Touching on the Purpose of Emotions
The human experience involves a range of emotions and it’s easy to label some of these emotions as negative. Whether we identify as women in this lifetime and are taught that rage and anger aren’t ‘feminine’, or we are on a spiritual path and told that some emotions are of a ‘lower’ vibration than others. None of these things are true. Emotions are just one aspect of this life that we come here to experience, and they have a purpose.
The emotions I’d like to talk about today are guilt and rage. What did you feel when I said their names? Was there an automatic recoiling or perhaps, a feeling of respect for their power? Like all emotions, guilt, and rage can be constructive— one gives you the will that you need to go into battle, and the other helps you to see where you have been failing yourself and yearn for improvement.
Guilt is the thing that we reach for from time to time when we know that we aren’t the best that we could and want to be. It allows us to pick it up, wear it when we need it, then put it back in its box and let it sit until the time comes again when our ever-faithful conscience tugs at us to remind us of our desire for goodness.
Rage is as if our nervous system’s fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response was only set to fight. Picture a lion backed into a corner. It doesn’t cower, it is rageful and calculating where and who to strike first. You can then see how this emotion can be useful. There are times in our lives when we may need rage in the face of opposition because it endows us with the courage we need to persevere.
It is an excess of these two emotions that can be detrimental. Rage represents an inability to let go, and it is used by people in situations where it isn’t necessary because of this inability. It’s also an unpredictable emotion, and when you habitually turn to it, it can become the default emotion. This isn’t helpful because rage’s purpose is wasted on petty tasks. It’s meant for those undertakings that seem insurmountable, to be your spear when there are seemingly insurmountable forces.
Just like rage’s ability to become overused and become a default emotion, guilt can also become a trap. Guilt is a thick and sticky energy. It’s not easy to move through it when you hold a lot of it, whether from a past that you aren’t living anymore or a present that doesn’t fulfill your conscience’s longing for goodness. For these two possibilities of an excess of guilt, the advice is different.
If you have already changed your life to match your desire for better, then there is work yet to be done. This work mostly consists of forgiveness of self. The things that we cannot change, we must forgive in order to move on with our lives and start releasing ourselves from the trap of guilt. If you are still living the life that makes you feel stifled and trapped by guilt, I received one channeled message in the form of a question to ask yourself: “How much of my life will I spend living with this conscience?” Your conscience is the lantern that lights the way in this life. Sometimes circumstances make that light appear dim, but like our soul, it is always there. It never truly leaves. However, it is always your choice what you do with that light.
With all of my love,
-Elena
Side note:
All of this was channeled information and I asked why the way of moving through guilt was so like the serenity prayer often used in AA and other groups that help with addiction and got the feeling that it had been given to people before, at their peaks of exhaustion. Then, I heard, “We have to help. We are family.”
It’s nice to know that we are always being helped, isn’t it? We aren’t alone even in our loneliest moments. Instead, we are unfalteringly, unrelentingly, and unconditionally loved.
