It's Time to Sift Through Your Emotional Baggage

Most people carry a large amount of unnecessary baggage, both mental and emotional, throughout their lives. They limit themselves through grievances, regrets, hostility and guilt. Their emotional thinking has become them, and so they hold on to old emotions because it strengthens their identity.Almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain. Any negative emotion that is not fully faced-- and seen for what it is in that moment-- does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain.

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Self-rejection leaves many people boiling within a brew of negative emotions. Any part of ourselves that we reject in thought carries a negative-- and sometimes self-defining-- emotion. If we dislike and reject parts of our bodies, personalities, intelligence, sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity we will suffer from self-abandonment. This self-abandonment will leave a large hole in our souls that will wail with the inner-pain caused by our self-hatred, self-criticism, shame, fear, guilt and depression.

 We can’t reject any part of ourselves and be happy. It’s impossible. Instead self-rejection will cause us to accumulate the emotional baggage of unhappiness that Eckhart Tolle verbalizes. We will begin to identify with unhappiness and, eventually, we won’t be able to separate our negative feelings from our identity or being. If we believe we are unlovable we will become unlovable-- not only to ourselves but to others as well. And we will seek-out the unlovable, the unhappiness, in others through negative comments and complaints. Misery begets misery and it becomes a twisted way of proving that we are indeed unlovable. We become unlovable personified.

People who habitually complain are unconsciously affirming their identity as unlovable, or unworthy or undeserving of happiness. They reject being what and who they are in the proper order of God’s plan. They refuse to accept their “perfect place” in the Higher Order and their inner-harmony is lost.

If we have become negativity personified, all is not lost, however. Paradise lost can become paradise found. It will take a two-pronged approach: 1) We must first be willing to face and unearth the ways in which we reject ourselves. We must then embrace these areas and learn from them. 2) We must work at unearthing the negative emotions that we have buried inside of us. Feelings unfelt become the living dead, and many of us are carrying around age-old emotional baggage. We need to face these old feelings and make peace with them by allowing ourselves to feel them and heal from them. This means we have to stop medicating them.

Many of us have used addictive behaviors to massage away the difficult feelings we don’t want to face. Addictive habits only suppress the feelings. They are powerless to remove them. Any feeling we refused to face was buried alive and it will cause us pain until we embrace it. So let’s do so. Let’s embrace our feelings by surrendering them to God. All we have to do is practice quieting ourselves through meditation. 

Find a quiet place where you can sit undisturbed. Think of a word or phrase that is sacred to you. Repeat it over and over and allow your mind to clear itself of noise. This will open you to the Spirit of God alive inside of you. Allow the Spirit to bring any old unresolved feelings to the surface and as they arise embrace and feel them. Allow the feelings to express what they have to teach you. Believe that they are present to help you, not to harm you. Cry and walk with your feelings. Embrace them fully until they subside. Feel your body releasing negativity. Then breathe. Every old piece of emotional baggage that you choose to face and free yourself of will help your soul to shine!