Many women, as
we are finding from our meetings, workshops and
encounters, want to get a better grip
on and understand more about this
hugely important area, their
emotions. The book ‘A Feminenza
Trace of Essences and Elements’ gives very revealing grids and deep
insights about the development of
the emotions from birth to old age
for the ‘Female,’ ‘Woman’ and ‘
Lady’ lives within. It helps to
explain how we may have
developed certain emotional
tendencies and it can therefore show
the way as to what needs balancing
in order to change a pattern,
which may not be so useful.
If we liken the subject of emotion to the subject
of colour, there is one instant similarity;
not all colours are the same, they split up into
red, yellow, orange and so on, and each colour
has its own effect. This is the same for the
emotions; there is a whole range of them and
if we consider emotions as one thing it can
lead to confusion.
So, what are emotions? Emotions are different
grades of fuel and just like the planet's fossil
fuels they are highly valuable commodities,
which take time to accumulate. At the higher
end of the spectrum of emotions, they are our
means of connection to energies that can
cause a person to move mountains and are
fortifying to the deeper motives of their life.
Whilst right at the other end of the spectrum,
the lower emotions, when too much at play,
can burn up, totally depleting a person and
leaving them unable to function properly.
The Lower Emotions
Lower emotions, like a thunderstorm, can,
when things become overcharged or are
above a level of stability, cause an explosion.
During everyday life everybody gathers charged emotions, which at
some point need
to be released, and these lower emotions grow
from the total of the over-loaded energies in
the body's systems. Emotions are there to tell
us if something is okay or not okay, they are
our internal response to the world around us.
There is a healthy everyday level of emotion,
like a certain degree of happiness, cheerfulness,
warmth and then there is its over-use or
under-use.
These
days we are constantly bombarded with impressions and life experiences
and as we
process all that we come into contact with, it
can trigger many different emotions, whilst the
originating circumstances often have nothing
to do with us, yet we can constantly find ourselves
in the midst of them. Consider the following
range of experiences and note your own
emotional responses on, say, seeing a mother
duck with her young; maybe this causes a
flush of happiness? Whilst witnessing delinquent
behaviour, one will often feel fear, anger
or perhaps sadness. Our emotions are often
subject to our general, habitual psychologies,
and therefore we can find ourselves giving the
same repetitive habitual reaction, so we always
get annoyed when our train is late and we
miss our next connection. A car driver urges us
from behind; do we deliberately drive slower
or do we consider that they may have a genuine emergency? Your friends
go to a
party, to which you haven't been invited; how
do you feel? Does watching a sentimental
movie make you cry, and so on? Extremes of
emotions can lower our capability to be rational
or in control and so uncontrolled anger or
deep resentment can become so charged that
they are destructive to oneself or others.
If
we over-react to everything that comes our way, or are carrying
around too many unresolved
emotional issues, it can drain our energy,
and we feel exhausted often within an instant.
Then emotions can behave a bit like a vampire:
they summon energies from the emergency
services of the human body – the energy that
works via the kidneys (the adrenals), which are
connected to the large energy accumulators– the
reserves of electrical energy that are stored within the bone structure
and the spine.
 All
of us have experienced these emotions in life. The clue is to find
a way to manage them
before they drain our energy or cause other
imbalances. The advice is, save your emotional
fuel. It is not free. Don't expend it on tiny
things, or it will rob the finer, higher emotions.
The Higher Emotions
At the finer end of the spectrum, the higher
emotions, consists of high-octane fuel, where a little goes a long
way. They have a cooling,
healing nature and allow a person to connect
to the finer energies of life and they also fuel
our creativity and future development. The
human is a spiritual entity, which is nourished
by the higher emotions and uultimately they
can be used for connection to spiritual realms
and the gods. These emotions are a strong and
powerful feeling and transmission device, for
qualities such as the purity of love, compassion,
devotion and passion. They are very
powerful and thus leave a strong trace in a
person's life and can often be recognised as
those extraordinary moments that one never
forgets.
An example of this is in the story
of Doctor Albert Schweitzer who built a hospital in
Lambaréné in Africa. In the biography written
by James Bentley, he says: “ It seemed to me
a matter of course that we should all take a share of the burden
of pain
that lies upon the world. Even while I was a boy
at school it was clear to me that no explanation
of the evil in the world could ever satisfy me.
All explanations, I felt, ended in silly excuses
and at bottom had no other object than to
make it possible for people to experience the
misery around them without really feeling it.
I vowed that I would never let my feelings get
blunted.”
 Emotions can be triggered easily through
music, words and aromas, for instance, and
the feeling can be re-evoked through the
medium of the senses, especially if they are
things that were experienced when we were
young.
As an example, if you loved dancing as a child,
and you take it up again when you are older,
you can click back to the feeling you had as a
child. The dancing might cause happiness and
vigour in you, which can make an instant connection
to how you felt as a child.
The green bicycle:
On her 4th year birthday party Liselotte received
as a birthday present a green bicycle. Full of joy she
learnt to ride the bicycle. She could keep her balance
quite well and it did not take long before she
could ride her bicycle proficiently. A world opened
up for her. With her hair blowing in the wind, she
explored her close surroundings and beyond. Full of
burning curiosity, she felt totally free to choose and
move where to go next. The green bicycle brought
her everywhere.The only thing she had to do was
to step on the pedals and steer. Still today she
remembers that first sensation of freedom, whenever
she gets on her bike.
Now having established some of the basics
where emotions are concerned we would like
to take a first walk through the 'landscape of
the emotions' in relation to the different lives
within us. Recently a workshop was conducted
on this theme, which contained some
triggering starter questions.
Four Essential Steps towards
Emotional Well-being
Understanding our emotions is a huge and
vital area especially for women, because
we have emotions for a very good reason.
As members of the feminine gender, we are
designed to have feelings not just as a barometer
of our own well being or lack of it, but
our emotions can ultimately become a tool of
healing, guidance, inspiration and warmth; a
source of nourishment to all other life, great
and small. But through a lack of education or
knowledge or development, we can often
get locked-in by our early experiences, and
become arrested at the level of automatic
emotional response, and are unable to give
true expression to the higher aspects of what
our feelings and emotions are guiding us
towards. The workshop was put together with
four sets of questions, to help women understand
some of their emotional reactions at
different levels, and to learn how to manage
them better. The first point made, is that as a Female/Woman/Lady/Tenant,
you are not just
one life – you have many lives within you, and
these questions are designed to help you start
to discover what some of the needs of these
different lives are. Essentially, this is a journey
through the four levels of ourselves. By understanding
our emotional reactions, we can start
to take control of our lives, and introduce
more positive voices, rather than always reacting
to the voices we heard in our youth, for
good or for bad. And the more we access the
higher levels, the more they can act like a
healing balm on the lower…
 Starting
with the Female life. Whatever your age, there are strong emotional
powers
influencing you, and many that come from
your childhood; working with them by observing them playing themselves
out, makes
for a very rich life and one in which you can
become your own best friend. Of course, some
of the emotions from our early female lives, if
not resolved and matured, can lead to various
states of timidity and dependence, and it can
be useful to examine these, and rewrite them
in the light of who we have become.
So
some of the questions are:
Do you like being Female?
In what circumstances do you feel timid, insecure,
or have difficulties with communication?
What do you do, as a woman, about these
fears?
Who were your role models when you were
young, e.g. family, friends and film stars?
Can you spot their influence in your behaviour
now?
What do you want to be trusted with today
and what would you like to be depended on
for?
When your knowledge about something is
challenged, how do you react?
What is a more useful way to think, other than
seeing things as 'gain' or 'loss'?
Although we went through a lot of these
processes as young females we still can sometimes
get hijacked by, for example, the need
for confirmation, or insecurity about whether
we are valued. Addressing these issues, with
stories and plenty of laughter, can be a great
healing in itself.
Moving
on to the Woman, the role of the woman is very intense and constantly
demanding.
The Woman is sturdier, more mentally
robust and more practical than the Female. Her
emotions are less self-centred, and have much
more tolerance and understanding about life.
Because the Woman is spreading her wings,
and learning how to become effective, creative
and constructive in the wider world around
her, recognition of her skills, both by herself
and also by others, causes great emotional
settlement and a growth in her confidence
in her ability to do. Her cry is to feel useful
and valued. The kind of questions that could
be asked here are:
What in your home life causes you to feel nourished
and secure?
What in your working life causes you to feel
nourished and secure?
What in your relationships with family and
friends causes you to feel that you are an established
part of something?
What are some of your skills?
What qualities do you think you have that
make you attractive as a life?
 Once
you reach the realm of Lady, the emotions are far steadier and
less personal. Emotions in the Lady
are a matter of choice
where the downside of emotions is not allowed
to enter, banished by the choice of the
occupier. (Obviously, this can only happen
some of the time – wouldn't it be wonderful
if it were more often rather than less!). This is
where the person has established a good
degree of self knowledge and self leadership,
and carries the presence and dignity of that
fact. There is no longer the hungry need to
demonstrate or show off or be noticed or
re-assured. To explore this arena, some good
questions are:
Can you think of a woman, from the past or
present, who has been an inspiration to you?
Can you say why?
What inspires you to go on, despite difficulties?
How do you keep the negative behaviour of
emotions out of the way, or manage them
when they arise?
Have you ever experienced a knowing,
with certainty, or an acute perception about
something?
What do you feel a strong conviction or belief
about?
Is it something you passionately want to be
able to remedy or put right in the world?
Finally, when talking about the Tenant,
we are talking about a set of very fine feelings
indeed, as the Tenant is you, when everything
else is stripped away. When conscious and
active, these feelings have sometimes been
called divine inspiration. Questions here
could include:
What do you most esteem/value about
yourself?
What do you do that strengthens this
self-esteem?
What do you most love doing?
What does it tell you about the way in which
you can serve on this planet according to
your unique purpose?
Do this adding up: What, so far, has been
good and productive about your life?
Mary
Noble would like to acknowledge the use of content from ’A
Feminenza Trace of Essences and Elements’ in the development of
the workshop ’Four Essential Steps towards
Emotional Well-Being’ which she has conducted
with various groupings. In this article she
gives an impression of its content.
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