Tag Archives: emotional intelligence

Daily Riches: Feel Your Feelings (Lynn Baab)

Posted on by under Awareness, Contemplation, darkness and doubt, Desolation's Gift, Emotions and Spirituality, Self-care, Spiritual Disciplines, Suffering and Grace, truth and illusion

“When I’m stressed about something, my feelings get buried under my thoughts. Some of those thoughts center around questions about the future: “What if this happens? What if that happens?” Other thoughts are about the feelings: “You shouldn’t be feeling these negative feelings. You should be trusting God.” …Some months ago [my therapist] suggested that I practice self-compassion as a way to cope with negative feelings, and I’ve had a wonderful year learning more about what self-compassion looks like and why God would desire it for me. The form of self-compassion that I have found helpful is summarized in the acronym RAIN:

1. Recognize [feelings]. It takes a bit of effort to figure out what I’m feeling because the thoughts swirling around my brain are so vivid and powerful. When I feel my negative thoughts careening out of control, I’m learning to stop and try to discern the feelings that lie behind the thoughts. Most often those feelings are fear or sadness, but I also sometimes feel anger, hopelessness and frustration.

2. Acknowledge [feelings]. After recognizing the emotion, I sit with it for several breaths. I focus on my breathing and let myself feel whatever it is.

3. Investigate [feelings]. I try to identify where the emotion is located in my body, because this helps identify emotions the next time they happen. I also try to figure out what the emotion wants. Sometimes it wants to dominate my life. Sometimes it just wants to be acknowledged.

4. Non-identify [with feelings]. When the feeling wants to dominate, it wants to be pervasive. It wants me to identify myself with that feeling. When I non-identify with the feeling, I might think about feelings as weather. They come and go. …Or I might focus on other feelings I’ve had that day–such as contentment, joy, happiness, or gratitude, no matter how fleeting–to demonstrate to my brain that this strong negative feeling is only a part of me, a part that needs to be acknowledged, but a part that does not define me.

…Why is feeling feelings a Christian spiritual practice? The Psalms demonstrate that all emotions can be brought into God’s presence. How can we do that if we don’t know what we’re feeling? God made us, knows us, and calls us to love and serve him. How can we do that with our whole beings if our feelings are driving us into counterproductive thoughts and behavior? My swirling negative thoughts truly are demonic, and I’m much better able to let them go if I acknowledge the feelings that lie behind them. This process of feeling the feelings, called self-compassion by some people, extends the same kind of compassion to myself that God asks me to extend to others. Why would God want me to show compassion for others but not for myself? Living under the burden of stress makes it harder for me to love and serve God. This gift of self-compassion through the RAIN process enables me to love and serve God more fully because I am not preoccupied with my swirling thoughts and feelings. Christian spiritual practices help us walk with Jesus and help us grow in faithfulness, and this process helps me do that.” Lynn Baab

“Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes
asked Jesus to leave them,
because they were overcome with fear.”
Luke 8:37

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Are you dominated by your emotions?
  • Do you see emotions as misleading?
  • What can you learn from your emotions?

Abba, teach me to listen for your voice in my emotions.

For More: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero

_______________

Thanks for following this blog. Longer this time. Too hard to abbreviate more, too important not to do.

Daily Riches: A Self-Aware Reading of Scripture (Richard Beck)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Ego Issues, Humility, truth and illusion

“We are all interpreting the text to some degree. We are all privileging–deferring to–certain values, doctrines, creedal commitments, traditions, or biblical texts. Something somewhere is trumping something else.  …The only question is whether you are consciously vs. unconsciously using a hermeneutic. …When your hermeneutic is operating unconsciously it causes you to say things like ‘this is the clear teaching of Scripture.’  …What is interesting to me in this phenomenon is not that we are all engaging in hermeneutics, acts of interpretation. That is a given. What is interesting to me is how self-awareness, or the lack thereof, is implicated in all this. …denying that you are engaged in hermeneutics–betrays a shocking lack of self-awareness, an inability to notice the way your mind and emotions are working in the background and beneath the surface. I think statements like ‘this is the clear teaching of Scripture’ are psychologically diagnostic. Statements like these reveal something about yourself. Namely, that you lack a certain degree of self-awareness. For example, saying something like ‘this is the clear teaching of Scripture’ is similar to saying ‘I’m not a racist.’ …Self-aware people would say things like ‘I don’t want to be a racist’ or ‘I try not to be racist’ or ‘I condemn racism.’ But they would never say ‘I’m not a racist’ because self-aware people know that they have blind spots. …[that] they have unconscious baggage that is hard to notice or overcome. And it’s the same with how self-aware people approach reading the bible. Self-aware people know that they are trying to read the bible in an unbiased fashion. …[and] to let the bible speak clearly and it its own voice. But self-aware people know they have blind spots. They know that there is unconscious baggage affecting how they are reading the bible, baggage that they know must be biasing their readings and conclusions. Consequently, self-aware people would never, ever say ‘this is the clear teaching of Scripture.’ Just like they’d never claim to be unbiased in any other area of life, racism being just one example. What I am saying is that when we approach the issue of sola scriptura–using ‘the bible alone’ …[that besides remembering hermeneutics, we must remember] the issue of emotional intelligence, the degree to which you are reading the bible with a degree of self-awareness.” Richard Beck

“Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you!” Peter (Mark 14:31)

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Is the Bible’s meaning usually pretty obvious to you?
  • Are you aware of your biases and blind-spots?
  • What can you do to read with more “self-awareness?”

Abba, reveal my blind-spots and arrogance, and open my eyes to see when others show me the truth.

_________________________________________________

Thanks for reading and sharing this blog!  –  Bill