Reflections and Emotions: How Feeling Your Emotions Leads to Your Awakening

Awakening is not about suppressing your emotions. It's about embracing them, understanding them, and gaining wisdom from the experience. This all results with you having a powerful realisation about the illusions you chose to believe about yourself. The journey of spiritual awakening begins with feeling your emotions—not just the pleasant ones but also those that challenge you, like anger, fear, and frustration. By allowing yourself to truly experience these emotions, you will develop one of your most essential awakening abilities, Your Witness.

To genuinely understand your emotions, you need to cultivate what I refer to as the "witness"—the part of you that observes your emotions while you are experiencing them. This is not an easy task; it requires patience, practice, and a willingness to be honest with yourself. Developing your witness allows you to be fully present with your emotions, consciously observing them as they arise.

Think of it like this: when you feel angry, frustrated, or afraid, instead of reacting impulsively, you pause and observe. You notice the anger without becoming consumed by it. You feel the frustration without letting it dictate your actions. You experience the fear but remain grounded. This practice strengthens your ability to stay connected to your inner self, even in the midst of emotional storms.

The Three Phases of Strengthening Your Witness

Strengthening your witness involves progressing through three distinct phases:

1. Observing from a distance

2. Observing close up

3. Observing while doing

1. Observing from a Distance

In this phase, you reflect on past emotional experiences. Start by thinking about a moment in your past when a particular emotion kept resurfacing. Perhaps you often find yourself getting angry in certain situations, feeling overwhelmed by specific tasks, or sinking into sadness without clear reasons.

Ask yourself:

• What was I feeling at that time?

• Why was I feeling that way?

• What was I thinking about just before it happened?

  
  

If your initial answers lead you to blame others, take a step further. Ask yourself:

• What were they doing that upset me?

• How were they behaving?

• Why did it upset me?

• What type of person are they?

  
  

This reflective process may seem counterintuitive, but it’s essential for the next phase. By questioning the role of others in your emotional reactions, you begin to uncover the personalities in yourself that they are reflecting for you. This leads to Owning it.

‘Owning it’ is the concept of embracing the truth that the person or situation you are blaming is often reflecting an aspect of yourself that you have been ignoring. Here, you shift the focus inward. Ask yourself:

• Can I see a part of myself that behaves in the same manner?

• When do I act that way?

• Why do I act that way?

• How does that make me feel?

This introspection leads to a more profound connection with your inner self. You start realising that the emotions triggered by others will always mirror certain aspects of your personality. By owning these emotions, you take responsibility for your inner world, the choices you make and the consequences of those choices, which is a crucial step toward awakening.

3. Observing Close Up

Once you’ve practised observing your emotions from a distance and owning them, the next step is to apply this practice directly after an emotional outbreak. As soon as you have calmed down from a strong emotional reaction, begin to reflect on what just happened following the process above. This is your chance to practise witnessing your emotions in real time, allowing you to process and understand them with the added clarity of it having just happened.

3. Observing While Doing

The final phase is the most challenging: observing your emotions as they occur. This means being fully present during an emotional outbreak, consciously aware of your thoughts, feelings, and reactions in the moment. This level of Witness takes time to develop, but it is incredibly powerful. By observing your emotions as they happen, you gain the true strength of what it takes to awaken, becoming empowered, aware and most importantly, you feel ultimate love for yourself.

Conclusion

The journey of awakening is not about reaching a state of perpetual peace or happiness. Instead, it’s about cultivating a deep awareness of your emotions and using that awareness to lovingly integrate them. By developing your witness and progressing through these phases of observation, you will begin to understand yourself as the unlimited being you are by discovering that you are the creator of your entire reality.