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By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 30, 2008
Big words, big concept but the concept has a simple definition. You can’t feel contrary emotions at the same time. Try it. Try to feel love and hate at the same time. Try to feel anger and forgiveness at the same time. Try to feel eager and lazy at the same time. It doesn’t work. Emotions that don’t match not only cannot exist together, but the stronger one cancels out the weaker one. How do you define the stronger emotion? It is the one that you can get to most easily and quickest; it is the emotion that you can stay in the longest and it is the emotion with the greatest intensity.
Our present state has largely been colored by what is called “reciprocity” of emotions. “Like” emotions attract “like” emotions, and opposite emotions repel each other. It is yet one more proof of the law of attraction. All of your life your emotions have been “reciprocal.” The emotions you have allowed have determined your “feeling” state- your propensity for how you are “used” to feeling most of the time and the cycles that were yours.
Emotions are about focus and focus is about choice. How do you want to focus on positive and negative emotions? How do you want them active in your life? What do you want to use negative emotions for? How do you want to use positive emotions? Negative emotions are great warnings that you are thinking something that is not in alignment with who you really are. At your Source, at your essence, you are love. When you depart from that Source or center, and get askew, negative emotions will be the indication that you are not in alignment with what is your Source. Negative emotions are warnings to go in a different direction, either in thinking or in action or both.
Emotions that don’t match are reciprocally inhibitory- the good ones cancel out the bad ones and the bad ones cancel out the good ones. You are always, always in search of the good ones, inevitably. Negative emotions lead to a sense of powerlessness. We are always trying to escape that powerlessness -in good ways or in ways that seem good, that are temporary and not satisfying or in ways that are a real expression of what we are really wanting.
Sometimes it’s as simple as savoring a five minute break of feelings of gratitude, love, peace, and joy. Or you can get really alive with your feelings and practice feeling positive affect all day. Just go there. It’s free. No admission!
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 28, 2008
Today there are agitations in me that are rubbing against my sense of contentment and satisfaction. I am feeling the initial oppressors of agitation and discontentment and everywhere I look, I can begin to see things that aren’t right, that upset me, that are not as I would have them be. I couldn’t tell you exactly what is bothering me. I can’t put my finger on what the unrest is. And I want to know WHY. I want to go there. I just do.
I realize that I can do one of two things. I can ask, “Why do I feel this way?” and I can run a search of several events that might have “caused” this feeling state. There is no proof, other than my discontent about each one of them, and that they are sort of just adding up. I so badly want to go to “why” I feel like this. I so badly want to x-ray my discontent. Shall I analyze each one, give thought to each one, play over each situation in my mind and articulate what I don’t like? I could really get into the mud of the “why” and just be a pig in it. Let me roll in it and get it all over me and just exist in it.
The more I think about why I’m discontent and ill-at-ease, the more agitated I become and I border on anger. It is just under the surface. I don’t like the idea that this Law of Attraction thing works to bring the good I dwell on AND the bad I dwell on, because today I want to chew the rag of what’s bothering me, rather than just leave it be and go on with my otherwise wonderful, positive life.
All of this is the roller coaster on the way up to oppression. There is a choice. The feelings of oppression or the feelings of the “At Ease” state of mind or the “Mental Equivalent” state of mind. Or to pulse positive emotions. But this means that I have to decide to go there and I have to decide to run through the process of these emotions a few times.
I’ll do this process of feeling these feelings and then maybe I could feel like getting to a list of writing down what are the positive aspects of my life at this point.
But the choice is clear. Oppression or freedom? Which will it be?
Should I do a 3:1? I know full well a 3:1 will not work. It will have to be about a 20:1 to turn me around. 3:1 is clearly not enough to work a turn around in my state of mind management.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 23, 2008
All of us know that negative emotions cycle themselves over and over in loop-like processes. What we do consider is that positive emotions do the same. Here is an example of the basic cycle of negative emotions and 2 examples of cycles of positive emotions.
Practice these several times each day. Get used to feeling a cycle of feelings. Teach your brain to go through the positive cycle. You can even teach your brain to use the negative signal of “oppression” to start you on a cycle of positive emotion, but like the scales of learning to play the piano, it takes practice and consistency over time.
The diagrams of the Roller Coaster of Oppression and the contrasting coaster of “ME” and “At Ease” will be posted soon. In the meantime the cycles are listed below.
This is a great time of year to be considering oppression with all of the holiday activity and expectations. Just the simple expectation of what the holiday “should” be and feel like, over and against its reality, can be oppressing. It is what we make it to be.
This is the cycle that is so easy to get stuck in. Once you get oppressed, you take the whole ride on this coaster. Those of you in our classes will understand this better.
The Roller Coaster of Oppression
Oppression (it’s on top of me, I’m not in control, it controls me)
Anger or Hostility
The fear of the same anger and hostility expressed toward you
The unconscious rehearsal of lashing out or withdrawing
The actual “acting out” or “acting in” the anger or hostility
The guilt and compromise with life (oh well, that’s just how it is)
Or
The ME (Mental Equivalent) Roller Coaster of Positive Emotion
Feeling Good and in control
Excited and Eager
Eager and Anticipatory
Appreciative
Joyful
In Awe and Wonder
Run through a cycle of all of these feelings. The feelings don’t have to be large; let them be small- just feel a little bit of them.
The “At Ease” Roller Coaster
Relief
Peace
Free
Unburdened
Casual
Grateful
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 18, 2008
Thanks be for the ego! How else would we move? Except until we learn to move by pleasure and what feels good.
You do not know the “ego attachment” that will open the next door to “flow.”
What you are hooked to with your ego, in terms of “got to have it,” is just as important as your deepest motivation to peace and love and wholeness. Never judge anyone who finds “oneness” by sliding their finger across the screen of their IPOD and “feels” some of the amazement and delight that will keep them wanting “more.” It is all in the wanting “more;” it is never in the “been there, done that” moment.
Being brought to your knees in poverty will open you to cry from your “core” but so will the luxury of an exquisite meal or a rock climb at Joshua Tree.
The ego and its attachments to our weaknesses are such a significant driver to the positive side by the contrast they create- if that’s the way you need to go. And most folks do.
Or you can just go to your strengths. Strengths tell you everything; where you’re not being yourself and where you are going to find “flow.” Go to them when the ego gives that indispensable signal of discontent and boredom.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 16, 2008
Where is the positive emotion?
Where is the positive thought?
What is the strength that works best?
What do I really want?
We are not trained to go to the “high place.” This is what will pry you loose from the judgment of the ego, which, in its appearance, is simply telling you to go “GHP.”
Curiosity and interest in the world is one of the Big 5 strengths of the happiest people in the world. It is interesting that this strength contains, by its nature, three attributes of Spirit: Diversity, Abundance, and Novelty (Discovery.)
We are creating a new mythology, and it is not characterized by “living in the now.” That is just the best present cultural solution we can accept. It is characterized by finding your autotelic center that generates your personal sense of discovery and satisfaction. It is the core of “flow.” There is no dragon to slay on the way to “manhood” or enlightenment. There is, however, the way to the permission-giving center which allows us to experience pleasure and novelty.
“Flow” is a description of one aspect of this new mythology of the essential journey.
Pay close attention to those places where the ego is raising a fuss. It’s goal of course is to get you to go to a weakness, to become frustrated and oppressed. However, it is also a laser pointer to GHP.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 9, 2008
Your brain in flow is revitalizing and renewing. It represents a state in which it operates most like its natural state -in a high degree of synchrony. This flow is meditation in motion; it is contemplation on the move. Many people who are not good at passive, emptying meditation practices will find that flow is a welcome, much more easily attained state of meditation and a relief from the daily spiritual practices they don’t do and feel guilty about missing.
What is meditation? It is becoming “one with”. It is unifying in such a way that we transcend the usual patterns of thinking about this or that and focus on a single reality so that, not just our thinking, but time itself slows down. That’s what happens in flow. It is perfectly possible to meditate and dance, to meditate and run, to meditate and do a task. This secret is in the “just this” experience.
The experience of the brain on flow is an increase in “psychological capital”. What that means is that you are reducing the amount of psychic energy used to do a task and adding to the scope of the connectedness of your neurons. Things are knitting together in new ways in your brain. When they continue to knit together in new ways (interneuronal association), intelligence increases. You are increasing the positive reserves of the brain on every level when you experience flow.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 7, 2008
Several stressors accumulate, or maybe a big one, or what “feels” like a big one and we start the experience of emotions that is like a roller coaster. The emotions which are the result of feeling oppressed or “it’s on top of me” are the core of the emotional pattern that is at the root of every addiction.
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By Dr. William K. Larkin on December 2, 2008
Your “vibe” emerges from 3 things: knowing what you want, believing you will get it, and being open to however and whenever that happens.
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