Dealing with Negative Emotion

Have you ever found yourself in anger or fear and said to yourself: “I’m a spiritual person. Shouldn’t I be beyond feeling this way?” We want to be limitless in our compassion. We want to be kind and generous. We work so hard on our personal and spiritual development. And yet, negative emotions such as guilt or blame still seem to catch up with us. Is it realistic to think that spiritual evolution will eventually move us beyond all negative emotion? I don’t think so.

I think many people may begin a spiritual journey in a quest to leave behind difficult feelings such as fear or anger. But while we are human as well as spiritual beings, the entire spectrum of the emotional energy body remains part of our experience. This is not a bad thing. Emotion is information. The idea that some of this information is “negative” is not so much about the quality of the emotion itself, but how it is addressed.

Let’s take anger, for example. Anger can inform us that a boundary has been crossed. Anger can tell us that we’ve allowed ourselves to be victimized. This is excellent information. We can now take our anger and establish better boundaries. We can choose to stand up for ourselves. The emotion of anger has become a catalyst for positive change. This is Lightwork – to transmute negative energy and emotion into a positive outcome.

But take that same anger and leave it unacknowledged, hidden in a dark corner of our being. It sits and festers. And should we open up that dark corner, we become overwhelmed by the force of it. The emotion is like a neglected e-mail account with thousands of unchecked messages – an overload of information, some of it highly important, but obscured by mountains of spam. The force of it causes us to act badly – to say painful and mean words, to yell and shout, to slam doors and seethe in punitive silence. We quickly seek to bury that dark corner of anger, because we cannot allow ourselves to act this way. The information it contains is left unacknowledged and unheard. We do not transform this anger into anything useful or positive. This is repression rather than Lightwork. This is how a great percentage of humanity deals with negative emotion.

There is one other way to deal with this anger. Some will use anger as justification to create the same in others. They will begin feasting on their anger. Eventually, they will enjoy the anger they create in others, because it makes them feel powerful or important. Anger will become their fuel. This is Darkwork.

It is not our goal as Lightworkers to evolve beyond negative emotion. This would be impossible. I will submit to you that even Jesus was known to get angry from time to time! Feeling negative emotions has nothing to do with our spiritual evolution. How we process those negative emotions, on the other hand, has everything to do with our spiritual evolution. We are all capable of energetic alchemy. As Lightworkers, it is our goal to transmute negative emotion into positive change.

Blessings,
Andrea