1st Invitation -- Feel Everything
Reading and study – Setting Your Heart on Fire, p. 1-37
Attuning attention: Emotional presence begins with recognizing the shutdown of feelings. To begin tuning your attention to your shutdowns, do the exercise on page 18. Deliberately think of someone or something that’s been bothering you lately, feel the frustration without shutting it off, and turn your attention to your body. What one area draws your focus most acutely? Keep watching, not censoring, as you learn your own shutdown pattern. Pay attention to your shutdowns over the next few days. This is the all-important first step.
Locating physical centers of emotion: Emotions or feelings, like shutdowns, have a physical component. Different feelings arise in different bodily locations. Do the exercise on page 20, running through a list of different emotions as you experience locating their bodily expression. Over the next few days, practice paying attention whenever a feeling arises. Find out where it lives, and don’t worry if you can’t identify what it is. Just gently let it be as you permit it to reveal itself to you.
Feeling the flow: Without interference, unpleasant feelings depart of their own accord. As it leaves it may move or shift in your body. Try the steamy hot bath or shower experiment on page 23 and feel yourself melting and expanding into the water. Are you willing to melt into your emotions and let them flow freely, thus allowing their dissolution? What are you feeling right now? Do you find yourself one step removed, thinking about your feelings instead of experiencing them? When you focus on the physical aspects of your feelings, do they tend to move as they subside?
Tripping the triggers: Triggers provide us fair warning of imminent shutdowns. They also warn us of a likely “cover-up”. Getting to know them is a useful way of identifying shutdowns and remaining open. Follow the directions on pages 26-27 to identify and list your triggers. Expand the list by talking with those who know you well. Review the list and identify in what situations are your triggers most likely to “be pulled.” What preemptive actions might you take to alleviate the effect of your triggers?
Facing the fear: However strong our will to feel, some emotions may still deter us. Which emotions are you most afraid to feel? Why? Explore these by doing the exercise on pages 29-30. How will these fears show up? Have you had any experiences where you responded to your fears by acting out? What did that look like and what effect did it have?
Telling the story: We rationalize our experience, even our shutdowns. Identify a specific shutdown. Out loud, pretend to tell a “stranger” (a disinterested, third party) about why you have decided not to feel in that instance. What are your beliefs and assumptions behind the story? Listen to the story as you tell it. Is it credible?
Then there are THOSE people: Pick a particular individual that causes you emotional difficulty or aggravation. What about this person causes you discomfort? In looking at your fears, your triggers, and your feelings elicited by this person, what can this person teach you about your feelings? It is said that people aggravate us because they point us to the fears and feelings that we hold about ourselves. Imagine this person to be present right now, what aggravations do you feel? To what fears might these aggravations be pointing? What feelings about yourself are you shutting down? Are you able to open a space of appreciation for this particular individual for what she/he has taught you?
Accepting the First Invitation:
To the best of my current and evolving ability, I resolve to: