You know I love challenging some of these outmoded New-agey ideas. So let’s unpack this one together, shall we?
“Send love to the situation.” or “Send that person love.”
Ever heard this New Age solution to anything that upsets you or gets you out of sorts?
Does it ever annoy the living daylights out of you? LOL
Because who wants to send love when our feelings are hurt?
The old “send it love” trick is a recipe for guilt, denial and disaster.
Because while you’re “sending love” you’re secretly feeling unheard, angry, sad or any other number of emotions that are normal and tend to run through you in a challenging situation, right?
Then you beat yourself up for feeling those things because, hey, you’re supposed to be “loving” and these negative emotions “aren’t spiritual.”
HA! What an endless cycle of pain and suffering that one is!
So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say:
DO NOT SEND LOVE to something outside of yourself at the moment that it pisses you off.
Instead send some love and attention YOUR WAY! You are the one who needs to feel loved – or at least that wee part of you that was triggered and got its feelings hurt.
But first, you need to take a time out and actually feel what you are feeling. Feel the anger, resentment, fear or pain that is coming up for you. Feel it fully and be willing to hold space for it.
You see, we can’t turn away from these parts of us in fear or disgust or shame. And judging ourselves as “unloving” and “not spiritual” is not getting us any closer to living a life of joy and magic.
I always say that it is unwise is to make us humans into what we are not.
As I mentioned in an earlier post Snake Medicine:
“…we are not creatures of ONLY love and light as watered down spirituality would have you believe– we are forces of light AND dark. To know one without the other is to know neither AT ALL!”
It is time we honor and accept the whole spectrum of human emotion that lies within – joy, bliss, love AND fear, lust, anger, resistance… I call this second set of gals and guys the EMOTIONAL OUTLAWS.
Nature is both loving and destructive; both welcoming and terrifying; forgiving and fierce; nurturing and soul-shaping (and that last one is not necessarily in a gentle way). And so is each of us – we contain the all within us – just like the Great Mother. Then what we choose to express can be up to us at any given time.
But we can only be a master of our expression in the world if we honor all facets of ourselves first– the moment we deny one of the emotional outlaws we sign away our power.
Empowerment rises, not from pretending something does not exist, but from looking at it straight on with two eyes wide open.
KNOW THYSELF – now that was a good bit of advice.
So the next time one of your emotional outlaws shows up to the party, I invite you to welcome them into the fold of your being. And give it some space to be what it is.
Because the truth is, they are frequent visitors already! It’s simply a matter of whether or not you choose to acknowledge their presence when they drop in for a visit.
I am not suggesting we “lash out” on others. Ever. In fact, quite the opposite.
But we can never be fully in our power, in a place where we can be a force of love and service in the world if we have not made peace with our own inner turmoil.
Welcoming the EMOTIONAL OUTLAWS:
- Breathe with the emotion.
- Do NOT expect anything of them. Making demands never got us very far.
- Try to accept it as it is.
- Perhaps say, “Anger you are welcome here.”
- Or maybe: “Fear, I see you. It’s okay I feel fear right now.”
- Feel it fully – not to make it go away but to know it. This is what loosens its control over you.
Because you don’t want it to bite you or someone else in the ass when you least expect it. 🙂
Hop on over to visit me on the Facebook page, and go ahead and post a comment about your relationship with your emotional outlaws. Would love to hear from you!