What is an emotional barometer? Are you listening to it?

An emotional barometer can be defined in many ways. It is one’s sense of:
• self
• well being
• calm
• peace
• personal acceptance
• personal bliss

It can also be viewed as the lack of all these things.

It is highly sensitive and very fast in response. If trained it can tell us who is a potential threat and who is a partner.

In today’s society we are extremely afraid of our emotional barometers. We try to dull it with drugs, movies, alcohol, sex, sports and a number of activities re-purposed to provide us with a quick high that distracts us from the feelings of pressure, anxiety, and depression, all of which are signals of being on the wrong track from our emotional barometers.

Scott Peck argues In the Road Less Traveled that we engage in such avoidance of suffering due to laziness.

I would add that ignoring one’s emotional barometer is also something we are taught by authority figures and society. If we have no inner voice, we are simply shadows of others and of that which is our true self, and we are thus easier to control.

Listening to one’s own emotional barometer is not easy. Many times we simply do not want to experience pain since we believe we shouldn’t have to and we are perfect as we are (ego). To protect itself the ego also says to us that it is others who are causing us the pain (victimhood as a defense mechanism). If we were to let go of these feelings and accept the pain we would learn about the inappropriateness of these beliefs.

We would also quickly realize how important feeling good is to us. More important than an understanding of how others and life is, is how WE feel about ourselves within the context of life and how we feel we relate to others. Not based on opinions of others and what they want and what they are sending our way in terms of energies. But in how we feel about ways we are showing up in life.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, others cannot hold us as their object of attention long enough to sustain any long term relationship guidance. Most people are striving with their own limiting belief systems and fears. Inviting their exploration and connection in our lives often results in feeling of getting the thin end of the deal. For we quickly realize how they can’t understand us without constant help and reorientation. Often in an attempt to be understood we remain in cycles of low energies and pain.

Secondly, focusing on how we show up in their lives helps them, if they choose so, see, understand, and co-create with us those elements of us which we feel are important. This involves conscious action and deliberate thought. It is also more likely to help us reach our relationship goals than simply expecting to receive that which we want.

Every time we choose honesty, love, self-trust our emotional barometer tells us that we are on the right track. Every time we feel lower energies such as fear and helplessness we must remember that those are indicators of where we are due to how we thought in the past. No one and nothing can ever overshadow our visions of who we are and what we want. They can simply help us realize contrast and can thus serve as great spiritual aids in reminding us to act with consciousness and focus towards a longer term sense of feeling better. When we do so we finally find that which we are asking and manifest that which our hearts deeply desire.

However, the interesting thing is that we never completely manifest for the law of nature is such that we are eternally feeling new contrasts and eternally expanding to rise up to them. I guess that is what makes life worth living.