The 3 Levels of Emotional Awareness (Most Replayed Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #591

[Chris Marhefka]

I'll first start by explaining three levels of awareness. The first level is the actual physical sensation that's happening in your body. Describing it by, does it have a shape, does it have a color, does it have a texture, does it have a size? If you were to describe this uncomfortable feeling you're having, how would you describe it in just simple adjectives? There's that level of awareness, and then there's the level of awareness of what we're calling that sensation.

This is our emotions. So I'm calling this sensation sadness or shame, or I'm calling this anxiety, or I'm calling this any other anger, any other emotion that we have a label for is just a set of sensations in the body that we've gotten used to identifying as this emotion. So there's the level of sensation, which is just as is.

This is just what's happening in my system. There's the level of emotion, which is now I'm putting it into a box of this emotion. And then the next level is the mental awareness where you're judging the emotion or trying to figure out why it's there.

So there's a story involved now. So, okay, oh, why am I sad? Why am I anxious right now? Oh, I'm always anxious when this happens. And this is where the story and the mind complicates things.

And so there's this, as soon as you, that mind level awareness is only the first layer. And so once you get stuck there, it's really hard to escape because it's sneaky and it loops and it like tells you all these stories. And then, and sometimes it will tell you why, and you'll believe it for a short period of time, or you'll, you'll, you'll distract yourself to something else.

And it gives you this little moment of relief, but it's not lasting because you didn't actually deal with the, with the sensation. You just distracted. And so people get really used to these little short, short bursts of relief.

And those are the actions that most people are taking that make up the majority of their life is they're just taking little actions to avoid feeling sensations in the body that we've judged as not good. Judged as wrong, judges the bad emotions, judges things I don't want to feel. And when you get to a layer that's deeper than that into just, oh, I'm feeling, I'm feeling tingling in my fingers.

I've got this tight sensation in my chest and it's red. And it's when you get to that level, that's what we call pure acceptance. You're not making this thing in your chest wrong.

You're just actually accepting it. You're saying, oh, thank you for being here. Oh, interesting.

Wow. That wasn't there a moment ago. Oh, it's here now.

You get curious about it. And this is the process we do in our work is, it's just getting to the level of full acceptance of what's happening. And there's, there's a moment that everyone experiences in our work where they, it takes a minute, it takes two minutes, maybe three minutes.

When we, when we guide people through it, it's not a lifetime like people think it is. It's emotions go really fast. If you watch a child and they're playing, um, they're playing with their, their toys.

And then one of them breaks and they, they're immediately sad. Oh my God, I'm sad. I'm toys.

And they, they, they feel through it. They feel through it and they feel through it. And what happens on the other side of a tamper tantrum, they're ready to play again.

Yeah, that's us as well. But we suppress the part that wants to throw the tantrum. So rather than just throwing the tantrum and be like, yeah, I'm sad right now.

I'm angry right now. And feeling it for, for two minutes, we suppress it. And it's just this low level anger.

It's this low level sadness that just keeps stacking up. Um, and so we teach people how to feel it, how to feel what's there, not judge it, just let it happen. Let it move through you in a really safe and the safe way, safe container.

And when they get to the other side of it, they're like, oh, that's it. That's it. Like I was avoiding just feeling this thing and we just felt it in two or three minutes and I feel great.

Like, yeah, yeah. And so we teach people that process of doing that systematically in their life. So anytime a sensation comes up, um, most people's responses to get the hell out of there, our clients, they stay with it and they're like, okay, cool.

All right, great. That's here. Awesome.

I feel okay. Yep. Okay, good.

Now they're ready to move on with their day. So it's this very quick, like feeling, checking in process, welcoming in the sensations. And, um, it's the mind that wants to understand it.

It's the mind that wants to control it. And so anytime, and this is the constant practice for everyone, but anytime we jump back to our mind, we use the breath and the safety to just come back to the body. Nope.

It's safe to go into that. Nope. It's safe to safe to experience this sensation.

And we just keep, nope, that's it. That's it. And it's, it's, it's so simple that like my, my masculine mind who, who read like a hundred personal development books in one year wants to be like, that is stupid, but it works.

It works so well. And it's universal to every human. And it, it gives you control back of your life because you're no longer controlled by these sensations in your body that we call emotions that we form stories, stories about in our mind.

And most people, this is, this is the common, uh, ailment of most people is that the entirety of their lives are being directed all of their actions, all of their thoughts, all of their being is being directed by avoiding certain sensations in their own body, the fear, the judgment, the, all of that is just controlling the way they live their life. And, and when they no longer have those things driving their life, they get to now create their life. They get to now, they now have a blank canvas and be like, no, I want to do this.

And I'm going to do this because this is what I want. I want to become an artist. I want to do this thing.

And I don't care what other people think, like I'm going to be me no matter what. And when they get to that level of freedom of being free of their own judgments, they get to create the life that they truly desire. And that's, that's a gift that more people are learning about, more people are figuring out.