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A Simple, Elegant Truth | by Samantha Smallwood-Pounds | August 2024

Have you ever found yourself getting angry, resentful or depressed without being able to control your emotional reactions? Do you find yourself feeling physically tense, constricted, out of your skin or about to pounce – for reasons that seem overblown or inexplicable?  Have you seen yourself repeating the same negative behaviours over and over again in relationships that take you to the same unproductive outcome?

These are a good sign that you are trapped in reactive emotions rather than living in an expansive, open feeling state.

We have a choice and a way to transform these reactive emotions into feelings, and to transform the patterns that bind us through emotional reactions.

Serenity, peace, compassion, surrender, patience, and love.  These are just some of the wonderful states that we as humans can experience.  In such moments something greater has touched us, and we expand beyond the quagmire of our challenges to become a beacon of light for self and for others.  Gentle, open, energised and kind, we share our expanded state and gift it to all that we meet.  And as we know, being in these states can beneficially change the world around us. This is a simple, elegant truth.

These expanded feeling states can be accessed in many ways… through meditating, journaling, creating art, listening to music, spending time in nature, prayer, reading the inspired works of great poets and teachers or other like actions.  They change the experience of our day, transform our relationships, and ease our challenges.  They release energies that relax and calm our bodies, and create a greater sense of well-being, health, and connectedness to life, to others, to the world.

Learn more about transforming your reactive emotions to manifest expansive feelings and change your life for the better! Register for our free one-hour workshop, A Taste of the Life Plan on September 7, 2024.

In contrast to these states, it is astounding to see how quickly and easily a person, situation or event can tear this expansion from us, tossing us into the great swelling internal movement of reactive emotions that rise and fall with the largest or smallest perceived impediments in life.  Emotions, always habituated and constricting, are powerful. We all have so many of them and at the same time we have no idea how to handle them!  We wear them like armour covered in many little trigger-buttons, sure to be endlessly activated as we brush up against life.

The reactivity of emotion is triggered in different ways…. through “pushing our buttons” as so many in our lives have manged from time to time, hearing bad news, being the target of sarcasm, dismissive tone or demeaning facial expression (even of a complete stranger), being frightened or intimidated (or even perceiving that may have happened) –  all of these and more show how easily we can trigger constrictive emotions –  and show how powerful our emotional reaction scan be, whether internalized against ourselves, creating an internal implosion that steals our hope and positivity or externalized in explosive and sometimes impulsive ways that we will come regret, wondering how it is that we could not choose to feel, act, or behave differently in that moment.

And then there are our emotional patterns – the sharp and jagged movements of emotions that have been with us for as long as we can remember, and like old grooves in a record, keeping us in the same patterns of anger, fear, depression, and anxiety.  Over time we will do anything to silence them, turning to distractions and worse to avoid experiencing them, and always getting lost trying to get out.  Does this sound familiar?  Well, the good news is that you are not alone.

Where would you prefer to be?  Are you more drawn to living in an expansive flowing way or do you prefer contracted reactivity?  In truth we will experience both consistently throughout our lives.  They will always be a part of what it means to be a human being, but wouldn’t it be great to be able to move more consciously between them?  But how?

Here is a second simple, elegant truth:  There is a way to transform emotion into feeling and by doing so, become the living gift that you are created to be.

While we use the words “emotions” and “feelings” casually and interchangeably to describe all our inner energetic movements, in our work at the School of Images® these two words couldn’t be more different. So, the first step is to understand that feelings and emotions are quite different. And to acknowledge that you experience these differently.

Next is to understand the body never lies:  if you sit with your emotions for a minute and feel them in your body, you will notice that they are always constrictive.  They contract and bind you, restricting the flow of your life force.  They will cause great reaction – maybe fight or flight, or perhaps a sense of collapse or paralysis.

In stark contrast, the feeling states of being that we first spoke of – serenity, compassion, surrender, and love – are always expansive and open, helping us to rise above the ordinary and predictable.  We experience freedom and wonder.  They lighten us, move us upward and outward, and put us into a receptive state.  They gift us with choice – we can receive the world and then use our free will to choose how we wish to respond to life.  This is very different to the experience of being surprised by the reactivity of our emotions.

And finally, we begin the work of transforming emotions into feelings.  In the lineage and tradition of the School of Images® and the Kabbalah of Light, we have a simple, powerful, and revolutionary inner technology for it is called The Life Plan.

The Life Plan begins the path of untangling our inner knots by giving us insight into our emotional patterns.  It progressively shifts us from emotional reactivity to expansive feeling.  This washes away the old stuck grooves of emotion that have been written into our bodies over time, clearing the constrictive pathways of frustration, sadness, boredom, confusion, depression, and self-hate.  In this we transform our bad habits and the impact that they have on our bodies and lives and develop the capacity to avoid slipping back into these old destructive patterns.  This utterly transforms our lives, and by anchoring ourselves in expanded feeling, we bring ourselves into greater mastery of our lives and emotions.  Above all, the Life Plan gives us the tools we need to transform any emotion that might come a ‘knocking.

By expanding into love, peace, harmony, compassion, delight, creativity, joy, exultation, and awe, we find our alignment and truth, and we are restored to our radiant self.  Grounded in our unbounded creativity and beauty, life becomes something very beautiful, creative, and free.… all of this is possible, and this is the way of the Life Plan.

If you would like to learn more about how to transform your reactive emotions to manifest expansive feelings and to change in your life for the better, you can register for our upcoming one-hour free workshop, A Taste of the Life Plan, on September 7, 2024.