Your feelings are a real thing, let’s be clear. They have power and influence of their own. They are, in fact, the navigator of our entire lives. Our feelings are what guide us in the decisions we make and the forgiveness we feel. Feelings are the unadulterated language of God.
What your feelings manage to accomplish on a day-to-day basis depends on how well you care for them. Our culture has twisted the idea of altruism into something which excludes us from the equation of serving others. Somehow we’ve come to believe that we don’t matter. We should only think of others. A life of utter sacrifice is holy, so the story goes. But that is a car with no gas to fuel it. How you feel always matters. How you feel determines the stamina you have to serve others joyfully.
How do you feel right now? Are you comfortable? Are you uncomfortable? Are you happy? Do you believe you deserve to be? Deeply ask these questions of yourself and listen very carefully for the answers. Don’t always expect the first answer you hear from yourself to be the truth either. Taking a personal inventory can sometimes be a moving target. Be patient with yourself as you move toward a state of knowing.
What we are feeling at any given moment is what we are projecting into the universe. It is what God hears. Our emotional state is the only form of communication we have which is not linear. Words are linear. Written sentences, prayers, incantations, all linear. Their value is in the emotions they bring up in us. Emotions are conceptual. There is neither front nor back, nor one after the other. The seven stages of grief do not correspond to numerical rules just because we have named them One through Seven. Our emotions have no clear edges or even facets to them. Our emotions are fully conceptual. As is God.
If we look at all of the world’s scripture together, we get a conceptual picture of the nature of God, at least as It has been portrayed in linear poetry and prose. Through our examinations, an interesting version of God appears which does not answer to any particular word or name. It listens only to our hearts. When we ask in order to receive, with what part of ourselves are we asking really?
This is why your feelings are important, and must be tended to like a garden. Notice them. Because if all thought is conceptual rather than linear it’s likely that’s what we’re praying with whether we mean to or not. All spiritual philosophers tell us that what we think, we become.
If you suffer from depression, despite how excruciatingly difficult it is, move toward healing it. Do not relent. If you have a backache, don’t delay in fixing it. If you don’t get the answer you want, or the treatment you need, keep looking. Keep knocking. Keep facing that direction. Care about feeling good. It is your right to feel good. The more often you feel good, the easier life will be. You are better equipped for the hardships which always come. Be strong for those future times by caring about your feelings now.
This is not a method to eradicate all sorrow. Sorrow is a part of our lives and shall continue to be. But if the water table of your emotional state is already so high that it takes nothing but a small rainshower to create a flood, you are in constant emotional peril from anything even slightly less than ideal. Is that really where you want to be?
It’s okay if you don’t know where to begin. Start by visualizing your emotional state as a garden. In your mind’s eye, visit it often. Walk around and smell the flowers, the vegetables and nourishment, the warm fecundity of the earth. On a day you are feeling sad, go into your imaginary garden and hunt for weeds. Check the dryness of the soil. Tend to these things lovingly. It will have an incremental effect on your ability to cope with life’s difficulties. Over time, it may very well give you the strength and courage to look your emotional state directly in the eye and heal it.
Ease and joy are our intended states. We are meant for them. We hold ourselves back from them without meaning to. And it’s understandable that we do. Human nature is a difficult labyrinth to navigate, but sacred nonetheless. There is only one test for us to take: that of seeking our divine spark and allowing it to become the guiding star of our journey. You are a sacred creation. Treat yourself accordingly.
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