(beingthere)Chapter 7. The Emotional Aspect

Since your level of consciousness is determined by the aspect of least development (Part 1, Chapter 4), and since for most people the emotional aspect is the aspect of least development, it is important to begin to focus your pursuit of Higher Consciousness there.

As a reader of this short course, you probably have ample skills in the other three aspects of being: the mental, the physical and the spiritual aspects. To pursue Higher Consciousness at this point in your development, you must learn skills on the one aspect where you have the least training.

After thirty years of providing psychotherapy, crisis intervention, public speaking, college teaching and marriage retreats to people of all ages who are just like you, we rarely come across someone who has received deliberate and conscientious training in emotional skills, outside of counseling. Everyone needs emotional training to seek Enlightenment.

It is through your emotions that you feel your world. It is through your emotions that you recognize the unconscious part of you, which only then enables you to find a greater consciousness. It is through your emotions that you become aware of the issues inside you that drive you. It through your emotions that you recognize the presence of a lesson for your consciousness. It is through your emotions that you gain access to an internal guidance system capable of giving you perfect, if not divine, guidance in every situation and moment of your life. Emotional skills are an essential part of the pursuit of Higher Consciousness.

To grow on the emotional aspect, you must first choose to be willing to feel your emotions; not just the ones that are comfortable or pleasant, but willing to feel all of your emotions, all of the time, without prejudice of the degree of pleasure you take or do not take in any specific emotion.
Your commitment to this first act of consciousness, willingness to feel all that you feel and to deal with all that you feel, is the single most important factor in determining your growth into Higher Consciousness, and eventually your Enlightenment.

As you choose to be willing to feel all that you feel, you will create an awareness of yourself that was not previously possible. This will be the next chapter in this short course.