#guidance articles

Everything and anything in our environment can be used by a higher power and presence as a messenger. All things can reveal guidance from the unseen. If you live in a more urban or residential area where your contact with nature is limited, a higher presence and power is still present.

The universe is both chatty and clever and has unlimited ways of communicating with us. Here are a few sacred signs that we might encounter in our everyday environment and their possible meaning.

Sacred Signs #1 – Windows Being Cleaned

Seeing windows being cleaned on a building can indicate a need to achieve clarity about ourselves and a situation, especially as it relates to our career, life purpose or activity with others. We may not be perceiving our true gifts and abilities. Take some time to focus on what you truly want and be true to yourself.

The cleaning of windows may also indicate that we may not see another or a situation objectively; a sign of clouded perception.

Sacred Signs #2 – Balloons

Encountering balloons may be a message to enjoy and celebrate the small things in life with a childlike sense of wonder. They may also be telling us to shed our worries and stress and rise above the troubling and mundane ups and downs of life. Happiness and good news is coming your way.

Sacred Signs #3 – Workers on A Telephone Pole

Encountering work happening on a cable or telephone pole may be a sign of communication and the ability to understand and engage with others. This may be a message telling us that we have the innate ability to influence and impact others. It might also be message encouraging us to reach out and expand our friendships or increase networking opportunities. If you have been wondering whether to contact someone, this is a Yes sign.

Sacred Signs #4 – Grand Opening

Noticing a grand opening sign is a message of transformation and emergence. A new you is unfolding and awaits expression. It is time for your authentic self to step out into the world and share your unique and special gifts.

Sacred Signs #5 – Moving Van

Encountering a moving van is a sign that it is time to make a drastic change. This may have to do with our goals, desires, career or health or a relationship. This may also be a sign to change our perspective, or view of reality. Let go of the beliefs and thoughts that may be limiting and hindering our progress. If you are thinking of moving or selling a home, this is a positive sign.

Messages from a Higher Presence

While all things can convey a message from a higher presence and power, it is important to listen within. This can verify whether or not what we encounter is truly a sacred sign. The universe always responds to a request. If you have recently looked to the heavens for comfort or guidance, pay attention to the meaningful encounters or synchronicities that unexpectedly come your way.

When we have a decision or choice to make or are experiencing a challenge in areas such as career, finances and relationships, sacred signs are more prevalent. In addition, if you happen upon something that seems to draw your attention or perk your interest when you are missing or thinking of another who has passed over, this may be a sign from him or her.

Trust that tingle in your heart and spontaneous knowing, if something feels like a sacred sign, it probably is.

Like many do, I turned to the spiritual path to help me cope, experimenting with retreats at Esalen, walking the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, pilgrimages to sacred sites, shamanic drumming, guided meditation, silent meditation retreats, yoga, prayer, indigenous spirituality, self-help books, spirituality conferences, cacao ceremonies, ecstatic dance, despacho ceremonies, and pretty much every other “spirituality-du-jour” experience one could have without trying drugs or plant medicines. I became a spiritual tourist, bliss-hunting for the next spiritual high…

Until I realized I had just found another way to bypass my pain.

I was using spirituality to avoid feeling not just my own personal pain, but the global pain I could feel in my own heart and body. (Fellow empaths, you know what I’m talking about here.)

That’s when I started studying the shadow of spirituality and learned about spiritual bypassing. In its essence, spiritual bypassing refers to any way in which we use our spirituality to bypass painful emotions, like despair, anger, disappointment, jealousy, or loneliness. Robert Masters, author of Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters, writes:

“We tend not to have very much tolerance, both personally and collectively, for facing, entering, and working through our pain, strongly preferring pain numbing ‘solutions,’ regardless of how much suffering such ‘remedies’ may catalyze. Because this preference has so deeply and thoroughly infiltrated our culture that it has become all but normalized, spiritual bypassing fits almost seamlessly into our collective habit of turning away from what is painful, as a kind of higher analgesic with seemingly minimal side effects. It is a spiritualized strategy not only for avoiding pain but also for legitimizing such avoidance, in ways ranging from the blatantly obvious to the extremely subtle. Spiritual bypassing is a very persistent shadow of spirituality, manifesting in many ways, often without being acknowledged as such. Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow elements, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.”

We have to remember that it hurts to be human, and pain is always here for a reason. Pain is usually our body’s or our heart’s way of saying, “Pay attention. Something is out of whack and needs to be healed.” When we use avoidance in holy drag to avoid pain, we limit the growth our souls crave.

The Hot Loneliness

In a recent Super Soul Session, Glennon Doyle Melton spoke about all the ways we try to avoid feeling what she calls “the hot loneliness,” including scrolling mindlessly through social media or popping pills. Just think of all the ways that our culture teaches us to grab for Easy buttons, the quick fixes and self-help tools and antidepressants and booze and social media obsessions and all the other things marketers target into our psyches to promise that there’s an Easy way out of pain.

In spiritual circles, the Easy buttons cloak themselves in spiritual garb. The Easy buttons come in the form of hours of meditation spent inhabiting non-dual awareness or ayahuasca ceremonies every weekend or attending one spiritual retreat after another seeking the next tool to avoid feeling the hot loneliness.

Glennon says:

“The problem is that when we transport ourselves out of our hot loneliness, we miss all of our transformation. Because everything we need to become the people we were meant to become next is actually inside the hot loneliness of now. So when we Easy button our way out we are like caterpillars who jump out of the cocoon right before we would have become butterflies. Because pain is actually not a hot potato. It’s the traveling professor and it knocks on everybody’s door, and the wisest ones say, “Come in. Sit down, and don’t leave until you’ve taught me what I need to know.” But we’ve got it all wrong. We are afraid of pain, but we were made for pain. We need to be afraid of the Easy buttons. Because the journey of the Love Warrior is to rush toward her pain and let her pain become her power.”

Newsflash: It Hurts to Be Human

Being human hurts. We try so hard to avoid this fact, doing our best to numb ourselves with various addictions, overwork, obsessive love affairs, positive psychology, and or spiritual bypassing techniques to try to “love and light” our way past the pain. But no matter how you run away from pain, pain will track you down, stalking you like a leopard until you finally dive down into it and really let it devour you. We have to go all the way into our traumas (as I described here) before it can begin to release us, open our hearts, and show us that at the pit of our pain, all we meet is (paradoxically) unconditional love. This is what we’re so afraid of? Love?

When Spiritual Bypassing Comes in Handy

Spiritual bypassing can be a healthy tool when we need it. As I described here when I was attacked by a pit bull, it was helpful to be able to use my meditation training to be able to bypass the intense pain of the acute injury. If you’re in the midst of an acute trauma, go ahead and use the spiritual bypass! But we can’t outrun the pain forever. We can delay it until we’re emotionally and physically equipped to handle it, until we have the emotional resilience to be able to be with that much pain without killing ourselves, harming someone else, or going crazy. Spiritual bypassing sure beats other numbing and bypassing techniques, such as addictions that harm the body. But ultimately, we have to find within us the strength to go down the rabbit hole of our pain — and we can’t do that alone. We need each other. We need our tribe. We need a personal connection to Divine Source. We need therapists and spiritual counselors and soul friends who can hold our hands as we venture into the scary, painful unknown. Only then can we truly, deeply, fully heal.

May we all find that inner fortitude so that we can do what we must in order to be who we must.

We could say yes, that’s a beautiful story, but why would an angel give us this knowledge to only silence us when we arrive to the destination where we need it most? Maybe because we are meant to cultivate and retain that wisdom through our own self-exploration and direct experience for evolvement. So where do we get lost? What blocks us from accessing this information when needed most?

Resistance is the Inner Enemy We Know Best

Within us all lies an enemy. We call it resistance! We convince ourselves we are open and expressing loving kindness and evolving through our many physical activities such as engaging in yoga, chanting, attending church, serving the community, but do we have complete acceptance and loving kindness towards ourselves in all matters arising from the depths of our core? Are the actions the mask we wear out of fear of allowing ourselves the freedom to expose what we feel?

One of the four Noble Truths in Buddhism speaks to suffering. There is discomfort in life. There is no avoiding it! People also live in poverty, are hungry, live in war zones knowing loss and deprivation. It is part of duality. We turn our eyes from it avoiding “feelings” of suffering and discomfort.

This is what we do in our own lives, as well. We put on an armor of protection from emotions we may feel such as anger, depression, pain, judgment, cynicism. Our ego resists showing the world our vulnerabilities out of shame for being judged as unacceptable or “bad.”

Acceptance and Making Friends with Our Inner Enemy

But it is through acceptance of our own sufferings and making friends with this inner enemy that allows us to cultivate authentic emotion and loving kindness towards ourselves which in turn develops towards all sentient beings. It is being in the flow of oneness with the energy of life rather than resisting it. This is how we can be of “true” value and help to others’ sufferings. Courage to have acceptance, make friends with our emotions and forgive the enemy within known as resistance.

“Today is cynical with a touch of self-pity. Check your attitude and prepare your Kleenex!” Does that maybe sound like one of your daily forecasts? Just as the weather changes from rain to sunshine to wind, our emotions are just as changeable. One day we could feel excessive anger wanting to tear apart the whole house. On another day, we feel such emotional pain we can’t get out of bed. We should not feel shame for these emotions, but rather have acceptance knowing that just as the weather, they shall pass.

Turn the Inner Enemy into Internal Wisdom

This doesn’t mean you get a “get out of jail free” card! If your neighbor complains about your dog barking, you don’t lash out at them calling them whatever expletive you can think of. Rather, becoming friends with that anger, acknowledging it as a changeable emotion allows you to be less reactionary. If it rains, we run seeking cover because we don’t want to get “wet.”

Embracing the rain allows us to recognize its nourishment as it cleanses the earth cultivating food and vegetation. It is the same with our emotions. We seek refuge to avoid judgment of ourselves or from others. If we experience anger, embodying and grounding it we can awaken to its wisdom using the energy towards beneficial and fruitful actions.

How to Best Befriend Your Inner Enemy

Take off the armor. Use courage to face the weather. Detach yourself from it. Same with any emotion arising. Embody, redirect, embrace. Wait for it to blow over just as when the weather changes. Have acceptance, not attachment.

Sit in silence, recall the wisdom of the angel whispered to you so beautifully and awaken it. Let go of the enemy of resistance. “Our everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and people, experiencing everything totally without reservations or blockages so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.” (Trungpa Rinpoche)

This is the wisdom imparted to us, teaching us to cultivate loving kindness, compassion first for ourselves and then others resulting in peace even with our physical enemies: One life; one love!

Hard Finding Find Clarity of Thought

I’m not saying “STOP THINKING!” or anything like that, but I do believe that when you’ve that much noise going on in your head, it’s hard to find clarity of thought. Sometimes, you can spend far too much time in a thought process, which at times can be influenced by negative thoughts as well. I believe it’s important to recognize those times and find a technique to eradicate them as quickly as possible.

Whatever you do, don’t put yourself in an environment where there’s even more noise, like watching TV or listening to music but try to find a quiet place without all that stimulate. One useful technique that I use, is to sit down somewhere quietly and write myself a letter … it’s like a “dear John” letter, except in this case it’s a letter to put down those negative thoughts.

Processing Noise through the Written Word

I pretend to mail it to myself once I’ve written everything down, but in reality, I throw it away. It’s quite cathartic as it’s a way of getting the noise out of my head, except in this case I’ve written it down. It does work!

So, next time you can’t stop the chatter, whether it’s positive or negative or just that voice reminding you of all the things ahead of you, or all the things you didn’t manage to do the day before, etc. stop and take a few moments for yourself.

John’s Lesson

Here are a few more useful techniques that might help to clear some of that noise. These may allow you to think more clearly.

Meditation is always a good technique. But, instead of meditating to a set routine, why not just meditate on a blank screen? Imagine you’re at the movies waiting for the film to start, and you’re staring at a blank screen. Just focus on that, and clear your mind in preparation for the film to start. Except in this case, for the next few minutes, it’s blank, quiet, motionless, and still.

Outdoor Expressions to Clear Your Mind

Another great way to clear your mind is to go for a walk if you can somewhere where you can shout at the top of your voice, like at the top of a hill or in the woods. Once there, think of all those thoughts that have been bugging you. Shout them out, one by one, at the top of your voice. It’s a great way to dispel them and put some clarity in your thoughts.

One last idea is just to do something totally mindless. Yes, find a task that requires no thinking. For me, that’s easy … I just spend time playing games with my dog, Koda, and before I know it, my mind is clear as I roll around on the floor laughing and playing.

Live a Soul-filled life!

In either case, we need to zero in on our subconscious mind. Our goal is to make sure to cleanse the subconscious that drives our thoughts and emotions. Childhood traumas or haunting memories create emotions that are not very easy to manage. These can take place either in the external or the internal environment.

Karma, the Compassionate Teacher

There are situations where a person finds herself or himself in an atmosphere that is so deeply negative and oppressive. No matter how much one tries to be positive, one cannot make much difference in her or his emotional state. The abusive and negative energies stream from the external environment continuously and we succumb to this oppressive climate.

Each of the situations that arise or happen to an individual has some relevance to the ultimate cleansing of the karma, as it is so very important for a soul to purge the past and move through to the next phase of evolution in the ladder of consciousness. We must go through physical and mental agonies to pay off the past debts of karma, that is only way to cleanse the mistakes of the past. This is a result of the natural law, “as you sow, so you reap.”

Meditation, Mindfulness, Gratitude, Release

Yes, we must clean up the smudges on the mirror of our subconscious mind. Then only the reflection of the Self can shine forth. If we believe modern science and accept the ancient cultures of the East with trust, then meditation, mindfulness, gratitude, prayers, and rituals all have their role to play. They help create the mind and heart that can take the pain when it comes, watch the pain as it arises, and allow it to dissolve as the time becomes ripe for it.

One very effective method of healing and growth is to focus the mind whenever one is gripped with the rise of an emotional trauma of any kind of fear or anxiety. We should watch the flame or the energy rise, and then when it is at its peak, we lovingly offer it to the divine or universal consciousness. We usually feel relief instantly. It just leaves; the whole burden leaves as if something has evaporated.

Everyone goes through his or her life dramas, the pre-scripted stuff of life. It is the one certainty. No one escapes. So, if with acceptance, we acknowledge our deepest emotions, watch them rise in intensity and then unburden ourselves to the benevolent, precision run universe, a great heaviness lifts.

Yoga, a Holistic Approach to Emotional Life

If one is truly sincere, then one can take the path of daily yoga practice. Physical yoga is only peripheral. Yoga must be a holistic approach to everything in life. This also includes food, clothing, and everything we ingest in the body through all the sense preceptors, including the kind of company one keeps. One truly soaks the mind with the divine vibrations of regular meditation and prayers, of acceptance and surrender, of watchfulness and vigilance.

One can sincerely try to rise above the emotional pulls and the force of gravity. One must be regular in practice of physical and emotional training through yoga and mindfulness. Over time, if there is consistent practice without continuously looking for the results and quick fixes, one could create a different kind of physical cellular structure. This could further result in a different kind of hormonal balance and different kind of mind-heart blend.

Most people are inconsistent in the practice of anything that can change or clear the dirt on the inner mirror. People learn every technique in the world and read every bit of knowledge on the subject that bothers them. But, when it comes to the regularity of practice, and most importantly, giving the heart for it, this is where one goes wrong or falters. However, if one is truly eager to overcome the emotional traumas, then both letting the karma play itself out and presenting consistent yogic efforts should mingle together to create the magic that one wants to see.

As Sounds True founder Tami Simon pointed out yesterday, without discernment, we can become flat out delusional in our efforts to seek out spiritual guidance. “What if someone sees seven butterflies,” she asked, “and he assumes that means he’s supposed to get seven wives?” We laughed at her example, but seriously — Hitler thought he was being spiritually guided to purify his race. Discernment is key. Without clear tools of discernment, an attempt to seek out and follow spiritual guidance can turn psychotic. After all, many schizophrenics think the television is talking only to them! The only thing that separates the mystics from the sociopaths and psychotics is discernment.

We’ll be talking about many tools for discernment in today’s Sounds True program, as well as in the 10 month Mystery School immersion Trevor and I will be teaching this year. (You can listen to Trevor and I teaching our free teleclass here.)

In short, there’s no simple answer to the question, “How can you tell if you’re being spiritually guided?” In fact, the very question calls to mind a story Rabbi Reb Zalman told about an enlightened master whose disciples were concerned about choosing another spiritual teacher after he died. The master told them to ask any prospective teachers a question. “Ask him what we should do with our thoughts that interrupt us in meditation, that drag us away. If he answers you, don’t take him as a teacher. It’s too facile to give such an answer.” In some ways, discerning whether you’re receiving accurate spiritual guidance is similar. If anyone tries to tell you they know for sure when they’re receiving clear guidance, be skeptical.

With that disclaimer, here are some key questions you can use to double-check yourself when you think you might be receiving spiritual guidance. Keep in mind that no single one of these questions is adequate for discernment. Don’t interpret your answers to all these questions literally. Use these questions as a prompt for your own intuition and discernment.

15 Discernment Questions

–Does it feel like ‘’shackles on’ or ‘shackles off’?

Does this make you feel like you’re in prison, or unfettered? Is the cage door open or closed? Do you feel the heaviness of the shackles or the lightness of being that comes with freedom. Martha Beck writes, “The Buddha often said that wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s the ocean because the ocean always tastes of salt.” By the same token, anywhere you find enlightenment—whatever improbable or unfamiliar shape it may have assumed—you can tell it’s enlightenment because enlightenment always tastes of freedom. Not comfort. Not ease. Freedom.” If you feel like you’re being guided, does it feel like freedom?

–Is it kind?

If you think you’re being guided to do something overtly cruel, insensitive or unkind, think again. Don’t mistake kindness for people-pleasing though. Trustworthy spiritual guidance is kind at heart, but it can also be tough love — complete with strict boundary setting and ferocious love. You may be guided to break a people-pleasing co-dependence pattern that may feel to someone else like your new boundary setting isn’t as kind as usual. Check the kindness meter in your own heart. Your heart will know.

–Is there Aliveness here?

This is a vitality check. True spiritual guidance rarely tells you to do something that makes you feel dead inside. The rational mind, the fear-based inner critic or the task-master superego may order you to do something that feels deadening, but spiritual guidance will not.

–Does it exhaust me or fill me with dread?

Your true nature may ask you to complete tasks that require you to hunker down and focus. You may even feel a certain weariness after saying yes to a calling that puts you on the front line of something big and scary. But even if your body is tired, you will also feel a certain excitement, a rightness and lightness of being, and positive flow of energy through your body. You may feel scared. You may have butterflies in your solar plexus. But if you feel dread, you can be pretty certain the guidance isn’t pure.

–Does it nourish or deplete me?

Even when spiritual guidance asks you to do something that requires a lot of energy, true guidance will only ask you to do things that fill you with spiritual energy and do not require you to give away all of you own personal energy.

–Does it feel natural, efficient, easeful, peaceful and graceful?

This question, from Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin’s wonderful book Your Soul’s Compass, always help me breathe more easily when I’m discerning whether guidance is real. As they discovered by interviewing priests, rabbis, Sufi masters, Christian mystics, sages, intuitives, and gurus, spiritual guidance usually feels natural, efficient, easeful, peaceful and graceful.

–Does it make sense?

While spiritual guidance may often ask you to do things that feel crazy, common sense is still a useful discernment tool. It certainly didn’t make sense when my spiritual guidance told me to leave my job as a doctor ten years ago. So as with all the questions, this question doesn’t work on its own. But if spiritual guidance is asking you to do something that violates your common sense, slow down. Ask for clarification and confirmation. If you’re not sure, it’s OK to ask for more guidance.

–Will it hurt anyone?

As with the “Is it kind?” question, this doesn’t mean your irresponsible 30-year-old son won’t get his feelings hurt when you set a boundary and tell him he has to move out of the house if he can’t contribute to the household as a mature adult. It also doesn’t mean you may not be guided to hurt someone who breaks into your house and is threatening your kids. It’s simply a prompt to remind you that if your guidance is potentially dangerous or hurtful to someone else, double check yourself.

–Would Love do this?

This is one of my favorite questions because it’s so expansive. What would love do? Sometimes love forgives unforgivable acts. Sometimes love leaves. But there’s nothing more powerful in the universe.

–How does this feel in my body?

Does your body feel contracted or expansive? Is it saying “Hell yeah” or “Hell no?” When you consider what you feel you are guided to do, do you get a headache or feel nauseous? Do you feel exhausted or enlivened? Does your heart light up? Check in. Let your body be your compass .

–Am I rushing?

In my experience, trustworthy spiritual guidance doesn’t rush you unless someone’s life is at risk. If you’re not clear, you can always ask the invisible forces of love for confirmation. Pray for another sign, a dream, a clear knowing or seeing or gut instinct. Slow down and get quiet. Listen deeply. Pay attention. You will get your answer. You just may not get your answer on someone else’s deadline. If you feel pressured to rush, the answer is probably “Not yet.” Urgency usually stems from fear and scarcity. But true guidance isn’t afraid and it’s ever-plentiful. There’s always enough.

–Is it coercive or controlling?

If what you feel guided to do is coercive or controlling of someone else, pause. Love doesn’t coerce or control.

–Is it ethical and aligned with my core values?

This one is so important that I could write a whole blog post just about this. I met a shaman who defended his sexual molestation of a client because he said, “I was being spiritually guided to give her a sexual healing.” Bullshit. I’m not saying that ethics are black and white or that you might be led into grey territory from time to time, but if you think you’re being guided to do something that might be a blatant ethics violation, think again.

–Will this cultivate the stillness in me?

This one is HUGE and it’s not often emphasized in our busy, rushed culture. So many things you might enjoy leave you feeling hyped up, manic, and on edge. As one guy who lived on a wild game reserve in Africa told me when he was breaking up with his girlfriend, “I used to think that the excited feeling I got when I was with her was love. But then I realized it was actually the feeling I get when I’m with an unpredictable wild animal.” Sometimes what we interpret as excitement is actually a physiological stress response. Choose the people, work, and experiences that cultivate relaxation responses in your nervous system.

–What’s true and not true about this situation?

Sometimes we get confused because we think it’s a black or white answer we’re seeking. But maybe it’s both/and. Sometimes the solution that resonates in your heart is a paradox.

Are you being guided? Do you have what the Quakers would call a “leading?” Run through these questions and see if they help. Also, don’t be afraid to seek out trustworthy guidance from therapists, spiritual counselors, and reputable intuitives, energy healers and shamans. Often, they can help confirm what you already know in your heart of hearts.

Trusting your discernment.

How I’ve related to people, until now:

As a child I often felt like I was being pushed into a box. This came from adults around me but was also often of my own making, because of a desire to please. And because of my desire to please I actually became very good at blending into whatever situation I was put in.  I almost didn’t notice that in many of these situations I wasn’t ‘me’ any more. It meant that I often agreed with people because I adopted their truth as mine.

What I’ve learnt over time and am only now beginning to really grasp, is that what you say in interactions, while important to make yourself understood, is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the quality of energy you bring to your interactions.

Here are a few ways in which you can be mindful of the energy you’re bringing to the interaction:

Look for your own ‘triggers’: Firstly it’s important to be mindful of what triggers strong emotion in you, such as anger or jealousy.  When we know ourselves well enough to know how we will react to something, then we can begin to work with our reactions with awareness.

Build empathic bridges: This is hugely important. It’s not only important in our interactions to be mindful of other people’s perspectives, but also to show people that you are empathising with their perspective, even if you don’t agree with it. This shows people that you have heard them. It may seem something reasonably insignificant, but think about how it makes you feel if you are talking to someone who is not really listening and can’t wait to get their point of view across.

Teamwork: Solve any problems/issues together. Recognising that your truth is not the only truth and that, even if you think the other person is wrong, that their truth is just as important as yours. This is a massive step in conscious relating. And remember ‘compromise’ is not a four letter word.

Know when to turn the other cheek: Sometimes remaining silent is the most aligned expression, particularly during an aggressive interaction. It shows people that you are happy in your own truth and you don’t wish to engage in such an aggressive energy. Another powerful way of expressing is simply to ask a question. Try to make it as open as possible and avoid challenging questions that often begin with ‘why’. A powerful one can be “How do you think this makes me feel?”

Try to find the compassionate approach: Of course many interactions will trigger negative emotions within you. It’s important not to push these away and ignore them, but it’s also important not to project the energy onto the other person. Phrases such as “I feel angry right now. Perhaps this is not a good time to talk” can be very powerful as the other person can acknowledge your feelings without feeling like their own expression has been undermined. Then you can go away and work on yourself.  ”. Let the anger express itself in a safe environment. I like to retreat into my bedroom and beat up my pillow. Then ask yourself where the anger is coming from – it’s often a need to control the situation in some way — and work to let go of this need.

People respond more to energy than words.

Test it for yourself.  If you focus more on the energy you are giving an interaction you’ll start seeing interesting results. If we express our own truth clearly and compassionately then people sense this, even if it goes against their own truth. We can’t change people, just as they can’t change us, and we shouldn’t try. But, if we are focused on our expressing our truth, while acknowledging someone else’s with compassion, the interaction will always be a winning one.

‘Non-Violent’ Communication:

There’s some great work by Marshal Rosenberg on ‘non-violent’ communication. Of course this way of interaction can be difficult as we have been conditioned otherwise, but with lots of awareness and practice we begin to refine our communication with others and recognise the energetic dynamics in play during interactions. Check it out if you’re interested.

Finally, good luck. I applaud you for taking on this exploration. You need to be brutally honest with yourself.  Sometimes you may not like what you see, so just go easy.  Negative, ego driven interactions with people are not your fault – they are simply a result of your conditioning, so don’t judge yourself.  They are, however, your responsibility so keep at it. You’ll be surprised how much better your life will become.

But in reality, our “feeling heart” is in our brain, which triggers the release of hormones and neurotransmitters so that we viscerally feel emotion in our body. Emotions originate not in our chest or any other parts of our body beneath our anatomical head (which for now on I will just call “body” for simplicity), but in that mushy, fatty organ in our heads.

With this said, and ironically again, the brain can’t feel itself. We feel emotions in our body not because the emotions somehow live exclusively in our flesh and bone outside our head. Cellular emotional memory is therefore encoded largely in our brains, and in very specific parts of the brain. These brain memories in turn activate our peripheral nervous system, and motor neuron system (which initiates physical movement), which might be able to “remember” emotional experience (we’re not sure yet), in addition to the brain proper.

Our peripheral nervous system, nonetheless, is connected to the emotional centers of our brain. Therefore, physical stimulation of parts of our body that were connected with past emotional experiences can trigger a whole gamut of emotional experience, including memories, thoughts, feelings, and images. This is why emotions can be triggered both through mentally recollected memory and having part of our body sensitized or activated, such as during bodywork, making love, or a yoga session.

Coded memories of specific events form neurological connections between the brain and other parts of our body. When we perceive situations that remind us of the past, this can cause us to “feel” emotions in the present related to the past. Cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine are secreted when we perceive fear. Adrenaline and noradrenaline levels rise when we are angered, and contribute to the physiological feeling of what we name anger. The latter function as neurotransmitters and hormones and are secreted both by the brain and kidney-adrenal system.

Indeed, what sets off most emotional experience is our perception, which is the activity of our mind, which involves our brains. Sometimes this perception is conscious, sometimes it’s unconscious. Fear is often unconscious because it’s the most fundamental emotion to ensure our survival in the face of danger, or perceived danger. If fear were always conscious we would likely be dead by now, because it would take too long for us to consciously decide to get out of the way of the oncoming car, bear, falling tree (or scary member of the opposite sex!). Psychologist Lauri Numenmaa says:

“Say you see a snake and you feel fear … Your nervous system increases oxygen to your muscles and raises your heart rate so you can deal with the threat. It’s an automated system. We don’t have to think about it.”

Helpful Fear

While helpful for survival, there is a problem with this autonomic nervous system fear response if we are not aware. If we don’t use our minds to recognize fearful experiences about real threats from false threats we can end up with knee-jerk reactions to situations that are due to either improper perception in the present (á la mistaking a stick for a snake in the road) or past memories being triggered in the present. The latter is called fear conditioning and is why fear gets such a bad rap. We might also form beliefs based on our fear reactions. Sometimes these are helpful, sometimes not. If fear helps us avert real, in-the-moment danger, it’s helpful.

But if fear merely causes us to react unnecessarily in the present (when we are not truly in danger now) because the present reminds us of a similar scary situation in the past (PTSD), then fear is largely unhelpful (except perhaps for signaling to us that we need some help). For example, we might believe that all rustling in the bushes means trouble. Or, if anger caused us fear in the past, we might believe anger is only bad and never helpful. Or if our partner breaks an agreement or disregards us, we might fear that they will definitely hurt us in the same way again.

All these examples narrow our world, lead to false beliefs about reality, and to knee jerk reactions that limit our joy. If, however, we use good thinking to notice this unconscious joining of past fear to present reactivity, and thereby work through and/or reframe our unconscious beliefs and emotional reactions, we can heal and better manage this aspect of emotional experience and the problems it causes.

Because fear creates these apprehensions and unconscious avoidances, many denigrate or make fear a villain, just as they do the mind. Indeed, some say fear is the opposite of love, or can’t exist in the face of love. This is not true. Neurotic fear — learned historical fear acting up in the face of current non-threats that only remind us of the past — can prevent us from opening to love in the present. But helpful fear in response to real or realistic threats helps us love ourselves and one another by safeguarding what we care for, such as our very survival, clean air, and fresh water! And protecting our children, our health, and our human rights.

Fear inspires us to act [fight, flight, fawn (play possum), or freeze], so to cherish life, so that we can allay anxiety, which is the perpetuation of fear we can’t manage. When we ignore healthy fear, we deny our love of life by risking our lives to inaction in the face of danger, and by not being able to act with kindness and care. When we embrace fear, or at least welcome, allow, and get a little closer to it, we can discern its helpful from its unhelpful aspects. This way we employ its wisdom to protect what we love. All emotion, after all, has valuable information for us, and when we deny any emotion we can miss the message and injure life.

In sum, to throw the helpful aspects of fear out with the bathwater of neurotic fear is as big a mistake as considering the mind to be useless in love and emotional experience. Again, conscious fear in relation to real threats, or likely threats, helps us prepare for the future, for action, and should not be tossed out with our neurotic, unrealistic fears, and considered bad or demonized. This distances us from fear and allows it to wreak havoc unnoticed and unconsciously.

For this reason, especially, it’s crucial to review our reactions to events that cause us to react rather than respond. We might consider recruiting our brain’s neocortex to respond to emotional stimuli in order to moderate or reality-check the belief/s that support our emotional reactions. Our neocortex is the evolutionary newest and upper-most portion of our brains where critical thinking happens, representing yet another helpful use of good thinking for healing and for loving.

Granted, sometimes we can’t control our physiological fear reactions, and our anxiety can persist regardless of what we consciously realize. In such cases, we might have to recruit other resources and get support such as therapy, friends and family, a support group, herbs and supplements, lifestyle changes, and even medications.

Determining if our reaction is in response to something real can help us re-frame our experience and beliefs according to reality. How is this practical, you might ask? Say your boyfriend is out all night and doesn’t come home. You feel afraid. Maybe you’re afraid that he is out with another woman. Maybe you become angry in response to your fear that he’s cheating on you. If you react to your fear and anger and smash all his belongings, or yell at him, and then later discover that in fact he had a car wreck, you might have some amends to make to heal the consequences of your reactions! Good thinking, reflection, good communication, and reality-checking matter.

Heart-Mind

All this is to say that we have to use our minds to help our “hearts.” “Heart” in this context is merely a metaphor for our feeling nature — again, which is mediated by our brains. In the final analysis, the term heart-mind might be most accurate to describe our feelings, because mind (cognition) and what we call “heart” (emotion/feelings) are inextricably linked. Yet, we can, for educational and self-improvement purposes, distinguish for discussion’s sake the mental aspects of emotion and the visceral or feeling aspect of emotion.

There is ultimately no “heart” without mind, even in “pure” feelings of love, because we perceive, even unconsciously, with our minds, which information is computed in the brain beneath conscious awareness. Emotional experience is processed, relayed, and emanates from there, which is what is meant by the mediation of emotions in the brain. Yet, on a spectrum, there is the experience of love with more feeling than mental activity. But to some degree it seems the brain’s thinking is always to some degree involved in ways not immediately obvious to us.

The reason for any confusion on this topic might be because we have conflicting reports with regard to the experience of our emotions versus what actually happens physiologically during emotional experience. Because we feel some emotions like compassion and empathy in our chest and body does not mean this is where emotions originate or where they are mediated. While we may feel our emotions in our body, the anatomy and physiology of emotion, of which we are not consciously aware, operate behind the scenes, giving rise to experience. The hormone and neurotransmitter cascades (chain of physiological events) that cause us to feel emotion are released by our brain, which then stimulate other organs, especially our adrenals, to release hormones, such as adrenaline (epinephrine) and cortisol. Being aware of emotion in this regard is yet another aspect of how the mind is crucial for emotional awareness and for its healing.

Because we feel emotion, and especially love, in our anatomical heart area, we associate love (and other emotions) with the heart organ. And we use this term in daily life and therefore come to believe (through unconscious association) that love and emotion are actually in our physical heart. We now know, however, that romantic love lies in the brain, not the physical heart. Researchers have found that that “two brain structures in particular, the insula and the striatum, are responsible for tracking the progression from sexual desire to love.” Yet, we feel love in our heart because our brain activates this area through sensory and/or motor (action) neurons. But, in the end, what we feel in the literal region of our heart originates in perception and is mediated by the emotional centers of our brain.

None of this means that we should start trying to feel love in our brains! The takeaway is not to adjust our feelings of love, but to adjust our demonization of the mind. It’s instructional to learn what’s really going on with emotion, love, and perception to prevent us from making up good cop-bad cop stories about our hearts versus our mind, and feeling versus thinking. For, when we understand that our emotions are not really mediated in our anatomical hearts but in our brains (the limbic system of the midbrain, to be precise) and involve thinking (in the neocortex), then we aren’t tempted to contrast heart versus mind, and glorify the heart while diminishing the mind. In a captivating book on love, titled A General Theory of Love, author Dr. Thomas Lewis says: “The limbic system is associated with our emotions and the neocortex is associated with critical thinking. Both are operative in processing emotions.”

So, discussing “mind versus the heart” is tricky territory. If we substitute the word feeling for heart we end up with “mind versus feeling,” which actually is a more accurate way to discuss how feelings interface with thinking. We experience feeling in our body and we think about and perceive the world in our head, but ultimately both are united as body-mind, or heart-mind. Now, discursive thinking (as in thinking about what you will have for lunch or mulling over a decision) is different than the subconscious activity of perception. Discursive thinking, and especially obsessive and uncontrolled thinking, is that activity of the mind that can and often does get in the way of feeling and emotion. This is the defensive, denying, or imbalanced, “neurotic mind” (sometimes called the defensive ego) that can usurp all of our awareness, and is often employed as a defense against feeling discomfort or pain.

If we only feel our emotions without reflecting on them, then we easily can displace our emotions from the past onto the present, which is no fun for anyone. This is when our past usurps our present and how past wounds can sabotage our current relationships. When we can use our minds to trace current feelings to the past — aided by the knowledge that emotions can be triggered in the present that might have little to nothing to do with the present — then we can better heal the past, appropriate our emotional responses, and preserve goodness in the present. This is another example of how the mind is crucial for regulating emotional experience. Another is falling love: it’s often easy to go with our hearts, until it isn’t. Using discernment (thinking, analysis, wisdom) to restrain our hearts in love is often wise, because we experience “neurotic mind” to interfere with good feelings, especially love feelings, we tend to make the mind a villain. Most of us have our version of tortured, obsessive, entitled, confusing, divisive, and defensive thoughts. Our mind, however, is crucial for managing and working with our emotions, not to mention living in accord with consensual reality and acting with decency. We just have to learn to put it to good use, which takes practice — mind-body practice.

So, when our thoughts are deranged and out of control, rather than make our mind the enemy, we can employ body-mind tools to help return our thinking back to being helpful, rather a hindrance. And if that doesn’t work, we can try to control our thinking and “not go there” as best we can. Distraction and taking frequent deep breaths also is helpful to get out of thinking ruts, and sometimes all we have in tough situations. We also might be helped by a walk, a shower, a jog, some yoga, or eating some protein. There are many ways to work with our mind to bring it back into harmony — as an ally — with our feeling “hearts.”

Coming From The Heart

When others speak of “coming from the heart,” I understand this metaphorically. I know what they mean because I feel love, appreciation, and affection in my chest too. But when we believe this literally, then we are tempted — as is ubiquitous today, especially in many spiritual circles — to pejoratively contrast our good, pure feeling hearts with our bad, annoying minds. Understanding that our feelings and love originate in the brain helps us not make these black and white distinctions, and ultimately preserves our full gamut of psycho-spiritual faculties. It also prevents our shadow from remaining underground where it can direct our lives unconsciously.

The feeling heart is not so pure, or good, when it’s unaided by its ally of good thinking, as in the projection and displacement of belief and emotion, described previously in the boyfriend example and just above. I notice people will often defend their pain and lack of critical thinking with statements such as “I’m just expressing myself,” or “I’m just sharing my feelings.” Well, there are responsible, skillful ways to express ourselves, that first include self-reflection, venting and vetting with supportive others. Just “sharing feelings” by unloading on someone before making sure we understand the facts that inform our emotion and their targets, and to what degree we are being triggered form the past, is crucial to not do violence onto others and to preserve loving connections.

So, when we understand that our brain and mind are integral to emotional experience, and more central to it than our anatomical hearts, then we don’t make the mind a villain and our literal heart a savior. Instead, and more accurately, we could contrast our feeling nature with our thinking nature. And it’s true, sometimes we can over-think things, for which we need to let go and just feel. Other times though, we need to think better, not emotionally reason (drawing definitive mental conclusions from feelings), and to better inform and realistically contextualize our feelings. This also prevents the dangerous myth that love is really just an emotion centered in our chest that has little to do with thinking and the rest of our nervous system and physiology. Actually, robust, comprehensive loving — especially acts of love — require us to think well, to perceive accurately, and to rely on our brains for the neurotransmitters and hormones to experience the feelings of love.

Because both mind and body-feelings are involved in emotion, both mind and body-feelings need to be involved in emotional healing. This means that we have to both re-experience our emotions in order to feel, process, and release them, and we have to use our good minds (not the divisive, defensive, denying, neurotic, and entitled ego-mind) to understand the context of our emotions. We use our minds, for example, to determine who is involved, what our choices are, to glean the facts and determine if our understanding is consistent with the facts, what we can learn from our mistakes, if our current feelings are in relation to what really happened, and what a current experience reminds us of from our pasts. For emotional healing we can also use our minds to name our emotions so we can remember and cross-reference other incidents when we felt “sad,” “anxious,” “afraid,” or “angry,” for example. This helps us context our current emotional states with past ones, so we can gain more perspective on our current situation and express our emotions skillfully and appropriately (while always feeling them, regardless).

At the end of the day, we may go on feeling and experiencing ourselves just as we always have. Except that when we place our hands on our heart we might smile in the back of our mind, knowing that we also are touching and feeling the deep folds in our brain responsible for the feel-good or feel-bad sensation inside our chest. We also will be less likely to denounce the mind as an enemy of our “heart,” because in large part, our feeling “heart” is in our brain! This way we welcome back any parts of us that we have relegated to the dog-house, like fear, critical thinking, and thoughts themselves. Healing the “heart,” then, is to heal the mind, and vice-versa. And fear, rather than the villain we make it out to be, tells us where and what needs our loving attention. As Rilke reminds us: “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.” This way, we recover the tools we need to live fuller, more integrated, connected, and harmonious lives.