Our emotions: Portals to deeper healing for our world

Are our emotions just something that need to be “dealt with” so we can take action? Are our emotions something that we need to figure out how to get under control, and quick, so we can show up in the world and do the work of shifting stuck institutions and cultural norms?

Or can our emotions be entry points for deeper insight and understanding of the changes going on in the world? Can our emotional experiences be portals for the past, present, and future in a way that shifts things at a more subtle dimension?

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My offerings are my consciousness are my healing are my personal journey. 

Therefore everything I offer comes directly from my own lived experience. 

Experimentation with myself as guinea pig.

I offer my process here. For it’s the only thing I have.

Raw.

In motion.

Full of

emotion.

In light of the service

that is my life

that I’m grateful to show up to.

~

The following are written reflections while processing emotional energy that was conjured by watching videos on poverty, refugees, and the climate crisis:

It breaks my heart

and I also feel calloused numbness.

I feel helpless and disturbed and disabled in most ways.

I see how I use aspects of my lifestyle to cope and push it out of my mind.

What would it be like to more fully hold it in my mind?

How can I honor you as a reality everyday?

As I ask this I feel my heart open.

I feel myself sink more deeply into my heart.

I want to honor you everyday.

I commit to honoring the human suffering taking place across the world 

everyday.

I do this by honoring my own suffering;

by rejecting the cultural illusion that this life is just about happiness;

that I or anyone else need to be “on” all the time.

I do this by welcoming all of my feelings and thoughts and sensations and experiences to the table;

making room within myself and within my life for all that is.

I close my eyes and breathe into the sensation in my chest.

These sensations feel close to me

physically close.

I imagine the space around my body widening;

creating breathing room for these sensations;

allowing them to unfold and exist more fully.

I retain the spaciousness I just created by continuing to breath;

I hold this expanded awareness; 

saturating myself in it.

“What do you need?” I ask the sensation.

“I need you to pray.”

“Okay.”

~

Dear God,

Please be with every human, every child, every sentient being on this planet right now who is suffering.

Please help them know Your presence.

Please help them feel You.

Dear God,

Please help me pray for them, for those who suffer.

Please help me be spiritually attuned to the unnecessary suffering permeating our world;

so that I may be in solidarity;

so that on some spiritual plane my brothers and sisters and others know 

they are not alone.

Dear God,

Please cleanse us of the ways our wounds perpetuate pain. 

In our politics, in our relationships, in our homes.

Dear God,

Please give me the resources and guidance on how I can be of most service. 

In whatever way that is.

I am yours to use.

I will not not look away.

I learn to carry all of this with grace, health and ease.

I learn to make myself expansive enough to hold it all.

In deep love I pray.

Amen. <3 

~

The emotional energy has moved.

Thunder rumbles outside.

I receive this sign from God as a nod of completion.

Thank you, Dear Mother.

I am always yours.

~

[5 minutes later]

Are the feelings gone?

No.

There’s a subdued heaviness in my chest.

I watch it tighten and rise

in my central channel.

Right in the middle

of my heart.

I open my mouth, keeping my throat loose

and allow this constrained feeling

to come up and out my core

with each hot, heavy exhale.

My jaw tenses and releases.

I continue to observe its movement.

I continue to stay patient and kind to what is.

My next inspiration is to physically move.

I undulate my chest back and forth.

Eyes shut.

In tune with what’s within. 

My upper spine and neck move in full, slow motions. 

Allowing the sensations to dictate what they need.

Releasing all inhibitions and critical thoughts 

to the full intelligence of my body.

:: chills ::

I look out the window 

it begins to rain.

How lucky I am to be aware of You.

To be aware of being held by You, this Divine interconnection. 

Tears come forth through a half, quick-lived sob.

The emotions continuing to run their course.

I do not judge. I do not attach.

I observe with kindness

and continue to hold space.

~

Hi, I’m Liz Moyer Benferhat. Writer, facilitator, coach, and development practitioner dedicated to the subtle interplay between how inner transformation feeds the outer transformation we need in the world. Welcome 🌿