The idea for this blog started years ago when I read Conversations with God, book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch. He said “Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you’re feeling about it”. The idea has since expanded to the power of feelings.
Feelings are much more powerful than just thoughts or words, and even actions. When you’re just going through the motions, there is not much impact. Feelings add power to everything you do. To understand this we must understand that everything in the universe vibrates, including our thoughts, words and actions.
Matter vibrates very slowly. It vibrates so slowly we can’t see it vibrate with the naked eye. Actions vibrate more quickly than matter and sometimes we can see those vibrations. As an example: if we drop a pebble in a pond we see the ripples spread out from where we dropped the pebble. What we can’t see, like electricity, television waves, radio waves, thoughts etc. vibrate very fast. We can’t see those vibrations.
Sine waves of different frequency. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The rate at which something vibrates is called it’s frequency, i.e., how many times per second it cycles above and below a baseline. In the example of the pebble dropped in the water, the ripples are the vibrations and the surface of the water that is not rippling is the baseline. The number of times a second that a ripple or wave is created is its frequency.
A small pebble and a large rock dropped in the water create the same frequency of ripples or waves. The difference is the power of the waves. A small pebble creates small ripples. A large rock creates more powerful waves. This is called amplitude, which measures the distance the wave travels above and below the baseline (it’s power). The more powerful the wave the more impact it has and it can travel much further before its energy is depleted. For example, a tsunami creates more impact when it hits something than the wake of a large ship and, because it’s more powerful, or has more energy, it can travel much further before it dissipates than a wave made by the wake of a ship.
Illustration of vibrations of a drum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Low frequency thoughts literally bring us down. We are vibrating at a low frequency. We feel bad. High frequency thoughts make us high, literally. We are vibrating at a higher frequency. We feel good. Feelings are the amplitude, or power, given to the thought’s frequencies. Thought is the pebble that sends vibrations through the Universe. The amount of feeling (size of the pebble or rock) attached to the thought gives the thought power and magnetic strength, determining our far and fast the thought will go, and how many ‘like thoughts’ it’s magnetism attracts. The ability to attract ‘like thoughts’ determines how long it takes to manifest something (matter).
Most of us experience the power of feeling in negative situations more than in positive situations. Getting angry in a situation escalates it from bad to worse immediately. We’ve all seen and felt that. For some reason most of us are quick to go to feeling anger, fear, jealousy, rage, revenge, judgment, etc. even though we have example after example throughout our lives of the powerful negative impact of those feelings. They almost immediately create even more negative situations. If you start yelling at your spouse, they immediately yell back. If you start yelling at your children, they immediately rebel (or cower, depending on their self esteem). You get the idea.
We’ve all heard about the power of positive thinking. There are hundreds of good books on the subject. We have not heard much about the power of positive feeling and very little is written about it. Thoughts, prayers, affirmations, etc., without feelings don’t have much impact. I prayed and did affirmations this way for years, with very little results. Feelings, whether positive or negative, add power to our thoughts, whether positive or negative. Just as we can learn to control our thoughts (more on that in later blogs), we can learn to generate positive feelings.
Our goal is to create feelings that give us joy and happiness, and cause others to feel joy and happiness (understanding that we can’t have any lasting impact on anyone else’s happiness). If you become aware of your feelings as they are occurring, and I’m asking you to start working on that now, you will notice that positive feelings begin in the area of your Sacred Heart and literally rise up through your chest, shoulders, neck and head, raising your vibration. They make you high; they lift you up; they make you feel good; you become happy. If you are considering doing something, taking some action, and you are aware of a good feeling in your Sacred Heart, pursue it. That is your intuition, or instinct guiding you.
On the other hand, if you observe a negative feeling, you will see that it starts at the gut level and literally goes down your abdomen, hips, legs and feet, lowering your vibration. It brings you down and makes you sad, depressed, and afraid; you become unhappy. As above, if you’re considering taking some action and you are aware of any negative feeling at your gut level, do not pursue that action. Again, that is your intuition or instinct guiding you.
You can learn to generate positive feelings. Over time, as you become more aware of your feelings, and with practice, you can replace a negative feeling with a positive feeling almost as it occurs, eliminating negative outcomes more and more in your life (except that in taking action, always heed the negative feeling). With practice you will also be able to constantly generate positive feelings, generating positive outcomes.
How can you generate positive feelings? By remembering them and reliving them. We have heard (in those books written about positive thinking) that our minds cannot tell the difference between a real and an imagined event. We can all remember times in our life when we were extremely grateful or joyful; where we were in awe and wonder at beauty and majesty; when a kind, loving act brought joyous tears to our eyes; or when a compassionate act of forgiveness really moved us. By remembering and reliving these occasions in our imaginations we can regenerate the feelings we had at that time. They may not be as intense as on the original occasion (although they can be), but you really can feel them and they really will raise your vibration.
English: an angry bear (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Many of us experience this more as it relates to negative feelings we experience than with positive feelings. For example, if you broke up with a loved one, you may re-experience these feelings many times a day, especially at first. These feelings are brought on by any little thing that reminds you of your ‘ex’. You don’t want to ‘do’ anything that will remind you of them. You want to hide those feelings, rather than confront them many times a day. Even after years, something may trigger that old feeling that brings tears to your eyes. The same is true for the loss of a loved one.
We want to use that process in reverse. We want to remember, to re-experience good, joyful, happy feelings that brought laughter, a great sense of peace and serenity, awe or wonder, or maybe even tears of joy. And we want to do this constantly, until it becomes normal for us to feel good always, all ways!
Gratitude (Photo credit: ally213)
You may find that you have a “favorite” feeling, that is, one that you can generate easier than others. My favorite feeling is gratitude or thankfulness. I can generate a feeling of gratitude at will, and easier than I can generate other feelings. A close second for me is the feeling of awe and wonder. If I need a lift I can go to the ocean where its majesty, power and grandeur immediately invoke a sense of wonder and gratefulness in me that raises my vibration. A drive through the mountains will do the same thing for me. So will a beautiful sunset or a field of wildflowers. Remembering any of these in my imagination invokes the same feelings.
It doesn’t matter what your favorite feeling might be as long as it’s positive. Whatever your favorite feeling is, practice generating it by remembering whatever experiences you had that generated it in the first place. A good time to practice is in mediation. Or driving to work. Or taking a walk. Or sitting in a beautiful environment.
What are some of these positive feelings that you may want to generate? I have listed some below. It is by no means exhaustive; rather it is a list to get you thinking about which feelings are positive:
Love, Joy, Happiness, Peace, Acceptance, Wholeness/Holiness, Thankfulness/Gratitude, Adoration, Forgiveness, Kindness, Giving, Serenity, Beauty, Caring, Awe, Freedom, Wonder, Compassion.
Practice creating some of these different feelings. Spiritual growth is not a Sunday or Sabbath day endeavor. It requires constant attention and awareness, 24/7. The more you practice, the easier it will be to always be feeling good. As mentioned above you may have feelings that are easier for you to generate than others, but it’s a good idea to learn how to create many different feelings.
The subject of your Spirit Hug should somewhat dictate which feelings you are creating. For example, if you’re giving a Spirit Hug to someone who needs healing, you would want to try to incorporate feelings of wholeness, health, acceptance, gratefulness, patience, and love into your Spirit Hug. If you’re giving a Spirit Hug to someone who needs financial healing you would incorporate feelings of abundance, thankfulness, acceptance, worthiness, giving, and peace into your Spirit Hug.
I have used the term ‘All That Is’ as another name for God. Love is also a name that is synonymous with God. The Love that is the Love of God is unconditionally accepting. All of the emotions listed above are aspects of Love. When you generate a feeling of Love, of unconditional acceptance, you can use that to Spirit Hug anything.
I talk about unconditional acceptance for two reasons. One, it is the opposite of judgment, which we as a human race seem to be so good at doing (is that a judgment?). And two, it is a requirement of every successful Spirit Hug.
Scriptures tell us “judge not that you be not judged”. Judgment comes from ego which, as we have learned, edges God out, and wants to be best or worst, depending on where we are coming from. If we have low self esteem we tend to elevate everything and everyone above us. If we have a big ego, we tend to put everything down so in our minds we are justifiably better than everyone. If we are in between, we will do both. But judgment in any form does not make you feel good.
If you believe that God created all things, that God is good, and that God is one with all things, indeed is all things, how can you judge anything as being less than good? There are many things in this world of ours that appear to be less than good. But we are not seeing with the eyes of God (remember the “Little Soul & the Sun” from an earlier blog?). We don’t see God’s entire plan. We get to accept that God’s plan is good and perfect just as it is. So it is very important that whatever we are giving a Spirit Hug to, whether it be an individual or situation, to accept it as it is, to Love it as it is.
Most of us have heard the term “what you resist, persists”. Another way of saying that is “you get more of whatever you focus your attention on.” So if you are resisting something, if you are negatively judging something, your attention is on it and you’re going to get more of it. It is by lovingly and unconditionally accepting anything and everything as it is that we can begin to change it. Don’t take this lightly. Acceptance is a primary key to changing your life and your world.
If someone is ill we get to accept that and be thankful for that while at the same time realizing that health and wholeness is their perfect state of being. We get to understand that there is a reason for their illness, and that at some level they are at cause of their illness. So as we wrap them in a Spirit Hug of healing it is with feelings of acceptance, of gratefulness, of understanding, of forgiveness, of love, of health, and of wholeness.
While we’re on the subject of healing, we also get to understand that we can’t heal anyone without their participation. In all the stories of Jesus healing people, they came to him, and he attributed their healing to their faith. The woman came up behind him and touched the hem of his cloak, saying if I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. The Centurion came to him on behalf his servant, who was as healed. The paralytic man lowered through the roof was healed. In all these cases Jesus saw their faith and told them it was their faith that healed them.
We can give a Spirit Hug of healing, but no matter how masterful we may be, they will not be healed if they don’t believe they can be healed, they will not be healed if they don’t accept their situation with gratefulness, they will not be healed if they don’t accept that at some level they are at cause of their illness (or other situation). That does not mean we should not give them a Spirit Hug. We are all One, and with a Spirit Hug our spirit is ministering to their spirit and at some level that is helping them. The same line of thought applies to any situation whether it is lack of health, lack of abundance, someone who is chronically depressed, someone who can’t get beyond grief, someone who is obsessed with fear or is paranoid, someone with low self-esteem, etc. They must participate in being whole.
Fear Filled Bathtub (Photo credit: Kewima)
Fear is another emotion that needs some discussion here. Fear is not the opposite of love, as many people think. Fear is the absence of love. The greater the fear, the more absent love is. Many of us have heard that fear is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. If we believe that, and I do, fear is a liar. As the riddle goes “I tell many lies and am always believed. Who am I?” (Deepak Chopra, Why is God Laughing?) Fear can literally make us ill over nothing.
As I was growing up I was very timid and shy. I was okay with raising my hand and answering questions in class, or reading papers in front of class. But I was terrified of giving a speech. I didn’t have to take speech class in high school and I didn’t. When I got to college, it was a different story. I took a class called English Composition and about the middle of the first semester our assignment was to compose and give a speech. Composing the speech was no problem. I was good at research and I loved to write. The day came for me to give the speech in front of class. Fear made me ill, literally. I went to the infirmary to get an excuse for missing class (this was a military school, you couldn’t just miss class). Because I really was ill, getting an excuse was no problem. I went back to my dorm and I laid in bed, not sleeping, but practicing my speech over and over, refining it. The next day I gave the speech. A speech is graded on composition, persuasion, eye contact, voice inflection, etc. There are a lot of components to getting a good grade in a speech. The professor gave me a perfect score. He also told me that he didn’t think there had been a perfect score on a speech in the history of the school since it was founded in 1802. Fear had lied to me. It had convinced me that I would be terrible at giving a speech, that no one would listen to me and that I wasn’t persuasive. Speaking in front of people turned out to be a very special talent. Since then I’ve never had a problem speaking in front of people. In fact, I really enjoy it and look forward to it.
Another example of fear lying to me was the fear of rejection. I was selling a very good product. I would go to my sales territory to call on businesses. I was so afraid of rejection that it made me ill. I would sit in my car, imagining the many ways I would be rejected. I literally made myself ill. I would sit there all day. I might drive around the block or to a different part of my territory and start the process all over. But again, fear was lying to me. Since then, I have made a very good living at sales working for some major corporations, including IBM.
In order to understand that fear is lying to you, face your fears. You can’t hide behind your fears, as I did for many years. You can’t bury them. You can’t ignore them and hope they will disappear. I changed careers, hoping the fear would go away. I can tell you from experience, don’t wait. It only gets worse. The energy builds and builds, making it very difficult to break away from the fear.
Energy is magnetic. The more energy present, the more magnetic it is. According to the Law of Attraction, the more you focus on something, the more ‘like’ energy is attracted. If you are obsessing over a fear enough for it to make you sick, you are attracting a tremendous amount of negative energy, as I did. Energy magnetizes your awareness, drawing you into it until you lose awareness that you are not your thoughts, that you are not your feelings. You become one with the fear. I had to go through many years of ‘failure’ to get through all that negative energy. I persevered and finally got through it. But there were dark days. Very dark days Days when I thought I would always be a failure. Take it from me, it is easier to get through your fears early on, before they build up that tremendous amount of negative energy.
Fear causes separation. It causes us to think it is us vs. them, or me vs. you. It is an illusion. It is a lie. But it is usually believed. When reading the introductory blog about how Love can’t hurt itself, you may have asked yourself, “what about all the violence and tragedy that occurs in our world?” It is all fear based. Remember, fear is the absence of Love.
Feelings are the language of the soul. If your feelings don’t make you feel good, you need to change your feelings by changing your thoughts. Feelings are a wonderful barometer, letting you know if your “weather” will be good or foul. If what you are thinking about doesn’t make you feel good, don’t give it a second thought, literally. Think about something that will help you generate a good feeling. Keep going back to that, no matter how often your thoughts are ‘attracted’ back to that negative thought process. Keep it up. Don’t get frustrated. Don’t be in judgment. Just notice that you are back there, not feeling good, and re-generate a thought that will make you feel good. In time, it will get easier and easier.
Feel All That Is. Feel good. According to Wayne Dyer if you feel good you are feeling God. This then is step two of the Spirit Hug process:
Connect with Love; feel the Joy, the Peace, the Acceptance, the Blessedness, the Thankfulness, feel Whole & Holy; Feel All That Is, now.
Practice this step until you can quickly generate good feelings. Then combine step one with step two. Go within, becoming One with All That Is, while feeling good.
Spirit Hug 