Journal: My journey with emotions

I think why I was weary of emotions in the last 3-4 years was due to the fact that for me, throughout this life, emotions were at the forefront of my identity.

I felt almost one with – not the emotions per se – but with the feeling of them inside of me, if that makes sense.
My awareness was almost completely identified with the feeling of an emotion. That feeling felt personal, it felt like me.
I knew emotions are not me, as emotions tended to come and go, switch and change, and I understood I am quickly an observer of the emotional winds. Yet, the inner palpability, the feeling of them, the way my soul reacted to them, that reaction felt mine. That feeling, that inner perception felt mine.

When I would feel a strong emotion (positive or negative), the feeling it would evoke in me would be that close to “my face”, to “my identity”, that I would almost consider myself to be that feeling, that soul reaction. Just like a car that would be pumped gas and accelerated in a certain direction, it would feel almost impossible for me to not go fully into the reaction of that emotion. It would feel almost impossible for me to not let the car push me into that direction, to stop the car or shift directions. It would feel almost impossible for me, in the past, to detach from an emotion.
Thus, I would almost mechanically enact it out, like a hopeless actor in a theatre. And more, I would feel personally involved in making sure that emotion is being played out to its best🙂

I could hardly feel a detachment or a space from my emotions. I could hardly feel a choice on how I want to react.
I would mostly feel completely attached to a certain emotion, like being part of my identity. I fought for them their wars, I cried for them their victims, I cherished their parties and victoriously swiped the blood of their enemies from my face🙂
I was a slave to my own emotional perception, to much degree.

And through all my emotional reactions, by either hurting others or myself, I ended up mostly hurting myself – at a deeper level, that I was not seeing in that moment. At a soul or core level.

At a soul or core level, I feel like something different than the observable world.
I feel like a different “thing” than my physical body, than my human mind, than my emotions.
I feel like a quiet pond, a still lake of quiet observation. I feel like something that can be named “awareness”.
Whenever anything touches this still pond within, this lake, that thing creates a wave inside of me, that now gets perceived.
I perceive my own waves created by the disturbances/touches of the exterior world. I perceive myself with the help of the observable world.
And at first, whenever an emotion would touch my inner lake, my inner pond or ocean, the wave it created in me felt personal. It felt mine. It felt like me. I felt anger was me, I felt happiness was me. And all these emotions pushed my inner substance to create a counter reaction. And I would constantly stir myself and automatically react in the way that emotion called for. Sometimes I would react angry, sometimes I would express joy and happiness. Yet the thing is that I felt like almost having no choice in those expressions. I would just see myself reacting, and not even: I would not even be consciously aware that that was a reaction, I felt like I was just myself. My emotional reactions felt that close to my face, that they felt like me. I thought the waves in the lake are me.

And when I would start be touched by an emotion, it would be almost next to impossible to detach myself from the identity with it. I could hardly stop that car from going in the direction it was going. And even more, if I started going in a certain emotional direction, it was almost impossible to shift directions, or take a turn. It would pretty much just be a full accelerated highway drive, that most of the time resulted with me crushed on a wall :))

I can associate this process with a car or a ship I didn’t had a control over. I would press the acceleration paddle yet I wouldn’t know how to control the stirring wheel to make the car avoid obstacles or go where I wanted to go. Thus most times I would end up crushed in a wall or over a fence🙂

And that was mostly from not having a certain direction for my driving altogether. Not knowing myself, feeling almost completely unconscious to who or what I am, waking up as this unconscious creature on planet Earth, made for me to mostly “walk in darkness”. And not only walk in darkness, yet .. freaking accelerate in darkness with an F1 jet airplane through unseen objects, trees, mountains, people and buildings. Thus, I used to crush a lot. My ship got bumped that many times that I can hardly remember.

And most of the time it was like the ship was controlling the drive. Yes, I was there behind the stirring wheel, yet unconscious of the fact that I even had a stirring wheel in my hands. Unconscious of the whole control panel, the pedals, the “cargo” and the ship itself.

Once the ship would start accelerating in one direction, next thing I would see myself bumped in a wall. Cried for days, months, years. Lost hair, lost hope. Started all over.

With time, I slowly understood there is a brake pedal as well in my ship. I slowly understood whenever an emotion comes and I see my ship almost automatically accelerating in a certain direction, I can also hit the brake, move more slowly or pause the movement. I could still not be able to detach from the emotion (the gas) yet I could try to control the speed.

Then I tested with resisting to move altogether. Whenever an emotion came I resisted to accelerate and move in the direction it lead me. I soon learned that skill, and it proved helpful. I could now at least control the movement of my ship. Yet I wasn’t yet having a certain direction for my movement.

Where do I want to go?
Where am I actually, in the first place? What is this dark, unrecognisable place I find myself in? What is this human body? What are these emotions and thoughts? Thus I mostly felt like a new-born baby, looking at my entire human self all over again, analysing its details from scratch, like dismantling and re-assembling a ship back together.

What slowly started to change my human experience, was making the space within myself to remember my broader existence. Once I started to remember bits and pieces of my existence outside of the human existence I understood that if I am here in a human body I must have a purpose or a reason for being here. Then I started to understand and try to remember more and more (through inner feeling) what that reason/purpose was. Remembering the purpose was what finally started to bring back a sense of direction for my ship. And also a surge of will and energy to learn how to drive this human ship, this human soul.

And I currently see myself in this process. I now might be able to better control how emotions are used, like gas in the ship, yet I still feel like almost 20% in the learning of this ship and of this whole reality. I still feel I have much ahead of me, and this makes me feel sometimes full of energy and curiosity of what the broader picture of this whole ship turns to be, and sometimes depression when I feel again bumped in a wall or a fence🙂