Feelings

Read this book by Richard Rohr :
The gift of Contemplative Prayers Everything Belongs

I attended the first of a 4 days workshop on emotional well being & spirituality organized by the St. Andrew Cathedral and left the first session feeling more connected to myself. Often, the world has such a denotion, that feelings ought not to be emphasized too much in our life, as feelings are well, just fleeting ones and do not represent the rational way of looking at things from an objective perspective and definitely is not a basis of decision making or embarking your actions from.

And thats where the peril lies. We bottled up our anger because anger is sinful. We dare not expressed our sadness and gave them little time or attention to release them. Every emotion has to be "get over soonest" , and let go and move forward before you've got dragged down and fall into a depressive stance. Look beyond your feelings. Does such comments sound familiar to you? Therefore, we held back our emotions, we suppressed, we bottled up and force ourselves to move forward so that we will look as though we are back on track with our seemingly normal life, surviving all trials and well - outwardly strong. Just what the society think we should look, don't we? Survivors. Conquerors.

And so, unknowingly, we laid the foundation of a wall made up from cement of  mixed feelings, pain, hurt, cries of frustrations, bitterness and resentment neatly brick together and we see ourselves more recluse ever and isolated from getting in touch with our heart and feelings and not withstanding in relating to others as well. We hit the wall most of the time. We fell into a period of brokenness and see ourselves unable to breakthrough the wall. Years of building up unhealthy emotions and not allowing it to release and feeling them in a deeper way left most of us creating the human wall that we later on, find it hard to chip away ourselves.
And when things get explosive, we seek therapy and counselling and medication.

It'll take a lot of time to unravel the past and slowly getting into touch with your own feelings, asking God to minister to us and help us and giving plenty of forgiveness to people who have hurt you before, it is worth it. Rather than avoiding the whole issue althogether. Although things may not be at the same level of friendship again for example, allowing ourselves to feel deeply during moments we need to, to mourn, to grieve, to overcome the loss, to release the emotions till we feel we are ready to get up and go again is important. Do not be afraid to do it, or be afraid of the world view of being weak or vulnerable. Allow yourself space and time. Care about your feelings, care about how your heart feel and be confident to follow your heart.

You love yourself more than you think.