This blog-post is a continuation to:

Day 131: Who Am I in a Group?
Day 132: Who Am I in a Group? Clashes of Cultures
Day 133: Who Am I in a Group? - Nothing Left but Memories
Day 134: Who Am I in a Group? Dance Company - Pt1
Day 135: Who Am I in a Group? Dance Company Pt2
Day 136: Who Am I in a Group? Dancing with a Ghost
Day 137: Who Am I in a Group - Self-Forgiveness Pt 1

I ended off my last post with the Self-Forgiveness statement:


“I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to always be skeptical of groups in terms of thinking/believing that it is unlikely that it will be fun experiencing myself in a group of so many different individuals when in my experience, each individual brings the potential that I will experience conflict with them – and therefore, any time where I do find myself in a group where there is a relative tolerance towards each other and a general mutual agreement to have fun and a good time together – I elevate it into something magical and miraculous within and as myself – accessing positive feelings of wonder, exhilaration, connectedness, euphoria, excitement, hope and love.”

So, I'm continuing from there:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to approach groups from a feeling and emotion perspective – where I either associate a negative emotion to groups or the opposite polarity of positive feelings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to base my evaluation of a group based on what kind of experiences I go through, where if I mostly experience negative emotions while participating within the group, then I will dislike the group and try to remove myself from the group and if I mostly experience positive feelings in the group, then I will attempt to hold on to the group.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to ever approach groups from the simple realization that groups consist of individuals and so to participate in a group is to participate with other individuals – instead, when in groups, it has always been about me – what can the group do for ME – how does participating in the group make ME feel – how does participating in the group make ME look – wherein I have used groups to satisfy experiences and if I found the group was not or no longer giving me the experiences I desired, then I would discard the group and so the individuals within it – showing that I never had actually considered any of the individuals within the group but only participating from a starting point of pure self-interest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create an interpretation of the groups I am participating in within my mind, where, within my mind, I create a ‘group entity’ to which I associate a positive or negative association – and based on that experience the ‘group feeling’ as being good or bad.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to – in order to experience as many positive feelings as possible – always assimilate myself as much as possible to the others in the group – adjusting how I behave, speak, dress, what I talk about, what I express my interests to be, what I express my opinions and likes and dislikes to be – to as much as possible ‘fit in’ with the group – because I have come to believe that the more each one conforms to the norms and standards of others in the group, the stronger the group will be and the more the group can do ‘for me’.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to ever consider what I understand under ‘a strong group’ – where I now realize that a ‘strong group’ actually referred to the extent to which individuals within the group assimilate to each other and so support each other within their perceptions, beliefs, opinions, ideas, in order to generate a maximum sum total of positive feelings within each of the individuals.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize that if I base my participation within groups on energetic experiences, then no group can ever last – because mind energy always moves between the polarities of negative, positive, negative, positive, etc. – and so if positive or negative energy is the determining factor for my participation or removal from a group – then it is inevitable that I will at some point experience negative energy – and especially if previously the positive energy had been quite intense – it will be mirrored by an equally intense negative experience – and so it is pointless to try to ‘hold on’ to a group for the positive feelings I experience within it, because it will not last.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize that no matter what kind of ‘connection’ I felt I had with people – on summer camps, or in the dance company or in the high school – it was always based within interpretation and experience where I would elevate the lack of anxiety or uncomfortableness to something ‘more than’ and create the idea and belief that this group was special for me to be able to experience these ‘amazing things’ with these other beings – when actually – I never had a real connection with any of the beings in any substantial way – I didn’t know who they were, what their lives were like or what they experienced.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize that whenever I would experience something apparently ‘amazing’ – I would project this experience and attribute it to the group – never actually looking at what the experience was – whether it was simply a point of silence or comfortability or how exactly a positive feeling was triggered within me in for instance feeling appreciated or validated or accepted – where, of course – everything that I experienced, I experienced within myself and so could have a self-honest look at the nature of the experience and how/why I was experiencing myself in this way – but instead chucking up my experience to the other beings and the group – and so creating a dependency with the other beings the group in a hope of experiencing these points again – where within walking in groups, I would in fact continuously separate me from myself and always miss: me. Learn more »

Question: 

Feelings are positive, emotions are negative. I can see how having an emotion is always a negative thing. But feeling happy about oneself is also a negative thing, is that true?

Perspective:

It's not that emotions and feelings are 'bad' things. When we say something is 'bad', we are really just assigning a negative charge to a word, or an event or a concept - when, in itself, the word/event/concept just is what it is.

So - why do we at Desteni investigate both our emotions as the negative experiences and our feelings as the positive experiences?

Emotions and feelings are energetic experiences. How does energy work? Energy - just as with electricity - always moves between opposite poles. On a battery you'll have a positive side, indicated with a '+' and a negative side, indicated with a '-'. Our Mind's energy operates in the exact same way - where it will always move from positive energetic charges, or feelings, to negative energetich charges, or emotions. That is why we are never just stable, but have 'ups and downs' - because the energy in our mind always has to switch between emotions and feelings.

So - what does this imply? It implies that emotions and feelings are dependent on one-another. Meaning: the emotion of hate must exist for the feeling of love to exist - the emotion of sadness must exist for the feeling of happiness to exist - because emotions and feelings co-exist in a relationship of polarity, and the one end of the polarity cannot exist without the other, opposite, end. In other words - we will never 'rid' ourselves of our negative energetic experiences if we want to hold on to the positive energetic experiences - because every time we participate in a positive energetic experience, we immediately create a negative energetic experience as well.

So - that explains why we investigate both emotions and feelings, as we cannot choose to keep one and do away with the other in terms of what emotions and feelings are by their very nature of polarity.

Now - some more on feelings. You will see/realise as you continue in your DIP course, that there is 'more to feelings than meets the eye'. What on the surface is experienced as something 'positive' or 'good' - actually indicates an aspect in yourself where you're 'lacking' something within yourself. This will be most easily explained with an example.

For instance - when we fall in love, we generally experience this as a positive/good thing - because it 'feels' good. We have love in our life, and all is wonderful and we feel fulfilled. However - this love is triggered by something outside of ourselves - we look for it in other people, in family, friends or a partner. But the underlying 'problem' so to speak - is that we are actually not loving ourselves. And because we don't love ourselves - we look for love elsewhere - through forming relationships with other people. And then we have an energetic experience that we call 'love' and we feel satisfied and fulfilled. But... as with all energetic experiences, this feeling of love will fade, or may even alter into an experience of resistance, disgust and even hatred.

So - what does the feeling of 'love' do? It gives us a 'quick-fix' - where we for a moment feel satisfied and fulfilled - but actually, what it does, is: make it so that we don't go and look deeper - to the origin of the feeling - which is the lack of love within ourselves - the lack of self-love. And this self-love is not just an energetic, fleeting experience. It is a living application in terms of how we treat ourselves and in terms of whether or not we accept and allow ourselves to be less than who we can be. This self-love is real love. And once we learn how to love ourselves - we can extend this love as an actual living application to others as well - where we can then live others as ourselves equally.

So - we're investigating feelings, because they 'hide' points of ourselves that require attention - and instead of 'settling' for merely fleeting positive energetic experience - we work towards fulfilling ourselves in a real and substantial way.

Related articles

• 183. Like and Dislike = Mind Control
• 7 years journey to life: Day 124: practical methods of stopping the mind
• Day 73: What do I feel like doing?
• Day 125: Abraham Hicks - Life is supposed to be fun
• Day 98: Stress Management

Learn more »