As essential as emotions are for certain phases of our growth, they are a compensation for the suppression of our true feelings and keep us disconnected from oneness.

Authenticity is expressed through feelings. When we are afraid of feeling, we allow the mind to project an illusion, which is expressed as emotion. Emotions don’t flow from our authentic being. Rooted in tension and stress, the mind tries to compensate for the suppression of our infinite consciousness and is the source of conceptual thought, just as emotions are bodily expressions of conceptual love.

Most people go through their days semi-alive, detached not only from their true feelings but even from their emotions. The energy they invest in suppression then gets stuck in their body and subconscious, where it ends up driving their behavior and eventually leads to illness.

Emotions can be a guide to areas of our life that need to be addressed. As we take ownership of our emotions, we reintegrate all the disowned and fragmented pieces of ourselves. We break the genetic code that keeps us disconnected from our authentic feelings of love, compassion, trust, gratitude, and joy.

Emotions exist in layers. For example, if we felt unsafe as a child, we might have hidden our true feeling of being hurt behind anger. If anger wasn’t allowed, we might be hiding hurt behind helplessness. However, we can only forgive if we allow ourselves to recognize our anger, only feel safe if we permit ourselves to know fear, only become strong if we acknowledge our vulnerability.

When we drop our usual defense and allow our emotions simply to be, they move through us. If we become tearful, we cry. If we are sad, we allow this emotion. If we are happy, we laugh and dance.

The key is not to direct the emotional energy toward anyone, including ourselves.

For instance, to find self-acceptance, we must acknowledge our anger, since shame is anger turned against our One Self. Shame is a sense of wrongness at the core of ourselves, the most painful emotion of all. It’s a result of legitimate but suppressed anger in response to non-acceptance and humiliation.

Being fully present with an emotion allows us to experience our innate feeling nature. We feel and express more genuinely.