As we close out the year soon, I too am closing this spirituality case study series with this last example of Gary Zukav’s work. You might recognize him as the author of the bestseller The Seat of the Soul. What I’m going to share with you comes from the book The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness.
What I appreciate about his insights along with co-author Linda Francis are some different perspectives around becoming more emotionally aware. They describe emotional awareness as becoming aware of everything you feel at every moment. In order to do this we need to become aware of our inner landscape of emotions and feelings inside of us, our external landscape of how these emotions are manifesting to the world and then becoming a detached observer of it all.
Our greater goal to becoming more emotionally aware is our own spiritual health. According to the authors, the goal of spiritual growth calls us to create a new and deeper understanding of who we are and what our purposes are. One way that we can grow is to learn how to own and claim our authentic power, which is the alignment of our personality with our soul. We can only do this when we are fully engaged in the present moment. This is “the longest journey that we will make it life is from your head to your heart.”
How they describe our emotions in terms of our energy system was very interesting. They believe that our emotions tell us how our energy is being processed. As our energy leaves our body, it gives us messages or signals from our soul. “Every emotion offers you information about you that’s important.” If you ignore the emotion, you ignore essentially soulful information. The more important the message thus the stronger the emotion you will feel.
“Any painful emotion means you are acting, speaking and thinking in fear and doubt.” When you don’t have painful emotions you are acting, speaking and thinking in the opposite with love and trust.
Let me give you an example of what happened to me while I was reading this book in which applies what I was learning. I had a painful emotion, this headache right above my left eye that lasted for a week or so. The energy center is by the forehead, often referred to as the third eye or 6th energy center. This energy center allows you to see beyond the physical into the universal. “It allows you to know the intentions of others, even if they do not express them.” As I was reading this I wondered where this was coming from and whose intentions might this be from. A few days later I come to find out that my husband was having the worst week of his 15 year career at this company. We discussed and prayed about his situation. I noticed how the pain began to lessen as did his stressful situation.
A simple and profound way that they described the concept of stress I really liked. They said that all stress really is is resistance to your life. The more resistance we have for things in our lives, the more stress we feel. Ever notice how when things are good it’s like we are going with the flow? When we resist the flow of life is when we bring stress to our lives. I’ll be doing the same thing two different days, one day I’ll go with the flow and the other day I resist it. Both give me different outcomes. The first is based in good energy processed with love and trust, the later is when our energy is being processed in fear and doubt.
As you reflect on this past year, think about how emotionally aware you’ve been and how stressful of a year it’s been. I encourage you to use what our soul is communicating with us, our emotions through our energy systems, to make 2012 a year in which you don’t resist but persist in the flow of your life.
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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.
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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.