Emotional Awareness leading to suffering or transcendence? 🫠

Many emotional awareness practices are self reifying. I think this leads to more suffering.

Does being more in touch with your emotional reality invite transcendence of who and what you think you are? Or does it confine you? Are you more open to surprise, or are you more controlling of how people are with you? Are you more responsible for your well-being now that you see what’s happening inside of you, or do you now feel entitled to others treating you a certain way?

I’ve done all of the above, probably today. My apologies to everyone who I’ve been holding responsible for me and my experience. I forget how powerful I am: How I get to choose the interpretations, my right to how I respond, what I show up for, and how I use my resources. I forget to respect the beauty and functionality of how you do things, and to let our differences be OK even if this means more space between us.

I like to think that with Relatefulness our emotional awareness training opens us up, allows us to be more self-responsible, and transcend the confines of what we limit our self-identity to. But we are flawed and multiple, so sometimes we use our best tools against ourselves. May we be gentle with ourselves and others when we slip into a disempowered assessment, “feelings reveal the truth of who I am”, and may we keep shifting toward an empowered inquiry, “feelings reveal new possibilities—am I free to choose?".

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With love, Jordan