Deliberate Receiving Page 12

  When you put a pressure cooker on the stove and turn the heat up, you’re going to need to release the pressure every once in a while, or it will, eventually, explode. In other words, you either let the pressure out voluntarily, in a controlled fashion, or it will erupt in an uncontrolled way. Our negative emotions are just the same. When we don’t allow this natural progression to take its course, we let the pressure build. It then explodes out of us in an uncontrolled fashion, and usually at the most inconvenient moment. This is when we go off on the poor waitress who didn’t do anything to deserve our rage. This is when we break down at work and have to run to the bathroom to cry. This is when we turn into ‘crazy bitches’ and stalk the hottie from the office. All of these types of volatile reactions and behaviours are uncontrolled eruptions of suppressed emotion.

  This is an important point to understand. If you’re afraid of your negative emotions, you can’t work with them, you can’t hear the message that they have for you. If you’re a healer who is afraid of negative emotions, you won’t be able to help others, as you’ll try to lead them away from their emotional responses, judging them to be too ugly or scary. If you’re a parent who is afraid of negative emotions, you’ll teach your kids to suppress them just like you learnt to do. If you want to break the cycle and truly shift to the positive side of the Spectrum, you’ll have to stop looking at negative emotions as a bad thing, and see them for the helpful messengers they are.

  Chapter 8

  Understanding Our Emotions

  Our emotions, all of them, are simply messengers, letting us know whether what we’re currently focusing on, and therefore what we are bringing into our realities in greater and greater fashion, is what we actually want or not. In fact, our emotions are our first feedback – without which we have no way of knowing what we’re really focusing on. If we know how to decrypt our emotions, if we know how to receive and understand the messages they contain, we’ll be able to use that information to move up the Spectrum easily and quickly, feel better, and set up Progressions of Manifestations that will fill our realities with experiences and stuff that we actually want.

  In order to understand the messages our emotions contain, we’ll be dissecting which belief systems trigger which emotion. In other words, we’ll be mapping different belief systems to different parts of the Spectrum, a process that will help you fully understand why we humans feel, react and act the way we do.

  Beliefs systems of the seven emotional groups

  You’ve already been introduced to the basic emotional groups in the Spectrum of Empowerment in Chapter 7, so now let’s build on that structure and look at the beliefs of each of the emotional groups.

  Belief systems of emotional group 1: DEPRESSION

  Emotions: Deep depression, total despair, total powerlessness

  Spectrum location: Lowest point on the Spectrum; it doesn’t get any worse than this.

  Level of empowerment: None. The world is a horrible, painful place and there’s nothing anyone can do.

  At this end of the Spectrum, we feel completely powerless: running back and forth in our pit, having been surrounded by unfulfilled and rotting desires for a long, long time. There’s very little life energy flowing, no fun, no joy, no enthusiasm. In fact, those emotions, and any thoughts that accompany them, are totally inaccessible at this point.

  This is where the clinically depressed hang out, as well as those who are addicted to drugs (when they are crashing). They don’t tend to interact much with society, as they usually hide themselves away. Since the world at this end of the Spectrum is a dark and hostile place, other people represent nothing but more pain and disappointment. Notice that even if the person knows this is not logically true, the feelings can still persist. Life is meaningless (it’s all just shit), and nothing makes any sense. There’s no hope, no way out and no one can help.

  The value of these dark, heavy emotions is in their pain. While the same can be said in a general sense about all negative emotions, it applies exponentially to group 1. Stay here long enough, and you’ll do anything to get out. While the Spectrum theoretically goes to infinity in both directions (there’s no limit to how awesome or bad things can get), it is actually limited on the ‘negative’ side by our own ability and willingness to handle pain. Each of us has a limit and when we reach it, we make a change. This is what people refer to as hitting rock bottom – our breaking point – and sometimes we have to hit it more than once before we’ll really do something about it (just as I was driven to the brink of a breakdown by my workaholism several times…). I call this the ‘Breaking Point Method of Growth’, and it’s employed by almost everyone (it’s our current default method of growth).

  Imagine that you’ve heard of this awesome party, and you want to go. Someone’s given you directions and you head off the way you’ve been told to go. Only, after just a little while, you get a weird feeling. You’re not sure that you’re going the right way. But you check your directions and according to them, you’re right on track. The party is supposed to be in this amazing neighbourhood, in a house with a huge garden and pool and tennis courts and ponies. And a chocolate fountain you can swim in – and another to feast on… Obviously. But as you keep on walking down the road, the neighbourhood just keeps getting worse. It begins to smell awful; there’s graffiti everywhere; there’s trash in the street; all the cars are on blocks; that guy on the corner just flashed some drugs at you and a knife, and what you’re pretty sure is his poop jar; is that a dead body over there? You begin to get more and more uneasy. You check your directions again, but, yep, you’re still on the right track. Now, a few hoodlums come out of an alley, and after they snap their fingers to a catchy tune (this is how I imagine all groups of hoodlums – thank you West Side Story), they being to harass you and shove you around. You’re really scared now, but the party has to be around here somewhere, right? I mean, the directions said so! The hoodlums start to smack you around and one of them has a baseball bat. They begin to beat the crap out of you. You think you just saw one of your teeth fly across the street. And yet still, you persist.

  Now, let me ask you something: how long will it take before you come to your senses and get the hell out of there? How much pain will you bear before you consider the idea that maybe, just maybe the stupid directions were wrong, and your gut feeling that you were going the wrong way was actually true? How difficult does it have to be before you give up and walk away? Of course, as long as you take this analogy literally, your answer would probably be ‘I would’ve gotten the hell out of that neighbourhood well before things got really ugly.’ But when you apply this metaphor to your life, when the party you’re looking for is monetary success or love, and the directions someone gave you are your limiting beliefs, you’ll realize that you’re actually willing to put up with a whole lot of pain.

  How long have you stayed in a job you hated? How far past its expiration date was your last relationship before you finally cut your losses (or they were cut for you)? How much pain did it take to bring you down? Are you actually proud of the fact that nothing short of a serious illness will cause you to take a day off? Would you rather nearly break under the workload of doing everything yourself, than ask someone for help? If you’re like most people alive today, you won’t get up and walk out of that neighbourhood until you absolutely can’t take it any more – when you’ve hit your breaking point.

  This is why people stay in a job they hate until they get fired, rather than quit. This is why relationships often have to get really ugly before people break up. This is why we often have to get ill before we’re willing to do anything about the chronic stress in our lives. When it becomes too painful to stay in the wrong neighbourhood, we have to get out. But we’re often unwilling to move until that day arrives. This method of growth isn’t ‘wrong’. It’s actually served us quite well. You see you don’t have to understand the information in this book in order to let go of resistance and keep raising your energy. That process will happen
automatically (you can’t stop having experiences that will create more desires, and sooner or later you will realize those desires, because not doing so will simply become too painful). Knowing about Deliberate Receiving gives you a shortcut. Growing via the Breaking Point Method is slow and, well, painful. If you want to stop taking detours into the wrong neighbourhoods and just go straight to the party, you’ll want to learn how to trust that little voice that told you right away that you were heading in the wrong direction. You’ll want to pay attention to how you feel.

  The Breaking Point Method of Growth entails waiting until a situation becomes so painful that it forces us to make a change for the better.

  Ignoring those feelings to the degree that you become totally numb, essentially allowing the hoodlums to beat you up in perpetuity, stems from a feeling of total powerlessness, which evokes a state of depression. Depression goes beyond sadness. There’s a feeling of detachment, of almost not being alive and no longer caring if you continue to live (for many, death actually feels like a welcome release). This state is the result of years (sometimes generations) of powerlessness, staying in a situation that’s incredibly painful and not doing anything about it.

  I want to make it clear that I’m not, in any way, diminishing what those with depression endure. Nor am I saying that it’s all their fault and that all they’d have to do is to get off their butts and change their situation. That’s the whole heart of the problem: in depression, we wouldn’t even have access to the idea that we could do that! The limiting belief system at the heart of depression states that life is not only ugly and horrible (so, pain is to be expected), but there’s nothing that can be done about it. So anyone at this level would go out into the world and just absorb all the hits, just take them. They wouldn’t stand up for themselves. They also wouldn’t change anything in their lives (what’s the point?). They will not talk it out or seek to feel better or try to get help. All of those behaviours require at least a smidgen of the belief that feeling better is possible.

  The good news is that this state is not sustainable (it’s simply too painful) and no one stays at the same level of depression for long. We’ll eventually get so sick of being in pain that we’ll attempt to do something about it. This isn’t generally a conscious decision, as much as the survival mechanism kicking in. The pressure will become so great that we’ll either have to do something voluntarily, or have an uncontrolled release (I believe the official term for this is ‘freaking out’). The bad news is that this freak-out, in its most extreme form, can come in the form of suicide or attempted suicide (as a way to escape the pain). In a less extreme form, we will move up the Spectrum but can fail to come all the way out of DEPRESSION, due to a resistance to the emotions we’d then feel, causing us to slide right back down. In this way, it’s possible to become trapped in DEPRESSION (or a cycle between ANGER and DEPRESSION) for years.

  I’ll explain this ‘cycle of doom’, as I like to call it, as well as how to escape it once and for all, in Chapter 11.

  Belief systems of emotional group 2: SHAME

  Emotions: Guilt, shame, severe insecurity, unworthiness, self-blame, fake gratitude, resentment

  Spectrum location: Between DEPRESSION and ANGER

  Level of empowerment: The power lies with some outside source (God, other people) who loves me, but will not show that love until I prove myself worthy, which I am not and can never be. I should be grateful for any scraps I do receive, and if I don’t get any, which I generally don’t, it’s clearly my own fault.

  When you experience emotions in the SHAME group, the world is still a dark and hostile place, but it’s not completely random. How and when pain is doled out can be controlled to a degree, by appeasing some outside source. This is where self-blame lives: where you take responsibility for everything, even if it’s not within your control. You feel you should anticipate everyone’s needs and cater to them and feel horrible when anything goes wrong.

  This is also where you put everyone ahead of yourself: you’re not just not first, you’re dead last, or not even on the roster. You are not important. All that matters is that everyone else is happy. That’s the only way to stay safe (by appeasing others, we can exercise a small amount of control over when and how much pain comes our way). Whatever bad thing happens to you, you must’ve deserved it. It’s always your own fault. Always.

  The value in these emotions is that they allow us to feel safer than in total powerlessness. We’re essentially trading service to others for permission to feel good – if we please everyone else and they are happy, we will be safe. This is like making a deal with the hoodlums; you’ll live in the hood with them and will do all their cooking, cleaning and drug running and they won’t kill you (they’ll still beat you up from time to time, but not as badly). You’re striking a bargain, one that allows you to feel more secure.

  The belief system that causes the emotions in DEPRESSION is one that states that you have no real value outside of what you can do for others. This is a step above DEPRESSION, because they don’t feel they have any value at all. The depressed person has no control whatsoever over the pain that’s inflicted upon them, while the ashamed person can exercise a modicum of control by pleasing others. They might even sometimes get some positive feedback, if they’ve done their job well (the depressed person, by comparison, won’t perceive any positives at all).

  Of course, it’s impossible to really please others, especially if they’re not already happy. No one can manifest in someone else’s reality. No one can actually change the vibration of another person. We can influence them, but they’ll still have to allow themselves to be influenced (see the Resources section for a bonus article that will explain exactly how this works). Someone might decide that they’ll feel better if you do their bidding, and they will actually feel slightly better for a little while, although not because of what you did for them. People who need others to please them aren’t exactly in a high vibration themselves. In fact, they’re usually stuck somewhere in the upper register of SHAME or ANGER, where people gain their power by manipulating others. So, this person that you’re pleasing will temporarily feel better because they were able to exercise power over you, not because what you did actually made them happy. Keep in mind that none of this is usually done consciously. The person doing the manipulating will generally believe that if they get whatever it is they asked you for, they will genuinely feel better. And, like I said, they do. Just not for very long. That’s when the next request or demand comes…

  A person stuck in this group has accepted their situation and will often take pride in their martyrdom. They will even hoist some help upon others in an effort to feel better, even when those others aren’t even asking for help. Think of your grandma, insisting that you have another helping of her delicious food, even when you’re so full that you can’t breathe. In that moment, your grandma is actually manipulating you so she can feel better (she feels worthy through service, whether the service is asked for or not). If you allow her to guilt you into doing her bidding, you’ve slipped into SHAME.

  As you can see, you don’t have to be ‘stuck’ in a group in order to experience the emotions within it. In fact, on some issues, and with certain people, you’re bound to dip into SHAME from time to time (if you ever feel guilty about anything, you’ve met this group – which, and this has to be said, would be the worst and yet most accurate name for a sleazy consulting firm ever). You can, for example, feel unworthy when it comes to one specific area of your life, but not in any other area. I once told a friend of mine that she clearly had an insecurity (she had asked me to help her, and so I read her energy), only to have her give me an appalled look and inform me that she didn’t have an insecure bone in her body. And of course, she didn’t. Except the one, that is, which she did end up discovering once she was fully ready. Until that point, however, my words held no meaning for her. It’s important to understand that this is not an all-or-nothing game. You’re never just sitting on one point
of the Spectrum. Different issues within you will evoke different emotions, and therefore be tied to different beliefs.

  When we are experiencing the SHAME group, we are basically saying that the needs and wants of others, no matter how trivial by the way, are more important than our own needs and wants. Someone in the lower Spectrum of SHAME and guilt will choose to do the most meaningless of tasks for someone else over the most important task for themselves (like running to get you coffee over being on time for their very important doctor’s appointment).

  Belief systems of emotional group 3: ANGER

  Emotions: Blame (blaming others), anger, revenge, hatred, rage, jealousy

  Spectrum location: Between SHAME and FRUSTRATION

  Level of empowerment: The power lies with an outside source that doles out both bad AND good, so both are theoretically possible. This power source plays favourites, however, so some people are unfairly privileged. We have the ability to ‘earn’ favours with hard work or by proving ourselves valuable or by paying a price, but the game is still rigged against us (meaning, we lose more than we win).

  The emotions in ANGER represent the first hint of actual empowerment. Whereas in SHAME, all the power lies with an outside source, which must be appeased and may then throw us a few scraps, in anger one can work hard to try and tip the unfair balance back a little.