As I've mentioned in previous posts, my childhood and adolescence were kind of intense. My family and I lived in a slum west of Caracas and I rarely left home without my parents or siblings. I didn't have friends in my neighborhood and scarcely played outside, so I often resorted to reading and drawing as means of entertainment. At school I was always the weird kid who talked funny and saw things differently, and I didn't enjoy my time there, much less after mom died.
My experience with death, melancholy and fiction set me on a path of alienation from everyone my age, and the generation gap between me and my siblings also ensured that there were a myriad things I couldn't discuss with them. Sometimes I wrote about them, and they certainly showed up in my drawings, but I mostly kept them to myself. On top of this, I tried to fit in by playing a character that was identifiable to others, but that I found tremendously uncomfortable. This is how I began truly struggling with aggression, sadness and disgust, and the struggle became open warfare as I reached my teenage years. In addition to all the things that I kept secret, puberty had me deal with the complexities of a burgeoning sexuality that I could neither push away nor show to anyone.
This all left me unable to exercise self-control. I had frequent, sudden and very public outbursts of anger, then fell into deep brooding a second later, and vice-versa. I used to return from school crying for apparently no reason, feeling rejected, abandoned, miserable. Although I was never prone to physical violence or abuse, I promptly resorted to insulting people, even complete strangers, when I felt they'd crossed a line. I yelled, I retorted constantly, I was argumentative... To be honest, in hindsight I think it's amazing that so many of my friends from those days still have me in high regard, and that I didn't get my teeth knocked out or my face slapped more often.
The problems continued as I entered adulthood, but thanks to therapy and growing financial independence, they became more manageable. Still, I made a lot of people feel awkward and I'm certain that I caused mild harm to many with my actions, words and thoughts. Even my bosses and workmates had to deal with my explosions and mood swings from time to time (although I must say, they weren't always uncalled for.)
I'm sure most of you could see yourselves at least partially reflected in this mirror, but this post isn't actually about the struggle, but about how I dealt with it, and the practices I've used to embrace my emotions, to quiet down the turmoils and brave the storms of my inner self.
Identify your emotions, find your center
Last year, after a particularly stressing day at work amidst a period of crippling countrywide blackouts, I headed out to visit a friend. I was pretty angry, but when I boarded the subway my anger grew exponentially, to the point that I started shaking. It didn't take long for me to realize that this wasn't normal at all; anger has always been my strongest emotion, and thanks to my spiritual work, I've gotten quite good at handling it. So I dug deeper, beneath the day's events which in no way warranted the blazing fury I was feeling, and it struck me: I was channeling the anger of the entire train. It was suffocating, oppressive, inescapable. I got off three stations before my stop, walked to a church, knelt and cried for ten minutes, then kept walking. The rage was still considerable, but at least I was certain I wouldn't burst out when I met my friend.
After this incident, I reviewed my memories and started deliberate exercises to restrict the flow of emotions, to separate my vibration from that of others. These exercises corroborated my initial impression and I understood that a lot of my overreactions and emotional issues in the past were directly associated with this environmental channeling, which even affected my physical integrity as I suffered from illness and weakness while processing the energy around me, so this is the first advice I give you: identify what's yours and what you're absorbing from your surroundings. You can do this through meditation, visualization, spoken decrees and prayers.
You can also use dancing, workout routines and creative expressions of any kind to reduce the emotional load. Sometimes you may be forced to deal on a regular basis with people who are very aggressive, pessimistic or irritating, and who dump their own loads on you either inadvertently or knowingly, so having ways to protect your energy and letting go of excess density is very important.
I have a very simple practice, which is drawing my entire energy to my core. I do this by saying "I call myself to myself perfectly, absolutely, completely, infinitely, instantly, eternally. I call my energy back to me, 100% of my energy back to me from all dimensions, all plains of existence, all vibrations, all locations of the Universe." I repeat this mantra and variations of it several times and then I close all the channels by saying "I close all gates, all windows, all channels. I quiet down all chords and silence all vibrations". I sometimes call upon entities, spirits, deities or the elements. This allows me to find solitude and gain a proper diagnosis of my true psychological, physical and mental status wherever and whenever I choose.
Go deeper, explore the source of the river
In general, society frowns upon emotional honesty, we're always told to be "positive", to reject any form of "negativity" and to control ourselves, which usually involves hiding our true feelings to present a semblance of stability to everyone else. However, if you really want to get better at managing your emotions, you have to feel them fully, trying to block them or repress them will only increase your troubles, you have to let them be and work through them, surrender to the tide. This is particularly vital when experiencing darker moods such as Fear, Anxiety, Sadness or Rage.
This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to express yourself openly all the time; in fact, working with silence is a much more productive exercise. Find a quiet place where you can stay for at least half an hour without interruptions or distractions, then expose yourself completely to what you're feeling. In most cases, this will reveal uncomfortable truths, you may find that the origin of your Rage is Guilt for the way you treated a friend weeks prior, that your Sadness is actually disappointment based on Arrogance, that your Anxiety is a leftover from a past situation you went through years ago, and that your Fear has a lot to do with something your mother told you the night before. Whatever the source might be, DO NOT deny it. Attempting to deceive yourself is sowing the seeds of chaos. As with any form of training, it may be tough at first, but the more you do it, the easier it'll be. For instance, I can now do this on the fly, even in the middle of a crowd.
Resistance is futile, suffering isn't necessary
As I said above, repressing emotions is a recipe for disaster. When we obstruct the flow and raise walls, thinking that we're protecting ourselves from harm, we're actually building up pressure and, at some point, that pressure must be released, typically in a burst of energy that may be extremely damaging for us and others.
Just like everything else in the Universe, we change constantly, and that change demands sacrifices, payments which may be painful. We can't choose whether we want to change, it just happens with or without our consent. What we can choose is our approach, we can see change as a blessing and accept it, or we can attempt to resist it. The latter increases pain enormously. I think back to the times when I've felt trapped, lost, crushed and beaten, and I'm thankful that I've never had a problem with tears, because my suffering would've been unbearable.
And so, I conclude this post with one last piece of advice: Don't resist, don't surround yourself with walls trying to keep hurt at bay, you'll get the exact opposite result. Isolation makes us prey to terrors, it weakens and confuses us. Accept the hurt, the ache, the sorrow, be grateful for it because it means that you're evolving, integrating a new lesson of life. I can guarantee you, acceptance will bring only Release, Freedom.
And Freedom is Pleasure.
Si están buscando una comprensión más profunda sobre su historia o lo que están experimentando en el momento, pueden pedir una lectura personal de Runas o Carta Astral a través de Discord o WhatsApp
If you're seeking a deeper understanding about your history or what you're currently experiencing, you may book a personal Rune or Astral Chart reading through Discord or WhatsApp
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Gracias, gracias, gracias.
Adiwa!
I feel one of the biggest traps in this spiritual journey is feeling like you need to be above of your emotions, always running away of feeling sad, embarrassed, angry. I sometimes need to recall on mi niña malcriada because the adult one feels like she needs to let things go and flow.
Ah, sorry - I missed my curation duties for Mindful Life this week because I wasn't paying attention! Instead, I'm going round tipping everyone who wrote on meditation topics for a bit of LOVE.
An absolutely stunning post. You did sound like a bit of a terror! I really related what you said about the train - a kind of vicarious experience of everyone elses energy. I have felt that very intensely of late and I always feel it in the classroom - I often feel that teaching shouldn't be a job for me for this reason as I absorb too much. I'm going to write your affirmation on the wall of my yoga room right now and start utilising that as part of my practice. Thanks for this beautiful post.
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I had never felt hatred and frustration towards other people the way I did recently with rooms full of people wearing masks...everyone except for me. It really makes you feel isolated and alone. But like you said, you gotta go within to find the source of all of it...like David Goggins says “the darkness within”!