For example, Walter is a man who has tremendous power over others but no personal power. Walter has made millions as president of a large investment company. He has a lovely wife, three grown children, and two beautiful homes. Yet Walter is often anxious. He worries about losing his money. He is easily triggered into anger when things don’t go his way and people don’t behave in way he wants. Because his heart is not open, he is a lonely man.

Walter operates totally out of his ego self, believing that having control through anger and money will bring him happiness and safety he seeks. Yet he has achieved everything he believed would bring him happiness and safety and what he feels most of time is anxious and lonely. Walter is empty inside. He has no sense of his true Self, no sense of beauty within him, no sense of his lovability and intrinsic worth. His life is based on externals rather then on spiritual values of love, compassion, honesty and kindness.

Personal power comes from embracing spiritual values rather than just earthly values. It comes from making love, kindness and compassion – toward oneself and others – more important than power over others. It comes from doing inner work necessary to allow soul to have dominion over body, rather than allowing animal instincts of fight or flight – instincts of body – to have dominion over our choices. When soul has dominion over body, you have power to manifest your dreams, to stay centered in face of attack, to remain loving in face of fear. When soul has dominion over body, you have tremendous personal power.

Accepting and staying with your feelings means listening to yourself, hearing how you feel, and being empathic with yourself as you would with a friend. It means acknowledging your feelings, whatever they may be, and asking yourself whether there is anything you need. Do you need to write about it, listen to music, sit quietly doing something soothing, take a break from what you're doing, go for a walk, lie down, have a nap, or something else?

Sometimes it helps to simply close your eyes, notice how you feel and just sit with that feeling, doing nothing with it; just feel it and notice it without judgement.

Stepping Back and Witnessing Your Feelings

Sometimes you need to step back from your feelings. Maybe they're too difficult to feel right now, or too overwhelming. You may need to do something that requires your full attention, or you may just need a break from feeling so much. It's possible to step back from your feelings - to be aware of them and acknowledge them, but to not be in them quite so much. This technique can be hard to do, but with practice it gets easier.

You start same way: close your eyes or look downward. Tune into your feelings, only this time, focus on noticing them and stepping back from them. This can be accomplished in different ways. You can name feelings, for example, "sadness" and then remind yourself to step back. You can think "I am stepping back". Notice feeling without going into it deeply or fully. You may want to imagine an image, real or abstract, to represent your feelings, and then observe that image. You are witnessing your emotions by acknowledging that they are there without going into them. You may or may not need to feel that feeling later. Sometimes simply noticing and acknowledging your feelings helps them to shift.

Talking About Your Feelings

Talking about how you feel can help you in many ways. It can help you deepen your connection with yourself, while deepening your connection with person you are speaking with (unless you are talking *at* person, or are not present as you speak).

Talking can help you to process, express, and let go of your feelings (as can writing, drawing, sculpting, reflecting, and listening inside). It can deepen your understanding of yourself by helping you to stay with your feelings, and to go deeper. And it can help you to feel heard and accepted, and help other person feel trusted and let in.

Talking about your feelings means you are being vulnerable with another person, and that both creates and deepens intimacy. Taking risk to say things that are hard can be liberating for both of you.

Not Everyone Feels Same Way

People are often surprised to discover that not everyone reacts to same events with similar emotions. Something that might scare one person will anger another. How you feel is rooted in many things, such as, how you perceive event, what it means to you, whether you've experienced something similar or not, what your history is, what your emotional temperament is, and so on.

Some people always feel intensely; others rarely do. Some people experience world through their thoughts and reflections, while others experience events through their emotions -- they feel their way through situations while former think their way through situations. (The Myers Briggs topology offers some helpful information about how people respond to world differently in terms of feeling, thinking, judging, sensing, perceiving, intuiting, etc.) People who lean more toward feelings are often confused and irritated by those who lean more toward thinking, and vice versa. Conflicts can arise out of these differences. It's important to remember that people are different; they feel what they feel, and they think what they think, and there is no one way or right way to feel or think. Just as we need to accept our own feelings, we need to accept others' as well, including -- and especially -- when they don't match up with our own.

We Need Our Feelings

Feelings are an essential part of our humanity - we need to listen to our feelings. When we don't sensitively tune in to our and to other people's feelings, all kinds of psychological and social problems develop. Taking an allow-it-to-be-there, appreciative, open, or welcoming attitude toward feelings has a lightening effect on everyone. Allow your feelings to be there without trying to get rid of them or to keep them, and you will find that many problems will lessen.

By being open to your feelings, you'll discover that they will guide and teach you, warn and protect you, and delight and entertain you. So give yourself a break by taking a little bit of time every day to tune into how you are feeling -- you'll soon discover benefits.