Judy was having a rough time. An employee at the office was giving her trouble. Kat was usually an excellent worker, but recently she’d been dropping the ball and making mistakes that, if Judy hadn’t caught them, would cause the company serious problems. Judy has tried every trick in the leadership handbook but she just can’t get through to Kat. Even worse, Kat, who Judy finds to be a lovely young lady, has been having some serious attitude toward Judy and her criticisms.
If I were to ask Judy what experience she’s having, she would say, I’m frustrated. I would say, no, you’re feeling frustrated. And she would be confused and say, what’s the difference? Good question. The answer is, there is a subtle but very big difference between saying what we are and what we’re feeling. Okay Joey, what are you talking about?
To say, I am frustrated, is to describe state. I am… But there is no state of frustration. There is only one natural state of being. It doesn’t have a singular name, people who experience it call it peace, joy, love, or some version of one of those. Frustration is a feeling. An emotional response to stimuli that pulls us out of the natural state. In Judy’s case, Kat’s work performance isn’t meeting Judy’s expectations and, importantly, Judy knows she’s right. It doesn’t matter if Judy is actually right or not, she believes she’s right and Kat’s not complying. That’s frustration. If Judy wasn’t sure she was right, if she didn’t see a clear solution, there would be confusion and uncertainty. That’s anxiety. Anger, resentment, shame, unworthiness. These are all just words that we use to describe an emotional response we’re having to our environment.
Remember, the nervous system is designed to keep us alive. It’s our personal security system and it is always on the lookout for danger. When there are no threats present, the nervous system’s natural state is what we would describe as calm, peace, oneness. The parasympathetic response is engaged, rest and digest. But it’s always ready to sound the alarm. Our experiences in life, especially during childhood, train the nervous system when and how to respond. When we experience fear, the nervous system ties that experience to the emotion that is present. Anxiety gets tied to experiences of money, shame gets tied to experiences around the body, unworthiness gets tied to experiences inside relationships.
But those emotions are not who you are. They’re just feelings, fueled by thoughts, accompanied by sensations in the body, that are trying to get your attention. The feeling itself isn’t real. Something has happened and the nervous system has decided there is danger present. It’s disrupting the natural state of peace to say, Hey! Something’s happening here! And that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do. Pain and suffering occur when we’re unable recognize that the emotion isn’t the thing. It’s just a notification that there’s something we need to pay attention to. Instead we get caught inside an emotion that doesn’t have the intelligence to address the issue that’s triggering it.
Judy is stuck in a cycle of frustration. The frustration compounds, triggering other emotions like resentment and anger. She’ll never find the solution she’s looking for while she’s stuck in that emotional loop. But with some knowledge and training, Judy can learn to recognize the feeling for what it really is. It’s not, I am frustrated. It’s, right now I’m experiencing frustration. She can acknowledge the warning from her nervous system and then shift it back to its natural state of peace, where she can access inspiration, compassion, and openness.
Emotions (both fear and love based) are a human experience, existing within our minds and nervous system. Emotion requires thought. State is an experience that exists beyond thought. Emotion is a brain event that drives the mind to think in a certain way and creates specific sensations in the body that accompany each emotion-thought loop. Nervousness, agitation, sick in the stomach. State exists in the absence of thought, beyond the level of sensation. In order to experience the pure state of I Am, we must quiet the mind, silence all thought, and allow the nervous system to calm and unfold into its natural state.
At IMS we train how to shift out of fear-based emotional expressions and into love-based ones. As we train the foundational curriculum of the Power Series, we are able to spend more and more of our time in a love-based emotion and less in fear. We come to Reset to visit State: Peace, Love & Joy. We get a peek at who we are in our natural state, beyond the tug of war between love and fear-based emotions, and experience what is truly there and what's truly possible. The more we train at Reset, the more time we spend in states of love, peace and joy until eventually, we can live there the majority of the time.
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