Emotional Training Part II
In a previous Bull’s Eye (Emotional Training I), I introduced the
concept of the Train of Emotions. Each carriage symbolises a human
emotion, ranging from the most ‘negative’ to the most ‘positive’ and at
any point in time we are within a specific carriage. Continuing from
there, we look at how to occupy a carriage, or emotion, in the highest
way available.
To recap, the first three suggestions for this were:
1. Clarify where exactly you are at any moment using as precise a word
as possible (e.g. does ‘feeling down’ actually mean feeling sad, empty
or resentful?)
2. Acknowledge and, if you can, be grateful for that carriage or emotion
(this is the most immediate catalyst for opening up the gift in it)
3. Identify any judgments you hold about this carriage (it helps to
think about where you have judged others for feeling the same thing e.g.
‘she really shouldn’t be so joyous, her mother only died a few weeks
ago’)
It is no use, as the readings have highlighted, to try to force yourself
out of an emotion before its purpose in your life is realised and
integrated. It would be as unbeneficial to you as trying to climb out of
a carriage before the train has come to a stop! As an alternative, allow
yourself to be there fully. If you are within the carriage of grief, be
there totally. Feel everything there is to feel there; get to know the
carriage in detail e.g. how does grief affect your body, what language
does grief tend to use, how does it influence your perspective? Every
carriage looks out on the same landscape from a slightly different
angle, therefore every emotion allows you another perspective on
yourself and your life. Instead of trying to escape this, it might be
worth embracing it to see what it is that that carriage can show you.
It is often the case that we are within a specific emotion in order to
prompt us to a particular action. We might never stand up for ourselves
if we did not first feel hurt, we might never take a risk if we did not
first feel inspired and we might never be honest in a relationship if we
did not first feel anger. So, not only does each carriage allow for a
specific, useful perspective it also prompts certain actions that might
be a necessary next step. For that reason, it is useful to remain there
until the emotion naturally, and easily, evolves into another. Rushing
the process will only ensure that you are placed within that carriage
repeatedly until the gift is taken up.
One of the easiest techniques to use to allow you to get the most
benefit from a particular emotion, is to express it physically and
verbally. This ensures that you won’t bury the feeling in your body and
is also nearly always the start of you being able to externalize the
emotion and stop over-identifying with it. Expression is what starts the
healing and the flow of insight and is as useful to explore through the
body (crying, screaming, running) as it is through the mind (talking,
writing).
When the emotion has been clarified, acknowledged, accepted, explored
and fully expressed, its likely that you will have gained perspective
and seen what actions might be useful to take. Once you have stepped
forward into that action, you are ready to release the emotion.
Metaphorically, the train stops and allows you to change carriages. In
one stop, you will not have time to get out of a carriage on one side of
the train and move into one right on the other side. In other words,
don’t expect of yourself to change from deep grief, to total
peacefulness in one easy, quick step. It is much more likely, and
sustainable, that you will go from grief to indignation back to grief
for a while then to anger to neutrality to hope etc. This process can
take a minute or a month, depending on how much benefit is to be found
there. Consider your emotions a journey and not an outcome. Happy
travelling!
August 2006
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