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From John Ruskan:
How I Originated the
Emotional Clearing Process and How It Works
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It's 1988. I'm at a point in my life of reassessment
- of looking at where I am and wondering why I'm there. I've been earnestly
"on the path" for a while, so an important part
of my self-evaluation concerns what we loosely call the "spiritual."
Have I really achieved anything in the way of growth? Am I succeeding in my efforts of self-realization? As I look
honestly at myself, I see areas that call out in distress.
I see that I am often angry. I see that I experience
much pain in intimate relationships. I see that I am isolated, lonely,
and living in anxiety if not downright fear. All this even though I'm
trying my best to keep up a dedicated meditation and Yoga practice,
trying to be conscious of the Karma I am generating, trying to be a
"loving and spiritual" person. One of the few consoling realizations
is that I am certainly not alone. As I look at others, I see the same
if not exaggerated condition.
What I see is that we are all in emotional turmoil,
including, and possibly especially, those of us on the consciousness
path, because we are in the process of leaving behind old rigid structures
that have served to keep us propped up and feelings held down and suppressed.
It seems to me that if we could resolve these feelings, we would be
doing something very important.
With regard to my personal path, I now see that resolving
feelings is primary. I was taught to aim for higher consciousness, to
become a loving and blissful person, but I was never taught how to handle
the negative feelings inside as part of my spiritual practice. I finally
had to admit that there was work to do on the emotional level, and that
my growth will be limited until I do it, and that my particular discipline
was not equipped to help me with this, beyond encouraging me to replace
negative feelings with love.
I now see why the emotional level is
so important. The emotional planes come before the spiritual. In our
journey of consciousness, we must clear the planes in ascending order: physical, emotional, mental, intellectual
and spiritual. |
Bypassing emotional work is not an option. If we aim
for the "spiritual" with no attention to feelings, we are
bound to be unstable in our growth. We are likely to end up suppressing
feelings in the name of spirituality, and the suppressed negative subconscious
will continue to plague us.
In the healing community, another important realization
about feelings has been emerging lately. More and more, we hear of the
connection between suppressed feelings and poor health. Healing professionals
are venturing the idea that in order to resolve health issues, we must
resolve the emotional issues behind them. The awareness is growing that
the unreleased and trapped negative emotional energy keeps building
inside and eventually manifests in the physical.
However, when I would read these statements in the past,
I would usually be confused and disappointed. It was now clear to me
that working on the emotional level was something I had neglected and
must do, but none of these spokespersons really had anything to offer
in the way of actually how this might be accomplished, aside from the
vague suggestion that feelings should be expressed and not held in.
What did express mean? Should I be more emotional? Should
I lash out, should I hurt people who hurt me, should I yell and attack
and get it off my chest? Should I be always out front and discuss all
my feelings, or should I just get into therapy? And if so, what kind
of therapy? Many of these possible alternatives clashed with higher
principles that were now a part of my life. I felt that I was on my
own.
Although emotional healing has always been an important
goal of Western psychotherapy, this did not seem like an answer for
me. While I was sure that therapy could be helpful to certain people
at certain times, my situation did not seem urgent enough to warrant
a therapist - actually, I felt better than normal.
Therapy was also expensive and could only be undertaken
for limited periods, and I was by no means convinced that it was the
way to emotional well-being. Many of my friends who were in therapy
were still greatly troubled by negative emotions. It's now apparent
to me that most talk therapies never really touch feelings, something
I have heard over and over in my counseling practice from clients who
spent years in therapy.
What I wanted was an approach that I could use all the
time, on my own. It was also important for me to integrate my emotional
work with my consciousness work and I could not see how to do this in
traditional therapy. Seeing no clear direction, I decided that I must
break new ground.
It's still 1988. I'm intently searching for a way to
put this together. I come into contact with a teacher who seems to be
presenting Eastern philosophy in a new way. I already know a lot about
Eastern philosophy, so much that I hadn't read any for years, but all
of what I had been exposed to was old school, if I may use
that term.
The old school never really recognized negative feelings
- just be spiritual, it said. If you felt angry, be loving. In other
words, suppress your anger. This new teacher had things to say that
I had never heard. Maybe I was just never ready to hear before now,
but the revolution was beginning within me.
I started having tremendous insights. I realized that
a large part of how I saw the world and how I experienced my interactions
with others was based on projection.
In projection, it would appear that someone or something was responsible
for my experience. In other words, I believed that someone or something
was making me angry, lonely, afraid, hateful, depressed and so on.
What I realized was that these feelings were actually
coming from my suppressed emotional subconscious and just attaching
to people and circumstances outside myself. Taking it a step further,
I could see how I attracted difficult people and circumstances to myself
that corresponded to the feelings. Why would I do this, I asked? The
answer came that it was in order to bring up the suppressed feelings
for clearing.
A large light went on.
You mean I attract these difficult people and situations
to myself in order to bring up those suppressed, negative feelings from
my subconscious for clearing? Yes, the answer came.
And if I don't take advantage of this opportunity to
clear the feelings, I'll continue to attract this same type of person
and circumstance to myself, over and over? Yes, the answer came.
This is starting to sound something like Karma. Yes,
the answer came.
I was stunned.
For the first time, I saw the connection between the
Karma of the East and the suppressed emotional subconscious of the West.
For the first time, I saw the complete implication and importance of
taking responsibility for my emotional experience. And at the same time
how I never took responsibility! How I would blame, blame, blame, and
unconsciously blame more.
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As the fog lifted and what was to become the Emotional
Clearing Process started to come together in my mind, I saw that
the first step to working on my emotional self was the meditative state
or Deep Relaxation. I naturally started
to use breath and body techniques that I had learned in my Yoga practice
to facilitate Deep Relaxation, even incorporating Binaural Beat Technology
to help induce Alpha.![](IMAGES/P75-12.7.png)
1. Deep Relaxation
In Deep Relaxation, brainwaves slow down
to the Alpha level (8-13 cps) or deeper.
This corresponds to a quieting of left-brain, ego-based activity: Thinking,
reasoning, planning, judging, worrying, and above all, doing,
diminish. Consciousness starts to shift to the right-brain,
the seat of authentic feeling.
The right-brain Alpha state is essential for emotional
healing. The quieting of the left-brain mind allows you to operate on
the feeling level, accessing and releasing the deep, hidden, core feelings
that are behind the painful events you draw to yourself.
2. Awareness
After Relaxation, the next step is Awareness.
This consists of several parts:
1. Become aware of the feeling behind the event.
2. Acknowledge how the feeling is coming from the suppressed,
unconscious reservoir within, and is only being triggered by and projected onto the event, even attracting it to you.
3. Take responsibility for the feeling.
At this point, I saw my experience in a completely new
way, but I still didn't know how to go about handling feelings so they
did not become suppressed, or how to release already suppressed feelings
as they came up for clearing.
Gradually, the light grew brighter. I saw that all we
need to do is to experience feelings
fully as they occur in order to clear them.
We think we are experiencing
our feelings, but the problem is that we don't allow full feeling to
occur; in fact, it is not unreasonable to assert that in today's world,
most of us have actually lost the capacity for authentic feeling.
Rebuilding the capacity for authentic feeling
If full feeling occurs, the feeling energy is
exhausted, and no suppression takes place. Feelings that have been suppressed
must be brought into awareness and experienced to clear, but there are
ways to do this that make it peaceful, even joyful, and not something
to be dreaded.
THE REMEDY FOR SUPPRESSION IS NOT
EXPRESSION BUT EXPERIENCE OF THE FEELING. |
It's our unconscious inner resistance to the feeling that blocks it from coming fully into consciousness so
it can release spontaneously. We resist painful feelings instinctively,
but we must learn that resistance is not always in our best interest.
Resistance itself constitutes most of the pain associated
with any distressful emotional event.
If we can drop resistance, and open completely to the feeling, pain
immediately lessens and clearing occurs, and we regain our feeling capacity.
3. Acceptance
I saw that the next step would be Acceptance.
Acceptance means opening to your feelings - dropping the inner resistance.
Acceptance does not necessarily mean accepting negative people or circumstances.
It refers primarily to your feelings,
as they are, relative to the negative people or circumstances.
The inner resistance that blocks full feeling occurs
on a mental level but it can take a certain behavioral form, which may need to be adjusted. For example, we can turn from the
experience of pain by immersing ourselves in activity. We can use food,
drugs, sex, entertainment as diversions from feelings. As we act
out feelings, i.e., as we are motivated by feelings into taking
action to change circumstances in order to change the feeling, we essentially
close down to the full experience of the feeling.
More subtle forms of emotional avoidance are worrying,
controlling, living in the past or future, living according to rigid
concepts, judging self and others, even constantly seeking the answer
or talking about the feelings instead of feeling them. And, of course,
last but most popular, relationship dependencies. All these are addictions; ways of unconsciously but deliberately avoiding the feelings.
I realized that I had to train myself to weed out resistance
and develop my capacity for feeling; and that in my quest for the past 20 years, I had been doing
the exact opposite - pushing away feelings as I chased after happiness,
wholeness, and "enlightenment."
4. Direct Experience
The next step is to move into what I call Direct
Experience of the feeling. We have softened our resistances and
now can access feelings more deeply. As I explored exactly how to do
this, it came most naturally to me to use meditation as a format for
exploring and experiencing feelings. Indeed, at this point, I regard
the metaphysical tools of the East, such as meditation, breathwork,
and bodywork to be essential in this approach to clearing feelings.
When used with emotional clearing as an intent, these tools greatly
aid in both bringing up suppressed feelings and in the eventual clearing.
In Direct Experience, you sit quietly and allow the
conscious mind to come to rest. You can use any technique you may know
to enter the stillness. You don't even have to think of it as meditation
if you happen to be allergic to that word - just think of it as sitting
quietly, doing nothing. As you sit,
feelings begin to emerge into your awareness. This is the releasing
starting. The feelings are coming from the subconscious into conscious
awareness for clearing. Any negative feeling can come up, such as anxiety,
fear, anger, sadness, rejection, heartbreak, humiliation, loneliness,
hatred, inadequacy, frustrations or abuse of any sort including sexual,
even depression, etc.
If you sit and anger keeps jumping up from something
that happened yesterday or ten years ago it means this feeling is coming
up to be cleared. Allow the feeling to be, allow it to exist on its
own. Try to see if it has a place it your body. Breathe into it. Just
watch and experience the feeling. Look at the feeling from the perspective
of the first two steps if you haven't already: Take responsibility for
the feeling - stop blaming and own it;
look within for the subtle inner resistance to the feeling that keeps
the feeling blocked and replace the resistance with acceptance, to whatever
extent possible for you now.
Allow the feeling to come forward fully. Don't be afraid
of it. Keep working with the breath - breathing easily and smoothly
with a sense of breathing into the feeling and the body location to
further loosen the congested energy of the feeling. As you sit and open
to and experience the feeling, it is clearing. Don't be alarmed if the
feeling becomes intense. Allow yourself to go through it. The experience
will naturally wind down and you will feel a shift - you will have released the feeling energy. It is likely you will have
to repeat this at other times to completely release the suppressed feeling,
and important life "clearing missions" may take years. But
don't be dismayed. It is enough to know and feel that you are moving
in the right direction.
As I worked with truly experiencing my feelings instead
of ignorantly avoiding them as I previously had, I began to feel that
I was starting to come alive. It became apparent that the blocking of
the negative feelings due my unconscious resistance also blocked my
positive experience and expression of life. I felt myself really growing.
Difficult situations changed magically because I no longer needed to
attract them.
5. Witnessing
As I shared these insights with others, I was overjoyed
to see them respond the same way. As I kept working, however, it seemed
that one more step was needed. This last step is Witnessing.
It is a deliberate move to invoke transcendental healing energies, and
takes place on the spiritual level. Using this power greatly aids in
the clearing process.
Witnessing refers to a powerful shift of consciousness
that awakens the transcendental spiritual energy in us, brings us into
an Alpha healing state, and allows processing of difficult feelings
to proceed easily. It means breaking the inner identification with the
feeling; owning the feeling, but seeing it in a detached manner. It's
a concrete, tangible experience of shifting
from lower-self consciousness to higher-self consciousness.
When you're in the witness, you feel genuinely serene,
peaceful, and accepting, no matter what's going on in your lower-self
emotions. Therefore, establishing yourself in the witness is a preliminary
to working with negative feelings. You'll feel safe and confident as you approach feelings.
If you ever feel yourself getting too much negative feeling, you just
go back and reactivate the witness.
I have found the best way to awaken the witness and
invoke transcendental healing energies in emotional processing is by
utilizing the ancient Third Eye technique.
At the very start of an Emotional Clearing Process, we contact the two Yin/Yang healing energies of the universe.
Then we contact the transcendental witness by activating the Third Eye (on the forehead).
Activating the Third Eye achieves the same result as
any of the Rapid Eye Movement therapies you may have heard
about, except that it is more effective, and is the ancient, original
technique. These other techniques were discovered accidentally and used
because they worked. Activating the Third Eye chakra brings about an integration
of left and right brains, and so reduces resistance to emotional experience,
releasing the feelings, and you can do this without the help of a therapist
if you want.
As we take any feeling through these five
steps, Deep Relaxation, Awareness, Acceptance, Direct Experience, and Witnessing, we are taking the feeling to a place where clearing can and will occur.
Trying to apply any of the steps without the others does not give quite
the same results.
If you are interested in learning more about the Emotional
Clearing Process, I would urge you to read one of my books as a first
step. It may be all you need. I suggest you start with my latest, DEEP CLEARING. Thousands of people have emailed me and
told me of their success using only the book! It greatly expands on
the basic concepts that I have discussed here, clarifies the important
subtleties of each part of the process, deepens your theoretical understanding
of the process, and guides you step-by-step in how to successfully apply
the process and avoid the common stumbling blocks along the way. I would
say it's essential if you are going to go for it with Emotional
Clearing.
• You'll feel excited
about life.
• You no longer
attract negative situations because you no longer need
to pull that particular kind of negativity to yourself.
• You are naturally creative and find a high sense of fulfillment
in applying your creativity, no matter where life has placed you. |
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