The Feeling Exercise

The feeling exercise has been an incredible blessing for me on my recent journey.   I tend to be cerebral rather than acknowledge any feelings as valid so this has helped me walk through them without all the gunk that usually comes with them (in my perception).  My heart is full of appreciation for Paul Scheele who introduced it to me.

Many, many thanks to Arnold M. Patent who posted on ArnoldPatent.com the following compilation with such astute observation and comment.

We are feeling beings. Our natural state is enjoying the free flow of feelings unimpeded by any thoughts we may have about them.

Our feelings are our access to our true power, our joyfulness, our peacefulness, our aliveness, our intuition and our oneness. All those aspects of our lives that we cherish the most are contained within our feelings.

The way we separate ourselves from all this magnificence is by attaching thoughts to our feelings. We do this by labeling them, describing them or doing anything with them other than feeling them fully just the way they are.

A simple way to practice this is by doing the following exercise:

THE FEELING EXERCISE

Part I:

Close your eyes, scan your body, and notice how you are feeling. Then:

1. Feel the feeling free of any thoughts you have about it.

2. Feel love for the feeling just the way it is.

3. Feel love for yourself having that feeling.

Part II: We are all trained to evaluate the circumstances in our lives. Since most circumstances evoke feelings, we automatically evaluate our feelings based on these situations. Reversing this process takes a heightened awareness and freedom from self-judgment based on an appreciation that we created our judgments for the opportunity to experience the opposite of our natural state. Our willingness to open ourselves to the newly-found joy of freely and spontaneously feeling our feelings is the signal that we have completed the journey away from our natural state and are on our way back.

Part III: As we begin the process of feeling our feelings free of the labels we have attached to them, we are ready to notice the energy within the feeling. There is enormous power in this energy which is part of our natural state. Instead of hiding this power and separating ourselves from it, we are now ready to allow this power to build within us. This is true empowerment. When we feel powerful, we are able to feel love for ourselves just the way we are. We are also able to feel love for the world around us just the way it is. We also notice that peacefulness, harmony and abundance have become our companions.

The importance of paying attention to our feelings and freeing our feelings of the labels we have placed on them cannot be overstated. Equally important is heightening our awareness to all the ways we have trained ourselves to avoid giving our feelings the attention and the appreciation they deserve. Practicing the Feeling Exercise (and noticing the ways we avoid the Exercise) is a very self-supportive and simple gift we can give to ourselves. I suggest that you revisit the prior three-part message which includes the Feeling Exercise. This additional practice will prepare you for the next part of the Feeling Exercise which will appear in the next message.