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.

What does that mean to you?

As a human being, you have been invested with power and purpose to act as a partner in creation. And as such, you are invested with same extraordinary Divine power to speak your world into existence! You have ability to create with your words; to start to bring into being what you truly want out of infinite potential of your own soul.

Just as creation of universe began with words and is sustained with words, so too every creative process. The words you use actually bring things to life – and when you stop using those words, or change them, you will inevitably create something completely new.

My Challenge to You:

1. Think of a situation which has you feeling distressed and disempowered. Maybe it’s in a relationship, or maybe it’s just a place where you feel stuck.

2. Just for now, assume that if you stop ‘speaking this situation into existence’ you can create something new – something you truly want - out of Divine ‘nothingness’ of your own soul.

3. What do you really, really want to experience in this situation? (not what you don’t want, should want, or need) Pick some words from second list, above.

4. Just for now, let go of old, judgmental or disempowering words you are applying to situation. Instead, if what you want to experience is love, openness and authenticity, ask yourself what you can do in order to create those things from ‘nothing’ – from infinite potential of your soul.

5. Try this and see what happens – you may create a whole new world!

Words of love create nurturing and connection. Words of praise inspire confidence and peace. Words of hope generate positive action. Words of encouragement bring courage into being. Words of vision cause soul to come alive.

So choose your words with care – and let there be life!

Authentic Kabbalah is not magic, spiritual tricks, or a new age self-help technique. It is Jewish mysticism, deepest level of Torah – Divine communication given to Moses at Mount Sinai. It is ultimate mission statement and owner’s manual for human being. Learned and applied properly, authentic Kabbalah will help you to reach your highest potential as a human being created in image of G-d, and give you access to a life of joy, purpose, power and passionate aliveness.

*Since Torah forbids erasing of G-d’s name, it’s customary to avoid writing it out in full.

Copyright: Shifra Hendrie 2004

Shifra Hendrie is a personal and spiritual coach who has been studying and teaching authentic Kabbalah for over 20 years. Her unique workshops deliver this transformational spiritual wisdom in a way that it can be integrated and applied to core challenges of participants’ lives.