One thing you will hear from me over and over again is, “Our Earth is a giant school, to which we have all come in order to learn and grow.” Not only is the earth beautiful, it is “concrete.” This makes it a perfect environment for growing.
By “concrete,” we are talking about the quality we experience here, that of getting fast feedback whenever we make a decision, take an action, or interact with others. You find someone attractive to you and make an invitation for them to spend time with you. It takes no more than seconds for you to know their answer (which can come through their facial expressions or body language, as well as their words). You take the action of making an invitation, and their response (on multiple levels) gives you “concrete feedback” about whether they are also interested in you.
Have you ever signed up for a course that seems interesting to you only to find out after the first few meetings of the class that you really do not like the topic? Why didn’t you know before you even signed up that you would not like it? Because on this earth, we learn through experience. It is through experiencing something we do not know about that we discover whether it really fits with who we are and how we want to spend our time.
In this Giant School called “Earth” that we are all attending, we learn through our experience. What happens, how we interpret what happens and how we react to it, determine how our learning goes for that time, as well as for future times.
One of the things that is the most difficult for people to experience and understand is when emotions arise in them that seem to come from “out of the blue”—not connected to anything that is happening in their life. Such emotions can be very, very strong, such as feelings of hate or overwhelming fear. How can we make sense of emotions like this?
When you remember that the earth is a Giant School, you will be open to the idea that we get our “homework assignments” in our childhoods. We have experiences, even traumas, in childhood. Sometimes we remember them, sometimes we do not. But our body always remembers!
You are 29 years old and living your life, when one day you feel rage coming up inside of you. It does not go away. You can forget it for only short periods of time. It is disturbing your sleep. When an emotion comes up with this level of force, it is always connected to our past experiences. To work with the emotion, we need to address something that happened in the past. What has occurred is that something in our present “reminded” us of the past experience. Like a monster that has been living in our closet, the emotion that has been inside us over the years rushes to escape. That is why it feels so strong.
“Old emotions” can be dealt with by going into the past through your imagination, or by dealing with the emotion in your present. Either way works. You can also deal with emotions from the past on your own—though especially when you are first doing this—it is much more difficult than when you get help from a therapist or coach.
Whichever way you choose to deal with what is coming up, what is necessary is that you:
- Identify the emotion
- Connect the emotion with the past event/emotion
- Take a “helper” or your own adult, strong self into that situation
- Take power over the situation in the ways that you could not when you were a child (in the past)
- Congratulate and appreciate yourself before you…
- Move on.
The lovely thing about this “school” we are in on Earth is that the instant you complete the learning that emotions bring to you, you are set free! The experience of going over and over and over the same emotional issue happens because we have not addressed what we are supposed to learn about that issue. Taking power over your experience and the emotions you feel allows you to get finished with the experience and the emotion. Complete the “lesson” and you are free to move on!
Most adults carry emotions that were not finished during childhood. To find out what emotions you are carrying, and learn how to move on, get your free 30-minute personalized phone call with me.