Emotional Distancing

Not from others. From yourself. To protect your Eternal self from the influence of the short circuit between emotions, thoughts, and who you really are at your core.

When an emotion comes calling at the door to your mind, it does have the right to be there. Emotions are essential to survival and provide information, sensory data about the environment. They must be accepted and welcomed with curiosity, even affection, because they are childlike in their simplicity.

But keep your thoughts and behaviours at a safe distance because emotions can be contagious and acting with them, giving in to their impulses, is unproductive for your core self. Treat your emotions like a toddler, one with story upon story to share with you but much of their information is filtered through a blurred lense. Don’t reject or abandon the toddler when they give you misinformation. They are doing the best they can.

Striking up a conversation with unpleasant emotions is a necessary challenge. Discomfort fuels the drive for growth and tells you there are changes you need to be making in the moment. Chatting with your fear, trading blows with your anger, or consoling your sorrow are the only ways to get to know them. Understand them. Ease their dissatisfaction. Balance them.

Each emotion is a valuable indicator of your present situation. Synergy created them to nudge us into action, not into judgement. Engaging with emotions provides Datter so long as a feedback loop of thoughts and associations doesn’t trap you in the past or fling you into the future.

That’s why it’s important to keep your emotions at a healthy distance. Then you can ensure you maintain function in the Moment by listening to what your emotions have to say and then allowing them to be on their way and not take up residence in your mind.

The Paralysis of Hopelessness

It’s ok to wallow.

To sit within the vacuum of hopelessness looking out with dull eyes at whatever surrounds you.

Hopelessness is a feeling. Feelings are not right or wrong, they are a sensory response to the present social environment. Hopelessness arises from a lack, an imbalance, from dissatisfaction.

No matter how plush and inviting or harsh and grating the environment, hopelessness is a valid response to an absence of something essential to your purpose, your survival.

Don’t judge the feeling with thoughts of how things could be worse. Don’t shame the feeling with thoughts of how others would appreciate where you are so you have no right to feel down. Don’t invalidate the feeling with thoughts that you should be happy.

In that Moment, hopelessness is your feeling. Simple as that.

Greet it with compassion and curiosity. Embrace it. Hello Hopelessness, what can I do for you in this moment? What brings you here today? What have you got to say for yourself?

And in the vacuum of silence and stillness which accompanies hopelessness, listen very carefully.

Trust the silence. Sometimes it will whisper, other times roar. But it will never lie to you.

Spiteful Pleasure?

We’re told to feel guilt and shame for the thoughts in our head. We self-chastise for offenses we didn’t commit, merely imagined. But…really…it’s NOT the thought that counts.

Thoughts and feelings are mere shadows in the Mattersphere, somewhat perceptible but not able to take action on their own. You are your actions, not your thoughts, in the material world. Even in the Eternal world, you are not your thoughts because thoughts are data fragments floating around in our local hard drive brain, they were not supposed to take up residence! They will not follow us in the present moment or in death.

Ever taken spiteful malicious pleasure in someone else’s misfortune and then felt awful afterward? Even though you had nothing to do with their circumstances and did not bring about their pain, did you feel guilt and criticize yourself for not being a good person?

Why?

What did you DO to deserve your self-condemnation?

You had a thought.

That thought was satisfying to you. Remove judgement from it, because judgement is a construct better left to Eternity. The thought was not malicious or spiteful. It was simply a thought, and your satisfaction in it simply satisfaction. Accept both without guilt or shame.

Synergy created us to be curious and hopeful and to seek satisfaction. Feelings are supposed to be sensory responses to the social environment, not tied to our internal environment. Thoughts are meant to pre-process Datter, and then disappear, not get stuck in loops of thought – feeling – thought – feeling.

The short circuit of our self-awareness makes us judge ourselves about the sources of satisfaction and pleasure, whether a thought or an act, and then society perpetuates that judgement. Notice children have no shame or guilt? If you learn to live in the Moment and accept your thoughts as simply information triggered by the events and circumstances around you, and you let go of contempt and criticism of those thoughts, and even of past behaviours. Did you hurt someone? Let it go but don’t do it in another Moment. Did someone hurt you? Let it go but keep safe boundaries in another Moment.

When you occupy the Now, there is no wrong or right. There is acceptance, curiosity, hope, joy, growth and gratitude. No matter whether the Moment includes pain and strife or ease and comfort, acceptance and satisfaction can be found. Every one of us is trying to survive the best we can in each moment, and each moment is what it needs to be.

Pain and Suffering

Pain is part of the price of admission for living, for growing character and resilience. Suffering is voluntary and arises from resistance to the reality that people will disappoint your expectations, goals will fail to fulfill you, and you will let yourself down when you turn out not to be who you believed you were.

No expectations, only boundaries. Even for your own mind and body. Surrender your self-expectations, too, allowing instead discovery of your purpose. That is how to avoid suffering.

Physical and emotional pain only interfere with life if we allow them to. We hear stories about mind over matter and admire feats of courage where someone overcomes great discomfort in moments of crisis. Are those people different? Do they have a gift?

No, they were present in the Moment and received strength and tools to escape the situation using their own existing core emotional and physical structure. They were not distracted by doubts or fears of not being good enough or making mistakes.

Pain arises from imbalance. Physical imbalance comes from structural or chemical deviations from optimum. One person’s source of pain is not the same as another’s, a debilitating deficit for me is not a source of dysfunction for you. Addressing them requires the use of all the escape room tools and resources available in your situation. The process of healing the imbalance must start from inside yourself, from identifying what it feels like. Physical suffering sometimes comes from the uncertainty and fear of not being able to articulate the nature, quality and parameters of the pain, not necessarily the dysfunction itself.

Emotional imbalance comes from social and relationship deviations from optimum. One person’s source of emotional pain is not the same as another’s, a debilitating toxicity for me may not be a source of dysfunction for you. The process of healing the imbalance must start from inside yourself, from identifying what it feels like. Emotional suffering sometimes comes from the uncertainty and fear of not being able to articulate the nature, quality and parameters of the pain, not necessarily the dysfunction itself.

Each of us is individual and unique. Sometimes we suffer because we are told we should, because another person experienced pain in a similar situation. Pain is subjective, it is in the mind, and can be used for growth.

All pain has purpose. No suffering does. Giving meaning and reason to pain alleviates suffering. Spending a Moment to investigate the pain with curiosity and acceptance will reveal to you the purpose. Embrace the pain, because at the moment it is your reality and all that is, is as it must be.

And, if you have been suffering…forgive yourself. That moment is over and a new one just beginning.

Neutrality verses Stability

The Periodic Table of the Elements organizes all the types of atoms based on physical and chemical properties. Atoms behave in a predictable consistent manner in set conditions.

So too do most humans. Although we may subconsciously blind ourselves to the predictable patterns, they are there. Accepting they exist is the first step toward becoming curious about how to interact safely with all the elemental personality types and finding joy and satisfaction in safe interactions no matter how volatile the personalities involved. Every person we meet is a gift from Synergy and if we open it with grateful curiosity we will obtain the hidden treasure found within the most challenging of relationships.

We are what we are.

But we can become more through our interactions just like the elements become more through forming bonds with other elements.

All atoms on their own are electrically neutral. There is balance between the core nucleus of positively charged protons and the orbiting clouds of negatively charged electrons. If left isolated, no atom is in and of itself volatile. They only become reactive in the presence of other atoms, whether their same type or a different kind entirely.

Humans are like that too. Leave us alone, without outside influence, and we don’t react if there’s nothing to react to! We are neutral, balanced in our positives and negatives. That person, who exists independent of humanity, is our Eternal self, the best and most wonderful version of our core structure. Every single one of us is beautifully neutral and balanced on our own.

But humans, like atoms, do not exist in an empty vacuum. We must interact from the moment of birth until we either die or isolate ourselves in a safe space. Those interactions are driven by our core structure and the structure of the people we associate with.

In the presence of other atoms, elements may become reactive dependant on the core structures involved. The objective in chemical reactions is not electrical neutrality, but rather structural stability. This is achieved by the movement of negatively charged electrons because positive charges cannot be changed. So atoms need to either give negativity away, or receive negativity, to get satisfied. Some are more volatile than others in their effort to attain chemical stability.

Humans are like that too. We feel the drive to either generate negativity in others which, be honest, can be very satisfying in the moment, or we seek to alleviate negativity which is also satisfying. Some people are more volatile than others in their effort to attain emotional stability.

There are 18 families of core structures on the Periodic Table but 8 are the fundamental ones most involved in our lives. Only one of those groups is both chemically and electrically stable, the rest have varying degrees of reactivity.

Understanding human reactivity as the quest for emotional stability while respecting the underlying balanced core structure allows the formation of lasting, productive, stable bonds.

Macrocosm reflects microcosm…we are what we are composed of.