Emotional turmoil often brings with it discomfort and pain, leading to our instinctive response to retreat, distract ourselves, or focus our attention elsewhere. However, this reaction may, in fact, hinder our potential for growth and evolution. Embracing such discomfort and delving deeper into our emotional turbulence is the first step towards becoming conscious beings.
When emotional turbulence engulfs us, it’s crucial not to dismiss or shun it. Do not seek any distraction or motivation to avoid or dismiss it. Instead, we should use it as a tool for understanding and evolution. Emotional turmoil offers a unique opportunity to gain insights into our conditioning, our fears, and our desires. This may sound paradoxical, as our natural tendency is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. However, only through facing our fears and discomforts can we truly understand their origins and liberate ourselves from them.
This doesn’t mean indulging in our negative emotions or wallowing in self-pity. Rather, it involves consciously acknowledging our emotions, experiencing them fully, and then moving beyond them. When we witness our emotional turmoil, we are not just passively experiencing it; we are actively investigating it, dissecting it, and understanding it. This process is akin to stepping outside of ourselves and observing our thoughts and feelings as an outsider might.
Rather than shunning emotional turbulence, we should strive to understand it, to dive into its depths and explore its roots. This is not about entering into a self-debate or criticism, which often results in more turmoil. Instead, it’s about witnessing and exploring our emotions without judgement or fear. It is about nurturing a deep sense of awareness about what is happening within us.
Think of it as being a scientist of your own mind. When a storm of emotions hits, don’t seek shelter; instead, see it as an opportunity for study. Analyze it, understand it, witness it. This form of internal observation allows us to untangle the root cause of our emotional responses and provides a pathway to move beyond them.
Emotional turmoil can serve as a magnifying glass, illuminating our deeply ingrained patterns and conditioning. It exposes the remnants of our primal instincts that still govern much of our behavior. However, by consciously witnessing these emotional upheavals, we can start to unravel these instinctual reactions.
Instead of running from the turmoil, we should welcome it, for it provides the most fertile ground for our conscious evolution. It is here, in the crucible of emotional turmoil, that we have the opportunity to face our fears, challenge our conditioned responses, and emerge more self-aware and compassionate beings. This is the promise of conscious evolution, the new frontier in our development as a species. In essence, the journey through emotional turmoil to conscious awareness is a voyage from darkness into light, from unconsciousness to consciousness.
