Something I learnt from my many years as a Buddhist is the importance of focus when trying to achieve something. The approach came across to me - initially, at any rate - as a case of tame the mind, and then the emotions will follow like the subordinate creatures they “should” be. It took quite a few years and experiences, and only came to the fullness of my understanding AFTER I had stopped using Buddhism as my primary identification, that Buddhism is about calmly embracing and unifying all aspects of oneself, including so-called "dark" emotions like jealousy, fear, etc (see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/10/them-and-us.html). It's probably akin to shadow work in Wicca (and other traditions/paths) - working with one's shadows, the aspects of oneself that one doesn't want shown out to everyone in the bright light.
PS - to be clear, working with shadow emotions does NOT mean using them to do harm: it means understanding them (the gift of learning, is probably how Karla McLaren would term that), managing them/their impact (as will be discussed below), and attempting to transform them - e.g., anger into passion (something that Buddhism did with demon spirits when it went to Tibet - those entities became fearsome protectors).
Sound a bit scary? It shouldn't. The power that goes to these more negative aspects of ourselves the energy we feed them by trying to deny them: it's a bit like trying to cover a splash of tar or contrasting paint by putting more and more tar or contrasting paint over it. Perhaps another, slightly different explanation would be trying to cover the smell of food starting to go off by using perfume: the food will keep rotting more and more, until we are eventually forced to take it out to the rubbish bin.
OUR emotions are OURS. We can work with them just as we can with most things - for instance, most of us can exercise to increase our vitality and well being (although we may need to find what form of exercise is best for us); most of us can improve our diet and thereby reduce our vulnerability to disease and increase our sense of wellbeing. Many people know they can work with meditation to calm and harness the energy of the mind. Well, it's the same with emotions.
Some people are doing this already. I've seen on TV quite a few send ups of people (generally Californians) who get counselling as a regular part of life. Well, the facts are that people who aren't afraid to genuinely seek and work with counselling, or growth work, may be ahead of many others when it comes to working with emotions, particularly our shadow self.
As with everything else, some techniques suit some and not others: in my opinion, the wide range of counselling techniques available (do you know how many techniques there are available? Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counseling_topics as a starting point anyway :) ) don't include techniques that suit every person at every stage of their life (and what suits a person at one stage, may not at some other time). Working with emotions can also be done through things like focusing on doing an activity well (which is, in essence, a Zen technique), or moving activities (such as Tai Chi or doing the gardening).
Some techniques are dangerous: getting drunk or escaping emotions through drugs may allow some people to get through moments when they feel overwhelmed, but there is usually psychic damage (particularly to the state of the aura), and the risks of other damage such as addiction, psychosis, etc. Did you know that obsession and possession are potential dangers from getting drunk? That's one reason some people have a change of character when they become drunk. Lobsang Rampa (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa) talks about the damage to the aura of alcohol and other drugs, but I consider he over-emphasises that harm at the expense of some of the other forms of harm, including the health damage doctors talk about.
Yet there can be a benefit to a moderate amount of drinking for some people: it may help them to open up to friends, or to relax and release some of the energy they are dealing with. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on the company they choose to keep. That same qualification applies to counselling: if you don't trust your counsellor, or if they are not in harmony with your best interests, they can be damaging. That does not constitute grounds for condemning all counsellors: it is grounds for finding a suitable technique and /or counsellor.
One technique you can use for knowing your emotions better is the results of your spellcraft.
Let's take a fairly obvious example: trying to send healing to someone you dislike. If you send healing to someone you love, your love will be a conduit for the energy, a motivator to get you to try your best, and an energy that will enhance everything you touch on that quest. (It might also lead you to overdo things and drain yourself as well, but that's a different matter.) If you dislike someone, unless you are very skilled at identifying, owning and working with your emotions, what will be sent is probably a bucket of light and three of crud. What do you think the effect of that will be?
Notice the qualification I gave there? If you are not afraid to be open about your feelings, and have some skill at working with them, then you are FAR more likely to be able to overcome them than someone who determinedly says "no, I love everyone in the whole wide world - so how could I possibly dislike person X?" I'm tempted to get flippant and say something like you can help them and you don't even have to stop hating them, but the reality is once you invest some effort into caring for them, you may find your views start to change anyway. And, I have to say, there's absolutely no point sending them three buckets of healing and five minutes after the healing session ends sending then ten of crud.
(On that, in my case, I can generally feel the direction that energy is flowing or moving, so if I am feeling irritated by someone and feel some movement towards them, I know I'm slipping and starting to do what is basically psychic attack. {This is far more common in everyday life than most realise: gossip and slagging off at others is the usual external sign of such attack, but controlling activity [see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/10/control.html] is also significant.)}Other techniques that help control this are flaming and closing one's aura, routinely asking for protection for those one may affect (see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/11/protection.html), and asking one's guides to give signals when one is adversely affecting others - perhaps asking that, if it is for the Highest Spiritual Good, people one is adversely affecting oh, say, scratch the tip of their nose. If you see that, you then ask for and check protection exists around both you and the other person, and ask your constructive influence guides to repeat that within, say, 30 seconds - to rule out your paranoia causing the other person, if they're sensitive, reacting to your suggestion, and to exclude things like a bit of hay fever. Have a look at my post http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/06/psychic-attack-energy-protection-and.html for more on this.)
Let's go back to spells. When I'm assessing the results of my spellcraft to explore my self, I look at:
- Higher Self
- conscious self
- unconscious self.
Let's say I am working on a healing spell, and find myself being drawn closer to that person. If that is a harmonious situation, it could be that my unconscious is remembering past life situations of friendship and there is a "liking" there. If there is no liking, but our paths still get closer, it could be that my Higher Self has identified that I could learn from the person.
That illustration is a it weak. Let's say I do a spell to bring wealth to someone else. Maybe the spell seems to work, but the person is guilty about being better off, When I meditate on my various levels, I may well find that my unconscious is jealous, which has resulted in a touch of guilt as an expression of fear in the recipient, but my conscious and Higher Selves may well be aware that this person needs a break. (The solution here would be to set up a psychic filter on one's energies - the short term solution, at any rate. The longer term solution may involve working with accepting fate, or trying to create and get into a circle of "giving forward" [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward or ], or using an affirmation to build generosity.)
This is still a bit shaky as an illustration: what is needed is another level of analysis at each level: "too much, too little and out of specification". This is a bit of a formula for planning things like HAZOPs (HAZard and OPerability analysis, where one considers, for instance, what happens in an engineering process if there is too little water, too much water or the water is not the proper quality).
Let's consider the sending someone else wealth scenario again.
Let's say the Higher Self was overendowed with generosity. How would that show? Perhaps as not enough coming back to oneself. If the unconscious was underendowed with generosity, then perhaps the spell would not be as effective as it should be. Let's say the conscious self had a slightly embittered idea of generosity (possibly because one didn't quite believe that giving would ultimately lead to one receiving as well?): then perhaps the results aren't quite what one asked for (so, instead of the person you are supposed to be working for, say, getting a raise at work, something may happen which cuts down on expenses - which can be OK, but you still didn't quite get what you claimed to be working for.
I'm going to leave this topic at this for now. The best way I can illustrate this is with a matrix, so I'll get going on that over the next few weeks.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post has no photo as it will eventually have a matrix uploaded as a JPEG.
Tags: emotions, energy work, responsibility, Buddhism, drugs, Lobsang Rampa, love, personal characteristics, self knowledge
First published: Saturday 1st December, 2007
Last edited: Saturday 1st December, 2007
If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram.
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence
(AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or
other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to
reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise replicate any part of
this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s
may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.
Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative
Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment