I Change Reality

This blog will discuss some common things that happen in our brain that take us out of our emotional center, the place we create with a feminine or loving power. This part of our brain is where we understand things using empathy. The great prophets and sages used this part of their brain to understand themselves and others. We develop the highest consciousness using this part of our brain because we are able to understand what effect our emotions, reactions and feelings have on others, even when we do not say a word.

What distinguishes the real prophets and sages from the phony ones is the fact that in the course of the development of their consciousness, they were able to sharpen all of their skills, not just the ones used to understand the external world but also those used to perceive what was going on inside them.

To achieve the consciousness of a sage, we want to experience all of our feelings and perceive what is happening inside. This new consciousness will offer us the ability to be our beautiful authentic self and fully open our heart.

To be authentic, assertive, caring and creative, we need to understand the importance our emotions have for us. Most people I talk to believe that if they do not feel upset they are not upset. The problem is that most of us are not aware of our emotions when we get upset, we are looking outward, not inward and we do not feel upset.

There are stages to fear. Many people think we just get frightened and go into the “fight or flight” response but we actually go into our head to figure out what to do as the first stage of fear.

There are two different areas of our brain, that change our focus from feeling to just thinking, to find solutions to an acute problem.

The first area is our limbic system. When our limbic system perceives a threat that is not an instant physical danger, it instantly puts all of our brains resources into thinking not feeling, so it shuts down the ability we have to be introspective. We can look outside of ourselves and find out what is going on but we are not able to relate this information to all of the emotional memories, feelings and understandings we have developed over our lifetime. If we are only in thought, we are not able to have the wisdom of a “prophet or sage”.

The second area is the cingulate area of our brain; this area helps us to hyper-focus on something so we can find out what we need to do to be safe. This area forms a “worry loop” to focus our attention and help us problem solve. The bad thing is the more we worry the more this area becomes “hot” and when it is hot it can command all of our attention. As we continue to keep this area hot, the focus can give us a worried feeling that for some can even become an obsession.

These two areas, focusing us on problem solving, can keep us in our head, away from “our heart”. Because these mechanisms are so great for instant problem solving and accumulating information, we need to respect and honor them.

We want to put the information of what is going on in our external world into context, in order to do that we need to open up our heart and experience feeling the emotional memories we have that are associated with the external information we receive. When we come from our heart, we are able to understand what we brought to create what is going on, as well as have a non-verbal empathic understanding of the other person’s feelings and motivations.

Using empathy to experience our emotions as well as others, allows us to learn much more than just ideas and verbal thoughts. Using the part of our brain that is empathic and non-verbal to add value or meaning to the bigger picture, allows us a richness of color and depth that makes it possible to see things, people that only use their thoughts can not see. We need to use all of our brain, both our ideas and emotions to have the opportunity to truly grow as a person.

Many people suppress their feelings and get into “positive thoughts” to resolve problems. People are creating a habit of not being in their heart, to resolve things. When we are feeling emotions, we are using our entire brain to create better understandings from experiences over time. The greatest prophets have all used their own feelings, as well as understanding the feelings of others, to see things others could not and create good things.

The second stage of fear is the “fight or flight” mechanism, it takes us out of our thoughts and puts us into our body. During “fight or flight” we are focused on action and we are not as capable of looking at what is going on inside, just as when we were focused on thought in the first stage.

I believe there are some benefits to understanding this. When we experience and express our emotions, we are more likely to stay in touch with them and understand what we are feeling, so we can prevent fear from rising without our knowledge.

There are other ways to be in our heart and not just in our head. Try to be with someone touching them as you talk and notice your feelings. If we feel we are upset, it can be worthwhile to take some deep breaths and be in our body and heart more…if that means we need to take a break then we should ask for that.

We can always do more fun things that are physical as part of our normal routine, to keep our body, brain and spirit healthy. The more we are  experiencing what is happening inside the more capable we are of using our heart or “prophet and sage” brain, to make empathic and caring decisions…