Do you see mixed emotions as a source of confusion?
Maybe you find yourself blocked in making a big decision because you hear a multitude of voices, each pulling in different direction (of excitement, fear, hope, sadness, etc). Maybe you find a strange comfort and joy in feeling sad or angry. Maybe you see others smiling and sense something wrong underneath and it makes you mistrust them, while smiling back at them at the same time. Or maybe it’s the other way around – you feel good and someone tells you that you look passive-aggressive, sending you in a loop of figuring out what’s the truth. There are many ways in which mixed emotions can show up in our lives and if you are like me, when they do it’s quite easy to slide into confusion. What is it that I am actually feeling? What is my truth here? What do I really want? Which voice should I listen to? What the hell am I supposed to do?
I recently realised something big when it comes to the way we react to mixed emotions. I found that:
Confusion results from mixed emotions only if we have a belief that there’s supposed to be only one truth about us, what we want, what we feel in each moment that’s supposed to point us in the right way. If we drop that belief, something magnificent happens!
Let me tell you how this came into my awareness. I was walking down a street and feeling sad. As I looked around, I could pick up the sadness in other people and even in the plants with broken leaves and cut-out branches. I was tuning into the undercurrent of sadness running through the world around me, resonating with my own frequency. I’d been walking down that same street a couple of days before, feeling into the undercurrent of love that is always there within and around me. And then it struck me – those two undercurrents were not a replacement for one another. There was no one current that is more true than the other. They were co-existing together, at the same time, always present within and around me – I was just tuning into the one that resonated with me at that moment. All of a sudden I realised:
The entire emotional spectrum exists around us and within us IN EVERY MOMENT. As our attention moves from one voice/frequency/emotion to another, it’s like a torchlight that illuminates a specific part of that spectrum.
That means the rest of the emotions are still there within our being, regardless of where the torchlight is at. They don’t disappear – they just lie there waiting to be illuminated! And so there is no one truth about how we feel! All the emotions and voices are true, we don’t need to pick one! It’s just the old fallacy for looking for a single right answer, applied to our inner worlds. It’s looking for a single Self we can attach ourselves to and feel safe, because whew, we finally know who we are, what we feel and what we want.
So how does knowing this lead out of confusion?
The antidote to confusion is not the clarity of a single answer. The antidote to confusion is wonder and it is from wonder that healthy clarity can emerge.
I believe the awareness that you are not a single emotion, that you contain the vastness of the entire spectrum and it is forever present within you is what can actually help you move from confusion to wonder to clarity. Let’s go back to the examples we began with.
Let’s say you have a big decision to make and can’t settle on what is your real desire, the truth of how you feel about it. You don’t have to, because they are all true – the sadness of what you are leaving behind, the fear and excitement of what might be ahead, the freedom and worry of needing to make a choice. Knowing that, you can listen to all of them without the pressure of looking for a single answer. You can witness with wonder your torchlight expanding to show you more of the vastness of your being that is so much more than a single emotion or voice! And from that wonder you can now exercise your free will of choosing which voice to follow or how to make sure all of them are heard and acknowledged in your decision!
Or let’s say you feel comfort in sadness or joy in anger. Once again – it’s just another opportunity to witness the vastness within you and to play with expanding that torchlight. Accepting the truthfulness of everything you find, because it’s always there within you, you can venture out and explore what other voices are there? What is each of them saying? Isn’t it magnificent how much wilder, more vast and beautiful you are than you thought just a minute ago?
And finally – let’s say you sense passive-agressiveness in someone smiling at you, as you smile back.
Mixed emotions again, an invitation to expand from confusion into wonder!
What if they are both happy and passive-agressive? What if they don’t need to agree with you about the latter, because you know it’s always present in their being and you are just tuning into that part of them? What if your torchlights don’t need to be shining towards the same parts of the spectrum? What if you recognise that the reason you are tuning into that part of them is because you are in passive-agressive energy right now? That doesn’t mean that you can’t also be smiling and feeling good – if you are, then it’s actually a way of smashing through that belief that you are supposed to be one emotion, one self, one point of view at a time. Or maybe someone else tells you they are suspicious of your own smile. You don’t need to get defensive anymore, because there is a part of you that is not feeling so good and it’s OK for the other to pick up on that. Their torchlight can be there and you can choose to keep yours where it’s at or to expand and enter into the realm of mixed emotions and witnessing the vastness of who we are. Only this time with wonder rather than confusion.
Love ya,
Z.
About The Paradise Vlog
I believe we already are in paradise, regardless of where we are and what’s going on in our lives. I believe life is a journey towards becoming aware of this and enjoying as much of it as we can in the limited amount of time we have here. The ‘The Paradise Vlog’ youtube channel is the space where I share my process of shedding patterns and beliefs that obstruct our view in order to replace them with presence, joy and wonder. It’s also my invitation to you – an invitation to connect and journey together in creative ways, as we help each other see through to the greatest expression of ourselves. I also love creating spaces for growth-oriented people to connect to their soul power and life purpose. I do that in the form of coaching and workshops. Reach out if you feel curious to explore these topics with me.
0 Comments