Often in my discourses with conscious creation students, I will find them getting hung up and confused on certain little nuance things. For newcomers to this site, I should state that my particular focus of teaching is to keep things as simple as possible. Therefore I'm always trying to help students strip away the clutter. One of the confusions I have seen popping up repeatedly has to do with feelings and emotions. What are feelings and what role do they play in the scheme of things? People will ask things like, "Shouldn't I honor my feelings" or "own them" or some such thing? Others, usually non-seekers, criticize feelings and put down "feeling" people as being "touchy-feely" types. So then people think that it's a sign of weakness or effeminate to have feelings. Allow me try to clear up some of the confusion.

Let me begin by saying that feelings are really one of our sensing mechanisms. Feelings are a barometer of our energy. When we talk about our feelings, what we are talking about is feeling our energy. In a very real sense, when we think of feelings, we usually have cause and effect turned around. To explain, let's suppose that we're having our attention on something that we wish were different. We decide to indulge in a little self-pity or pouting for example. THEN we feel the energy associated with that. And you know what, these feelings of self-pity often actually do feel good. That is, they feel good to the ego…but not to your Inner Being. So even though we are on our journey of awareness, now and then, we will occasionally still find ourselves deciding to spend some time experiencing these sorts of energies at times …for awhile anyway.

Now getting back to feelings as a sensing mechanism, just as our skin senses energy in terms of hot, cold, pressure and our eyes sense light, and our ears, sound waves, what we refer to as "feelings" is also a sensing apparatus. It senses other types of energy, the energy that comes from within as well as energy from those around us and from the cosmic "field" (in this latter case, we refer to that as our intuition, or sixth sense).

Now here is where I think some have been getting confused. We always have internal energy of some kind. Therefore, we are always feeling. But in the very same way that you are always seeing and always hearing and yet are not always paying attention to what you are seeing and hearing, you also are not always aware of what you are feeling. Suddenly you see a large blast of orange light and hear a loud explosion, you are suddenly conscious of seeing and hearing. It's the same with feelings. Suddenly something happens that causes an emotional drama and now you are aware of your feelings--joy, anger, fear, worry, happiness, sadness. These are reactions to the stimuli just like "ouch" is a response to too hot or blinking is a reaction to too bright or joy is a reaction to a beautiful sunset on a fabulous beach.

Now when many of you have been discussing the subject of feelings, it has always been from the context of feelings that you didn't want, kind of forgetting that you are always feeling and that it is a stimulus response. Thus it is an effect-not a cause. Do you get this? You have been thinking feeling is a cause and the effect is unhappiness.

Now let's look at what we have. Someone says something hurtful--the ego says, let's get peeved off--you go with that and dwell on (focus upon) the remark, getting good and angry (the reaction). Now this emotion of anger and insult has an energy inherent to it (quite a dense heavy slooowww energy). And you sense this energy... and do you ever. You sense it with what? Your sensing apparatus of FEELING!

Ahhh, but wait a minute, are we powerless captives of our feelings? Of course not. Just as we will choose to move away from something that is too hot or turn from a light that is too bright or a sound that is too irritating, we should always consider if a feeling we are having is in our best self-interest. We always have a choice of what to focus upon. What if I wanted to feel differently? I could let it go and try to focus upon better thoughts that would provide me the reaction of joy. Joy has a better feeling energy than the anger (the sunset compared to the burn). It is higher frequency energy. But we have to acknowledge that often, we are just too caught up in the reaction and find it nearly impossible to simply choose different thoughts; or, we'll decide we enjoy the drama so much that we'll indulge ourselves for a while. Now if this is what is meant by owning the feelings or honoring them, so be it. That's fine if that's what you decide you want to do--all the more so if you are doing it in conscious awareness - the awareness that you can also choose to own joy feelings instead.

Meanwhile however, allow me to remind you that while you're spending some time enjoying the drama energy, the universe has not stopped operating the way it does -- according to Principle. Law of attraction is working as perfectly as ever. So what do you think that energy you have is doing? You've got it; it is attracting all kinds of additional events into your experience for you to get peeved off about. In your awareness, you will catch this and maybe decide to give it up. 'Course on the other hand, you may love this cycle of getting more and more swept up in the drama swirl. It's all perfect because you are doing what you choose to do. The cycle of anger and muck, anger and muck may be a good learning lesson right then. Maybe you'll even slam your fist into a wall, breaking it and having to go to the emergency room. While you're in the cast and trying to eat with your left hand, you will be receiving wisdom from the universe. Hallelujah!!!

Then you may ask, "OK, if I decide to spend some time enjoying those "negative" feelings, will I be building up a storehouse of negativity?" And I say, no. You are just utilizing some time not choosing to go for feelings that may be more beneficial in the long run.

To expand upon this, let's say that every evening, I go to that beautiful raw beach with dramatic rocks, views, and pounding surf to watch the sunset and experience joy. Now on a particular day, I get into an argument with my neighbor or significant other and I wallow in this and miss my beach experience. And let's say that this argument goes on for a few days and I miss more days of the sunset joy and continue to wallow in the anger stuff. What I am getting at is that you are not building up a "bank" of negative energy that will then have to be neutralized with the same number of days of joy thoughts before you are back to where you were before. As soon as you decide to get joyful again, you will automatically be changing your energy. You will very soon feel the change of higher vibration. Sometimes there may be a little lag time as you are still wavering a bit within a mix of energies. But there is no sentence of time you must serve before you are allowed to continue as before. You don't have to work off any bad energy calories.

When many of us were beginning our seeking journey, we were taught that our mind was programmed with all of these negative thoughts from our infancy onward, and that we would have to spend twenty or thirty years now re-programming our subconscious mind to neutralize all of that stuff. Thus we tried repetitious affirmation techniques to speed up the process -- tens of thousands of repetitions. We worked at it. We dedicated ourselves to it. And it didn't work because "working at it" is counterproductive when it comes to spiritual practice; and furthermore, deep down, we couldn't believe the affirmations we were repeating. It was nothing more than meaningless rote nonsense. The supposed "bank" of bad thoughts wasn't the problem. The here and now thoughts were the problem. There was no bank. The way the universe works is that you get what you focus upon. Yes, as we've discussed, sometimes, it does take awhile for manifestation to occur. Usually, however, that's because of our own wavering and doubts.

So I'm saying that when you spent the four days with the anger thing, there is no bank and no sentence to serve. But since we are living in a space / time realm here, you have utilized some earth time (four days) not choosing to go for feelings that may have been more beneficial in the long run - but not in the sense that it would have been beneficial in building the bank of "good" energy had you chosen the good feelings. Rather I mean that when we are being joyful and at ease, the way is open for better flow of manifestation of the things we want to bring into our lives. All you have done is utilized some earth time with those anger thoughts which means you weren't living joyfully in that time. No need to beat yourself up however, because we are always doing the best we can do at any moment. Maybe you needed to get into this funk and receive some reaffirmation from the universe that it always provides you what you want-even when you are preferring fits of drama at any moment.