A friend of mine had Abraham Maslow as a professor in college. Maslow was a psychologist that created the concept of the hierarchy of needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a general outline, when it comes to human development. Luckily, I was introduced to it while I was in college so I’ve had a lot of years to contemplate its meaning. When I first saw this chart I could honestly say that I had the levels of physiology and self-esteem down! I grew up in a family where all of my physical needs were met and had a great neighborhood where we all got along, and I had many experiences of leadership in high school that built my self-esteem. I was captain of the swim team, homecoming queen and maintained a 4.0 average in my studies. So self-actualization happened on many levels.
In my sophomore year of high school I found out I had to wear a back brace for my scoliosis. Because of my love for swimming and staying focused on sports and my studies, I was able to move forward with the support of my family and friends. In my junior year I only had to wear my brace when I slept. In my senior year I was the captain of the swim team and set 3 school records in freestyle and I started a relationship with a classmate. After graduating high school, the relationship only lasted another year, as we could see that we had different goals for our lives.
Once I was introduced to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I developed a better understanding of myself, and my needs. I was able to assess and validate, or shift if necessary, the choices I was making in my life. Maslow pointed out how our emotions can pull us away from the passion we feel toward our ideals. When this happens, we become dis-integrated human beings, as we lose our alignment with our heartfelt passion and purpose in life. I wanted to learn how to align my emotions, intellect and will to become an integrated human being.
Emotions and feelings are important, as they make us human. My dad always told me that I was too emotional when I was younger, that I needed to think more. He never explained what he meant by that statement, so at the time that didn’t make sense to me. I always got straight A’s, so I thought I did a good job thinking through things. I was always searching for a way that I could understand the relationship between emotions, thinking, feelings and will. I was seeking an integration of these aspects of my being. It’s been a lifelong journey.
In 2017 my husband and I drove out to Ojai, CA and spent 3 days with a small gathering of people to hear Amit Goswami’s presentation, “Love, the Chakras and Healing Your Emotions”. I had read his book “Physics of the Soul” and felt I could learn a lot from him.
By that time I had become certified as an Emotion and Body Code practitioner, and all of my 5 children were living on their own. Amit Goswami is a quantum physicist who taught at the University of Oregon. He’s written many books that ended up on The NY Times best-selling list, all addressing the quantum nature of the human energy field. The entire 3 days we met with him, he spoke about the importance of listening to our feelings.
Feelings are different than emotions. Emotions are actually feelings that are connected to the brain. Dr. Nelson created the Emotion Code Chart and he pretty much sums up the spectrum of human emotions in this chart of 60 emotions.
The first thing you may notice is that all of these emotions represent the antithesis of love and wholeness. So when Amit Goswami shared that emotions are connected to the brain, it made sense that it’s our emotions that pull us away from love because they create negative thought patterns. These thought patterns cause us to doubt ourselves. When we doubt ourselves we lose our will, or intention to follow our goals. This can block us, especially in our quest to create love in our lives. Negative thought patterns cause us to not believe in ourselves, and without belief in ourselves, we cannot love others. Amit Goswami went on to say that it’s by listening to our feelings that we honor who we truly are. Feelings are aligned with our higher ideals of love and belonging, as Abraham Maslow pointed out.
That was very liberating for me to hear! A quantum physicist was letting me know it was OK to listen to my feelings! This understanding helped me to become aware of my feelings, and by doing that I could assert my will to honor them. Amit shared that when you don’t listen to your feelings you just become a Zombie and do what is “expected” of you, and you become disintegrated from yourself.
Dr. David Hawkins was a psychiatrist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who had a thriving practice in New York. He gave it all up and moved to Sedona, Arizona. It was there that he used kinesiology to research the vibration of every emotion and feeling. He condensed the findings of his research into a Map of Consciousness.
The “Survival Paradigm”, in the Map of Consciousness above, is basically comprised of emotions! You can find them on the Emotion Code Chart. In the Survival mode, it’s emotions that bring us down and keep us at a low vibration. The level of Reason and Integrity, on David Hawkins’s Map of Consciousness, is where you begin the path to self-actualization.
David Hawkins states that the critical point is courage. Courage comes from the Latin word “Cour” which means heart. In Middle English it is defined as “valor, quality of mind which enables one to meet danger and trouble without fear”. We need courage to go beyond the low vibrations of fear, and reach out in love. The basic need that we all have is to be loved. Safety is critical to feeling loved. We need to feel safe physically and spiritually in order to develop courage.
Courage is the beginning of learning to listen to your feelings and love yourself. Do you feel safe? Are you aware of when you don’t feel safe? If you study the Map of Consciousness, you can see that being in Reason and Integrity, being thoughtful before you interact with another human, raises your vibration so that you can experience optimism, hope, forgiveness, and all of the feelings that are needed to be loving toward yourself and toward others.
Once you learn these qualities of reason and integrity you can create loving relationships by setting boundaries for yourself. You can sense when you don’t feel safe with a person, or in a particular situation, and you set a boundary with that person, or you stop putting yourself in situations where you feel unsafe. That is loving yourself! When you feel safe with another person, you can develop a deeper bond by trusting them and reaching out. Once you start to love yourself in this regard, you raise your vibration so that you can experience synchronicity with other humans by entering the spiritual paradigm, which is the gateway to peace, joy and enlightenment.
When you create harmony within yourself, you bring peace to your soul. It takes practice. Be conscious in the moment and make the choice to love yourself. As you practice loving yourself by honoring your feelings, you will become more sensitive to the feelings of others. This is the greatest recipe I could pass along to you during this sacred season of love. May this season be one of peace and joy for you.