Step 2:
Journey of Emotions
But human beings are like that, she thought.
We’ve replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.
—paulo coelho
As you grow older, step by step you are separated from your expanded self reality. It is similar to a plant in the earth—as it gets a little water, it sends its roots into the earth to try to get more connection and to be more earthbound. Your emotions, like water, are part of the step-by-step process of becoming more bound and constricted as you grow older. In this Journey of Emotions, there are two major additions to constructing the constricted self. The first is an emotional tension between desire and resistance and the second is between space and time. We then, as we will do in each chapter, describe the age activations, brain frequencies, and the emotion exercises leading to the guided meditation.
The Push and Pull of Emotions: Desire and Resistance
The next addition in developing your constricted self is the push and pull between desire and resistance. The more you experience likes and dislikes in the form of wanting and not wanting or simply resisting everything before you, the more emotional tension and reaction builds within you. You can feel the desire and opposition in your body and it creates emotional reactions that continue to build and reinforce the framework of your identity. If you are basically happy, that is who you are. If you are fundamentally sad, that is who you are. But being happy, you tend to want more. If you are unhappy, you resist people and situations around you. This desire and resistance is the way you build more structure in your constricted identity through emotional response and reaction. These emotional structures create boundaries that keep you in a life separated from yourself and others. As you are held more solidly by these emotional boundaries, you protect the continued developmental structure of your constricted self.
Space and Time
Space is another way you add on to your separate constricted self. This is accomplished by automatically placing an awareness of separation between you and other people and objects. The result is it makes other people and objects appear to be outside of you. This space of separation also uses a sense of time by employing the past, present, and future. You will tend to avoid the present by focusing your attention on time and space primarily of the past and future. For example, you were with your friend yesterday and plan to be with the friend again next week. This past/future structure provides the known condition for the constricted self to operate. There are circumstances and references available in that time and space to be able to tell what happened in the past and what will possibly happen in the future. However, there also may be fear related to what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. This fear increases and builds tension, tightness, and constriction in you.
The fear of the future is ultimately the unconscious unexplored boundary between life and death. You know what life is, but you want to avoid death. Death is the unknown that is the unconscious fear in us all. This is the huge emotional driver for the protection of the self and the justification we have to be constricted and try to maintain inner and outer protection of our lives.
The Age Activations
The activation and development of the feeling drive of desire and resistance, space and time, and life and death begins to be experienced between the ages of four and eight. This emotional development brings another form of unconscious protection from the uncertainty of your death. Very early in your life, you were told things like “Don’t touch the fire,” “Be careful crossing the street,” “Watch out for the neighbor dog as it may bite you,” and so on. These types of statements planted in you the unconscious fear that any one of these situations could cause you to die. These and other statements generate the emotions that generate the fight-flight-freeze pattern that is part of survival. When you are in some form of fear, you don’t trust yourself or others. This fear and lack of trust deepens your constriction. This fearful response can affect your relationships, your confidence, and how you go forward in life or not.
Blocks in Life Flow
Your ongoing emotional journey builds and develops more constricted patterns again from ages thirty-four to thirty-eight and sixty-four to sixty-eight. For example, at these age stages of your life, you may find yourself wanting to have more of everything, better relationships, or more passion and creativity. These strong desires build and create tension, restrictions, or blocks in the flow of your life. If it seems like you are stuck being blocked by a person or situation. Resistance will grow both outwardly and inwardly and nothing will seem to move for you. Generally, this resistance will come in the form of judging, negating, doubting, or belittling yourself—or the opposite, projecting these same qualities onto others and situations. These emotional reactions strongly reduce the flow of your life and add emotional tightness, strain, worry, and apprehension. For example, you may want to have a more meaningful relationship, but it is not happening fast enough for you, so you judge yourself as not acceptable or not good enough or criticize prospective partners. Being impatient is time driven, which means you are pushing against the flow. Notice how you get frustrated, wanting time to move quickly and achieve some desire you have. Consider whether impatience is part of the driven quality of your constricted self.
Your constricted self learns to react in fear and push away in anger to protect your perceived vulnerability. This is another way separation works for survival. This continued fear and anger response eventually creates an inflexible tightness and an imbalance that blocks the flow of energy from moving naturally through you. The constricted self refuses to look inside itself at its feelings and because of that it is more and more focused on the outside world’s activity of separation for protection. To bring unconscious feelings and emotions into conscious awareness, it is helpful to ask the question “Is this feeling pleasant/strong or unpleasant/weak for me?” This answer gives you an awareness of the flavor of the feeling. The feeling can be a strong desire of “I want” or a reaction of pushing away “I don’t want.” The more you become aware of this dance of your emotions trying to go forward and then pushing back, you will realize how it stops the flow of your life energy.
Another block to your life flow is when a feeling of fear arises and there suddenly occurs an innate response of a variety of self-protective emotions. Some of these reactive emotions may be anxiety, worry, anger, shame, panic, guilt, and doubt. This pulling and pushing away from yourself and outer situations creates tension, which keeps you far away from the flow and the source of the actual reality of the situation.
As the constricted self builds its structure, it takes on other people’s feelings or emotions as its own. This happens more when you are highly sensitive or out of emotional balance. The more separated you are from an inner connection to yourself the easier it is to be influenced by other people’s emotional field. Taking on their emotions can deeply negatively impact your mind and body, as well as your own emotions.
Knowing how to have a conscious protective emotional shield is helpful, especially in relationships where you become too sympathetic or empathic to others’ feelings. When caught in the negative sympathy and empathy pattern of others, you cut yourself off from your essential energy and inwardly seal off the pure power of your expanded self.
The Brain Frequency Patterns
The frequencies for this emotional stage correlate with the theta brain waves of 4 to 7.8 hertz. These brain waves are predominantly activated in the limbic brain. Feelings and emotions as well as memories are accessed in the limbic brain and are subconscious.
Given that emotions are activated in the subconscious, you may push them down when they arise to be experienced because you don’t want to feel them or because they may be too painful for you as they activate negative memories. Because many of us push our emotions down into the unconscious, we become unaware of what we really feel at any given moment. The tragedy is that these feelings or emotions can run your life or ruin your life as they pop out of the subconscious and spontaneously react without your control.
Journey of Emotion Exercises
The Journey of Emotions as it increases the constricted self has to do with your inflexibility, lack of inner balance, longing for all types of pleasure, sexual experience, relationships, success, meaning, and other emotional drives. When the sacral chakra energy frequency is negatively affected by constrictive emotional conditions, the physical body can react with kidney stones, lymph problems, urinary inflammation, lack of blood circulation, physical inflexibility, fluid retention, sexual dysfunction, stiffness in joints, sore ankles, lower back issues, as well as trauma or physical injury or disease to stomach, intestines, and sexual organs. The power of your emotions can have huge negative as well as positive impacts on your mental, physical, and behavioral life.
• Take a moment and ask yourself how the Journey of Emotions affected your life during the ages of four to eight, thirty-four to thirty-eight, and sixty-four to sixty-eight. Record in your notebook. What were the challenges, conflicts, and successes you had?
• Make a list of key emotions that run your life.
• How does the idea of space/time affect your life?
• How have negative emotions affected you physically and mentally throughout your life?
Exercise: Brain Frequency Patterns
• Recall your energy pattern, especially at one of your three developmental ages when functioning in an imbalanced emotional theta brain-wave frequency ( 4–7.8 Hz). Here are some examples of frequency imbalance to stimulate your thinking.
Imbalanced Frequency: Rigidity/inflexibility in physical movement, unable to deeply feel or enjoy physical or emotional sensations, inappropriate sexual drive, scarcity of creative ideas, feeling dull, lack of passion, poor social skills, excessive boundaries, and a focus on sexuality, acting out, and addictions.
• Write in your notebook about an age stage when one or more of these were dominant in your life.
In the following two lists, check your Enneagram type in relation to how your type focuses on feelings and how you have learned to defend yourself. Where does this pattern operate in your life today? Give an example. Write them in your notebook.
Enneatype: Feeling Fixations
Type One: Resentment (judging)
Type Two: Flattery (ingratiation)
Type Three: Vanity (deceit)
Type Four: Melancholy (fantasizing)
Type Five: Stinginess (resentment)
Type Six: Cowardice (worrying)
Type Seven: Planning (anticipation)
Type Eight: Vengeance (objectification)
Type Nine: Indolence (daydreaming)
Enneatype Defense Mechanisms
Reflect on how your type creates defensiveness in you and with others.
Type One: Repression, reaction form is displacement
Type Two: Identification, reaction form denial
Type Three: Repression, projection, displacement
Type Four: Introjection, displacement, splitting
Type Five: Displacement, projection, isolation
Type Six: Identification, displacement, projection
Type Seven: Repression, externalization, acting out
Type Eight: Repression, displacement, denial
Type Nine: Repression, dissociation, denial
Journey of Emotions Meditations
The previous exercises were to stimulate both your thinking and feelings about how your particular form of emotional patterns developed throughout your life. Your reflection is in preparation for the following guided meditations. These meditations are a way you can explore how you used your emotional structure to create constriction in your life.
These three guided meditations in the Journey of Emotions will help you to continue to explore the development of your constricted ego self. You will be guided into a deep state of relaxation and given a way to quickly put yourself into a deeply relaxed physical and emotional state whenever you want to use the “marker” you created in the first set of meditations. Recall that this “marker”—a symbol, an image, or a word—is used to anchor in your body/mind the direct physical experience of your relaxation state so that when you want to relax you can recall this marker and it will more quickly move your body/mind into a relaxed feeling. This deeply relaxed state will enable you to explore many aspects of both the development of your constricted ego structure as well as the next stage of your journey to your inner freedom and happiness.
You will now examine patterns of the Journey of Emotions and how your constricted self developed through the ages four to eight, thirty-four to thirty-eight, and sixty-four to sixty-eight. The patterns identified emotionally in these time periods are the effect of worry, denial, desire, and judging in our experience.
Exercise: Meditation Ages Four to Eight
Again, as with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this guided meditation in order to listen to it or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
The intention of this meditation is to go back to the early part of your life to recall the emotional conditions that began to shape your constricted self development.
This early period of ages four to eight is a powerful shaper of our emotional life and identity. Consider the following questions as access points to explore what your emotions in this time period were like in preparation for the guided meditation. Write your results in your notebook after doing the meditations.
Questions on Ages Four to Eight
• What kinds of moods or emotional reactions did you have to people and situations?
• What were the interests that you were excited or even passionate about?
• How did you resist change in your life? For example, did you move a lot? Were you forced to eat things you didn’t like?
• Do you remember having pleasant/strong or unpleasant/weak feelings about yourself, friends, teachers, parents, activities, etc.?
• How did you protect yourself from bad or unpleasant feelings?
• Do you remember being scared of dying or something negative and bad happening to you?
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Take three deep breaths and begin to let yourself relax into a safe, quite comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat.
• Close your eyes and notice the movement of your breath and then the sounds in your environment. (pause)
• With your eyes closed, focus inwardly on the image of the color orange along the spine at the ovaries and gonads for a few moments.
• Notice any sounds in your environment as you focus your attention on the color orange. (pause)
• Recall the depth of your last meditation. Let yourself relax into that remembered state. What does that state of relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember your marker. It was either a symbol, an image, or a word. Use your marker to return to that deep state of relaxation. As you move deeper into your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go. (pause)
• Now take three long, deep breaths slowly.
• Allow thoughts, feelings, or outside disturbances to simply float through your mind, emotions, and body without holding on to them.
• With your marker in mind, move down deeper inside yourself as though you were falling like a leaf through the air to the ground. Let yourself drift down and down and down within your body. (pause)
• As you move into that deeper state within you, feel yourself in a comfortable, safe place deep within your body.
• Now move through your body to your belly, right to the center of your body below your belly button. This is your healing center. Let yourself drop deeply into the center of this healing circle. Feel yourself resting in the center and opening and sinking deep into this healing place. (pause)
• In the center of this healing center, imagine that you are in a small boat on a beautiful lake. Notice the color of the lake, the trees around the lake, the beautiful sky with white fluffy clouds, and a breeze that allows you to float easily in the boat. (pause)
• Let yourself relax deeply as you just float, having no worries or concerns.
• Now, as you float on this beautiful lake imagine yourself going back in time to when you were four years old to eight years old. (pause)
• I am going to ask you a series of questions about this period in your life. Try to respond to them with the first thought that comes to mind. Also, note any feelings that arise as well.
• Now take three long, deep breaths slowly. (pause)
• Where were you living when you were the ages four to eight years old? What was life like at that time for you?
• If there were changes going on where you lived how did you react to them?
• Were you moody or upbeat as a child? Were your emotions different when you were home? Or in school?
• What were good feelings like? When did you have them?
• What were bad feelings like? What people or situations triggered these feelings?
• How did you protect yourself from these feelings?
• Did anyone die that you knew at this time? Did you know about death? If so, what was your reaction? (pause)
• Let go of these questions. Feel your breath and the relaxation of your body. Return your imagination to the lake. Continue to float in your boat on this beautiful lake. As you float in your boat, review the answers to these memories of your past. (pause)
• Now allow yourself to come back to the healing circle right below your belly, having the feelings of peace, ease, and present awareness.
• Place your attention on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments. Let yourself integrate what you learned from your four- to eight-year-old time period.
• Notice your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath, come back into the room.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.
Exercise: Meditation Ages Thirty-Four to Thirty-Eight
Again, as with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this meditation in order to listen to it or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
This meditation is to explore events or situations that generated emotional structures in part of your constricted self’s development. There are a number of questions below that can clarify your emotional pattern at a deeper level during this time period. Reflect on these questions about yourself as you go into the guided meditation. Write your results in your notebook after doing the meditations.
Questions on Ages Thirty-Four to Thirty-Eight
• Are you aware of the type of dominant emotions or feelings you have or had?
• How did you react to them? How do you usually react?
• Were you aware of your sexual attractions? Did you act on them, sublimate them, or what did you do? Were you excited, worried, or resistant, etc.?
• What is your fundamental fear of not getting what you want in your life?
• How much do your past experiences influence you today? Which ones?
• What are your deep interests and passions at this age, if any?
• What causes you to be fearful of death?
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Once again take several deep breaths. Take them with a long inhale and exhale. Permit yourself to relax into a safe, comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat. Imagine the color orange around the lower half of your body.
• With eyes closed, imagine the color orange and notice the sounds in your environment.
• Take three deep breaths and feel your body relaxing. (pause)
• Recall the depth of relaxation in your last meditation. Let the body memory relax your body right now. Notice how you feel mentally, physically, and emotionally inside yourself as you relax.
• What does that state of relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember your marker. It was either a symbol, an image, or a word. Use your marker to return to that deep state of relaxation. As you move deeper into your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go. (pause)
• Now take three deep breaths. Slowly inhale and exhale.
• Allow thoughts, feelings, or outside disturbances to float through you without holding on to them.
• With your marker in mind, move down deeper inside yourself as though you were falling like a leaf through the air to the ground. Let yourself drift down and down and down within your body. (pause)
• As you move into that deeper state within you, feel yourself in a comfortable, safe place deep within your body.
• Now move through your body to your belly, right to the center of your body below your belly button. This is your healing center. Let yourself drop deeply into the center of this healing circle. Feel yourself resting in the center and opening and sinking deep into this healing place. (pause)
• Now imagine you are in a canoe on a slow-moving, gentle mountain stream. Be aware of the colors, the sounds, the forest, the beautiful sky above with drifting clouds, and a soft breeze that allows you to float slowly in your canoe.
• Let yourself relax deeply as you just float downward with no worries or concerns. (pause)
• Now, as you float in your canoe imagine yourself moving back in time to ages thirty-four to thirty-eight. (pause)
• I am going to ask you a series of questions about this period in your life. Try to respond to them with the first thought that comes to mind. Also, note any feelings that arise as well.
• How aware are you of your emotions and feelings at this time? Can you see situations or events where you experience these emotions and feelings? How strong or disruptive were these feelings in your life and with others?
• Were you aware of your sexual attractions to others and did you respond or react to them?
• Did you emotionally act on what you wanted or did you hold back? Either way how did that feel at that time?
• What were you passionate about in your life at this time, or were you troubled or depressed?
• Did you consider yourself dying from accidents, illness, etc.? If so, how did you protect yourself from possibly dying?
• Come back to yourself floating in the canoe. As you gently float in this canoe, reflect on what your emotional life was at this time of your life.
• Now allow yourself to come back to the healing circle right below your belly, having the feelings of peace, ease, and present awareness.
• Place your attention on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments. Let yourself integrate what you learned from your thirty-four- to thirty-eight-year-old time period.
• Notice your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath come back into the room.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.
Exercise: Meditation Ages Sixty-Four to Sixty-Eight
This journey is focused during the ages of sixty-four to sixty-eight. The intention is to become more conscious of your emotion structure that is part of your constricted self’s development. Again, as with other exercises you’ve done before, please either pre-record this meditation in order to listen to it or have a partner or friend read and guide you through it. Where there is a (pause) indicated, give yourself time to experience the instructions at that point. (If you want to use the bonus video for this meditation go to Appendix D.)
Below are a number of questions to make you more aware of your emotional experience. Considering them can help you go deeper into the guided meditation. Write your results in your notebook after doing the meditations.
Questions on Ages Sixty-Four to Sixty-Eight
• How would you describe what it is to emotionally flow with life?
• What emotions do you respond to when you resist life?
• What pleases you in life?
• Do you have a strong interest or passion in your life at this time?
• What are the sensualities in your life? How do you express them?
• What are the routine emotions you fall back on in tense situations?
• How do you protect yourself from the feelings of fear and anger?
• What are your fears about dying?
Let’s begin the meditation:
• Once again take several deep breaths and take them with a long inhale and exhale. Permit yourself to relax into a safe, comfortable place with your back straight but not rigid or lie on a bed or a mat. Imagine you are in a room that is all an orange color.
• With eyes closed, feel the orange color feel like the sun on your face and notice the sounds in your environment. Take three deep breaths and feel your body relaxing. (pause)
• Recall the depth of relaxation in your last meditation. Let the body memory relax your body right now. Notice how you feel mentally, physically, and emotionally inside yourself as you relax.
• What does that state of relaxation feel like inside you?
• Remember your marker. It was either a symbol, an image, or a word. Use your marker to return to that deep state of relaxation. As you move deeper into your marker, feel the tensions of your body letting go. (pause)
• Now take three deep breaths. Slowly inhale and exhale.
• Allow thoughts, feelings, or outside disturbances float through you without holding on to them.
• With your marker in mind, move down deeper inside yourself as though you were falling like a leaf through the air to the ground. Let yourself drift down and down and down within your body. (pause)
• As you move into that deeper state within you, feel yourself in a comfortable, safe place deep within your body.
• As in other meditations, now move through your body to your belly, right to the center of your body below your belly button. This is your healing center. Let yourself drop deeply into the center of this healing circle. Feel yourself resting in the center and opening and sinking deep into this healing place. (pause)
• Resting in the center opening, sink deeply into your healing place.
• Imagine now that you are at the beach looking out at the waves of the ocean sliding up the sand and then back again. Notice the color and the sound of the waves, the movement of birds in the beautiful blue sky above you. Feel the breeze that caresses your body as you sit on the sand. (pause)
• In this beautiful and restful place you have no worries, no concerns with a feeling of safety and rest.
• As you feel this deep restful place on the beach, go back in time and remember your life at the ages of sixty-four to sixty-eight. (pause)
• I am now going to ask you a series of questions about this period in your life. Try to respond to them with the first thought that comes to mind. Also, note any feelings that arise as well.
• Now take three deep breaths and slowly inhale and exhale. (pause)
• At this period of time in your life are you flowing or struggling with life?
• What situations do you react to and emotionally close down or what situations are you open to and express yourself emotionally?
• Is sensuality a part of your life? How do you express that sensuality or cut it off?
• How do you protect yourself from fear and anger?
• Do you consider the closeness of death? Is death a part of your life? Do you avoid thinking about it? Do you resist or avoid or have you faced it? (pause)
• See yourself now back at the beach watching the waves come in. As you relax on the beach, reflect on what was important to you at this time of your life.
• Now allow yourself to come back to the healing circle right below your belly, having the feelings of peace, ease, and present awareness.
• Place your attention on the sensation of moving gently upward until you reach your chest. Notice your breath slowly moving in and out. Follow your breath for just a few moments. Let yourself integrate what you learned from your sixty-four- to sixty-eight-year-old time period.
• Notice your hands in your lap. Notice how heavy and relaxed they are. Begin to wiggle or stretch your fingers and hands and move your body.
• With a big inhale and exhale of breath, come back into the room.
• Please write in your journal what you learned and experienced.