EMOTIONAL HONESTY AND RESPONSIBILITY

Emotions have two vitally important purposes for human beings. Emotions are a form of communication. Our feelings are one of the means by which we define ourselves. The interaction of our intellect and our emotions determines how we relate to ourselves.
Our emotional energy is also the fuel that propels us down the pathways of our life journey. Emotions are the orchestra that provides the music for our individual dances - that dictate the rhythmic flow and movement of our human dance. Our feelings help us to define ourselves and then provide the combustible fuel that dictates the speed and direction of our motion - rather we are flowing with it or damming it up within ourselves.

Healthy guilt is what we feel when we violate our own value system. It is an important intuitive component in maintaining a healthy, honest relationship with ourselves. Guilt helps us to be aware of areas that needs some more healing - behavior that is a reaction to old wounds and old tapes. It is generated by our Spirit when we have acted in ways which we need to make amends for, when our humanness has caused us to act in a way that does not respect and honor that we are one with everyone and everything.

It is necessary to start seeing ourselves with more clarity in order to recognize the attitudes, beliefs, and definitions that are dictating our emotional reactions. Once we start achieving more honesty in our perspectives of ourselves, then we can get more clarity in our emotional process.
For instance, until I started to recognize how I had been programmed to have a dysfunctional relationship with my own emotions because I am male, I could not start giving myself permission to get in touch with feelings which I had been programmed to believe were unacceptable for a man in this society.
There are numerous levels, relationships that I had to start seeing with more clarity - getting more intellectually honest with myself about - before I could start changing my relationship in those arenas.

By having expectations I was giving power away. In order to become empowered I had to own that I had choices about how I viewed life, about my expectations. I realized that no one can make me feel hurt or angry - that it is my expectations that cause me to generate feelings of hurt or anger. In other words, the reason I feel hurt or anger is because other people, life, or God are not doing what I want them, expect them, to do. I had to learn to be honest with myself about my expectations - so I could let go of the ones that were insane (like, everyone is going to drive the way I want them to), and own my choices - so I could take responsibility for how I was setting myself up to be a victim in order to change my patterns.

Emotions have a purpose, a very good reason to be - even those emotions that feel uncomfortable. Fear is a warning, anger is for protection, tears are for cleansing and releasing. These are not negative emotional responses! We were taught to react negatively to them. It is our reaction that is dysfunctional and negative, not the emotion.

Emotional energy is not only supposed to be in motion, to flow, it is also the energy that gets us in motion. It is what drives us, what propels us forward through life. When emotional flow is blocked and suppressed it does not go away. Energy cannot simply disappear. It can transform but it cannot disappear. That is a law of physics. Emotional energy that is suppressed still drives us. It is what causes obsessive-compulsive behavior, it is what drives addictions. Repressed emotional energy builds up pressure that has to be released. We are emotionally dammed. Dammed up, blocked up -which is what causes us to feel damned. The emotional energy generated by the circumstances of our childhood and early life does not go away just because we were forced to deny it. It is still trapped in our body - in a pressurized, explosive state, as a result of being suppressed. As long as we have pockets of pressurized emotional energy that we have to avoid dealing with - those emotional wounds will run our lives.

Then we can start setting internal boundaries within the mental, between the mental and emotional, and within the emotional levels of our being. Within the mental we can start discerning and separating the shaming messages that are coming from the disease / critical parent voice from our own wisdom, knowledge and intelligence. By learning to set a boundary between emotional and mental, we can stop reacting to life based on the false belief that what we feel is who we are - that what we feel defines our reality. Once we start having boundaries within the mental, and between the mental and emotional, then we can also start having boundaries within the emotional level of our being start discerning between the emotional truth that is coming from our old wounds and the emotional energy that is Truth.

We need to learn to be emotionally honest with ourselves - and direct and honest with others - in a way that works for us. Having a healthy relationship with our self involves living according to value system that we resonate with - living with integrity.