicable here. My parents and most parents that I knew wanted quiet from children. They wanted emotions within acceptable levels. And those limits were simply the ones that their parents had taught them.

You see, we have passed down so many beliefs from generation to generation that limit who we really are and the limitation of our emotions have done so much greater harm to us than good.

If a child is screaming with delight, why is that a bad thing? If they are hurt and they are crying from pain, why is that to be stifled? And yet, that is exactly what most of us were taught.

It isn't our parents fault. They just didn't know any better. They could not give us that which they did not have.

And so we didn't learn how to really feel our feelings. We didn't learn that there is a wealth of experience in being able to fully feel all the physical sensations in our bodies that come with the different emotions. We have not been able to experience the fullness and richness available in life...because we were taught not to feel them...and certainly not to express them.

I have traveled all over the world. I have been to about 20 different countries and interacted in this country with people from more than that.

Every culture I have found discourages children from really feeling their feelings.

Did your parents ever tell you, "If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about?" This one was a common one from my childhood.

And yet, if my parent had sat down with me and asked me what I was feeling and had fostered an environment where I felt safe to tell them what I was feeling, together we would have been able to work through what I was feeling and why. My parent would have been able to give me permission to feel the physical sensations of whatever I was feeling and simply by facing it and breathing into it, I could have felt it for 10 minutes and it would have been gone...instead of bottling it up and carrying it around with me for 40 years.

I used to have so much anger that I carried around with me, so much sadness, so much embarrassment, hurt and fear...and I simply could not understand why my life was SO difficult.

I couldn't understand why I kept having the same experiences in my life over and over again.

All of this started in 1990 when I woke up one morning with a blood clot. And I'm not going to ever say that my poor diet and lack of drinking any water didn't have something to do with that showing up in my life.

I will tell you though that over years, I did change my diet and I created a habit of carrying water with me every where I go. Everyone that knows me rarely sees me without one of those Nalgene 32 oz. bottles of water with me.

But my blood clot did not heal until I learned the Language of Feelings and started applying them in my life. I applied myself with all of these exercises that my coach gave me that were designed with the intention of pulling these feelings out that had been buried for so long within me.

In the winter of 2004, about 6 months after I started the Self-Mastery course, I noticed a lump in my upper left thigh...right about the spot I had my first clot. I felt a pang of fear because I just did not want all of this to start again.

But that only lasted a second when I noticed it. I felt it and let it go.

A few days later, I noticed the lump again because I bumped my leg on something at work and it was sore. I put my hand down and felt it and realized that the lump was bigger. When I got home, I looked at it and realized that the lump wasn't bigger. It was rising to the surface.

I remember that during the Super Bowl game that year, I was sitting at home alone. The lump had risen all the way to the surface of my leg and was just there like a big boil or something. I got a needle out, sterilized and pierced it. It bled a little, but mostly it was just clear fluid that drained out.

About a week later, I noticed that the spot had almost completely healed up and there was just a brown spot...like a big freckle there now.

Later, I was telling my massage therapist about it and she wanted to see it. She looked and said, "Which one is it? I see two of them. One is a couple of inches lower."

I realized laying there that there had been two blood clots. I had one in April 1990 and another one in October that showed up on the venogram. The other had come up and healed without me even noticing it. I lay there simply amazed at the miracle that had happened to me.

Now for any skeptics out there, I know what you're thinking. How do you know that you still don't have them?

I know because in 2005, I had an ultrasound done for another issue and they looked for blood clots in that leg. I told them that I used to have two in my femoral vein. The technician scanned that area several time and said, "No. There's nothing there. You might have had some clots in some superficial veins, but there's just no way that you had some rise up from your deep veins."

I didn't argue with her. I didn't need to. I laid there on that table in the Navy hospital and watched as the doctors showed me on that screen where I had that clot. I had them explain to me several times what it meant to have one that deep. I had spent weeks in the hospital on a heparin drip, months of Coumadin supplementation, years of taking baby aspirin and dealing with the limitations of having a leg that limited my physical activity.

And so when she told me that not only was there nothing there, but really no evidence that anything had ever been there...I just laid there and smiled.

My left leg is still larger than my right one and may always be. That is of little concern to me. But the clots are healed...and that does matter.

In Louise Hay's book "You Can Heal Your Life" she talks about how our repressed feelings manifest as "dis-ease." She has researched and found which thought patterns most often cause which "dis-eases."

The probable cause listed out next to "Blood - Clotting" says it is related to "closing down the flow of joy." And the new thought pattern to create a belief from says: "I awaken new life within me. I flow."

This is what my "Learning to Flow" has been about.

Learning to flow with joy. But also learning to flow with anger, with sadness, with fear, with embarrassment, with hurt, envy and shame.

Because if my teacher taught me anything, he taught me that "Feelings aren't right, wrong, good or bad. They just are!"

It isn't the feeling of emotions that harms us. It is the repression of them that harm us.

And because emotions are really "energy in motion," they cannot be stopped. They will seek an outlet.

As humans, we have a choice. We can choose to allow ourselves to BE human and really experience all of the feelings that life has to offer...or we can choose to repress them and be surprised when they show up in our life in ways that are not as delightful.

I have experienced the other way. I hope that if you seek to learn the Language of Feelings, it is not because you have a life threatening illness that quickly got your undivided attention.

I hope it is something as simple as the dissatisfaction that comes from the feeling that you aren't really living your life...that your life is living you.

But for wherever you are on your journey, whether you face something that is threatening to take your life...whether it is a physical pain or simply you want peace and joy in your life. If you are looking for a relief from the depression, rage, discouragement, judgment, jealousy, guilt, confusion and/or feeling that you need to be perfect or just never feel good enough...I offer hope.

It isn't a magic pill. It isn't something you can drink and feel better in the morning. It requires work and a sincere willingness to change your life.

But if you're desperate enough, you'll do it. I did. It took me 14 years to find this solution, but I can tell you from my own experience that it works. And it won't take you nearly that long to apply it and see the difference in your own life.

And even more than just healing something, learning to feel my feelings has given me creative control over my life.

With anything that happens in my life, I am no longer looking outwards and asking..."Why does this keep happening to me?"

I am no longer thinking, "I wish she would stop doing that....I wish he would just start giving me that like I asked."

I understand through the power of my feelings that I have the power to change my life...that I attract what it is that I have within me. If I have anger within me, then I will attract situations to be angry about. If I have hurt within me, then I will attract pain.

However, if I let these go and find the joy that already was inside of me, the joy that has been there all along...then I find my life gets easier.

I find that the types of people and circumstances that used to come into my life and bring me such grief...just don't anymore.

I find that the more I simply allow myself to feel love, happiness, peace and joy, the more I see them reflected back to me.

It is still a journey. I am not "there." I do not claim to be an enlightened master...but I am on a journey to mastery. 

But I am not living my life in chains anymore either. I have learned that life doesn't have to be a struggle. I can grow through joy instead of pain.

Who wouldn't want that?