Letting go of emotional baggage

Like most people living in the 21 century, we have been conditioned to live in a constant state of survival, exhausting most of our time and energy trying looking for a fantasy of a one sided reality, that leaves most people disillusioned. With a part of our emotive and cognitive resources being expanded to edges, while seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Fantasy ideals are more prevalent than ever before, most people have forgotten who to distinguish a real threat from fake threats.

The autonomic animal mind, which is activated by stress, is constantly in state of fight or flight, even when surrounded by security and abundance. This stress response undermines the the creativity and executive functions, that fostered human evolution, found in the prefrontal region of the brain. The part of brain that allows us to be leaders and take charge of perceptions, decisions and actions.

One of the important components to being free of the animal mind and emotional baggage associated with it, is to understand the laws that govern our behaviour. Among these laws is the Laws of Attraction which was popularised by the hit book and movie, The Secret. Another law, although lesser known but equally important is the Law of Conservation. This Law of Conservation is found in almost every area of scientific and philosophical studies, and it states that for every action there is an equal reaction that is naturally set in motion so to maintain equilibrium, homeostasis or momentum as it applies to all aspects of life, including the physiology, psychology and ecological expressions of nature.

So how does all of this relate to you?

Well, in times of stress we often get stuck in our heads and we tend to overreacting and in so doing, make matters worse don't we? When we think that we may lose something or someone or that we may miss-out on an opportunity to gain some sort of benefit, the body then goes into stress and survival mode and hardwires the brain with warning triggers so it is able to adapt and respond to the same stress in the future. These memories are further associate with past stressors, while compounding over time these tensions get physically and psychologically linked to people, situations or things that we now seek or avoid as a result. This long-term compounding causes emotional and psychological baggage, and this stunts our personal growth potential.

It has been said that stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment. We often find ourselves resistant to change and that resistance comes from the perception that one course of action has more benefits than risks, or more pleasure than pain. But these value judgments we ignorantly make trap us in polarised and disassociated personas that cloud us from seeing things for what they are and making objective assessments.

Most people live by polarised emotions and perceptions, judging the world and seeing things as good or bad. This constant polarising causes us to disown the traits we judge as bad, and cause us to become addicted to the things we see as "good". This automatically makes us hypocrites, because the things you condemn in someone else, are equally inherent in your own some area of your life, if you care to look. So when we try to see ourselves, or others, as one sided extremes we only reinforce our own disempowering biases.

When we do this we tend to have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others. The great prophet, Jesus Christ once said, “Judge not according to appearances”. While appearances only tell half the story, there exists another side that most of us are ignorant of. People often cast their own judgment on God's will, and want to force situations to change into their own ideal fantasy of how things should be. But the reality is that nothing is ever missing or being threatened. These is no need to split yourself into two parts to feel complete, you can choose to acknowledge the ever present state of complementary opposites in how you perceive and respond to events.

The baggage we drag around is the result of holding on to our one sided ideals to the point that that judge anything that challenges those ideals negative. Seeing the world through these polarised states cause us to filter our reality through the lens of tragedy or comedy, happy or sad, depending on where our emotions are anchored at any moment. To have self leadership and true power in the world we have to set aside these are fake personas that only serve to reinforce our emotional and psychological biases and cloud us from seeing what’s truly happening in any given situation. Because, if we learn to see things objectively, we will find the counterbalancing "good" in whatever is perceived as "bad" and vice versa.

I am sure you can think of a time when something happened that you thought was terrible and only to find out, in a month or few years, that the same event has had some positive consequence, if you really consider it.

So any situation can serve us, only if we are able to step back and look at the problem from both sides of the equation, because no matter how thin you slide it, there are always two sides. The Law of Conservation maintains objective balance as nothing is ever lost of gained, it only changes form. And whatever we see on the perceive and judge on the outside, can be found inside us as disowned parts of ourselves.

This way we would have nothing but gratitude and presence for whatever shows up in the external world. Baggage is anything that we can’t appreciate and reconcile with. Knowing that life is happening for us and not to us, give us the responsibility to make purpose driven decisions in any environment or situation, and let go of the personas that mask our authenticity and cloud our inspired vision.

-WN