We All Have a Secret Decoder Ring: It’s Called Emotion
What words can we use to express what only the heart can discern
The heart is a complex thing. It feels and yearns to feel.
And yet . . .
It’s vulnerable to fear.
Not the heart itself, but us, the ones who must sit with the fear. It’s not so complex to understand when we see the process of emotion for what it truly is — a perfect vessel for decoding all that we experience.
A massive decoder that can tell us the truth in all things.
The problem is when we don’t feel, when we burry our feelings, and then they come out sideways.
Toxic masculinity is easy to understand when we consider the ramifications of raising boys by telling them they’re not manly enough if they feel. We tell a feeling person not to feel, and even to hate themselves if they do. And since they are feeling beings, they will feel anyway, but they will judge themselves when they do.
Men pretending to be unfeeling and working overtime to suppress their emotional nature leads to a calcification of self-hatred and judgement. Which is the impetus for what we deem toxic masculinity.
Historically, a male-dominated culture has told women they are “too emotional” and therefore weak, and for some time a sizable percentage of women bought this narrative. Fortunately, this is changing.
The shift of men embracing their emotional nature is progressing slowly, but there is movement. In the generation I grew up in, an overly emotional man warranted an accusation of homosexuality. Now emotional men are more acceptable.
Throughout our long history of suppressing emotion — judging men, judging women, pretending ‘too much’ emotion is a bad thing — we’ve overlooked one important attribute of emotion.
It informs and decodes. It is the basis of our intuitive selves.
Fancy that! We’ve had this built-in magic decoder ring that can tell us the truth in all things, and we’ve suppressed it.
Awakening the Feeling Self
Being deep is not just about having deep thoughts. It’s also about feeling deeply. Something I’ve been practicing of late is letting the beauty of nature in more deeply. Not just seeing it with my eyes but feeling it with my heart. I’m blessed to live in a rural area, in a home with panoramic views of the mountains. Every morning and every evening I get to witness the rising and setting of the sun in all its hues. There is so much beauty around me, and I’ve been practicing feeling it in my heart.
I’ve also been practicing writing from a different place — using my mind less and my feeling center more. Writing is a creative process that requires the intellect to form words into coherent passages that communicates a message to a reader. And yet for it to be truly creative it requires an infusion of emotion to breathe life into the words.
And in all my affairs, personal and professional, the more I feel, the more I intuit the truth of things — the sincerity of people, the soundness of an idea, the wisdom of a direction, and the more I learn that the heart never lies.
But the heart can deceive us when we’ve been working hard to suppress our emotions. Suppression leads to a calcification of emotion, which leads to faulty projections. Whereas practicing open heartedness leads to a loosening of long held emotions, then eventually a release, and in the release comes cleansing, followed by newfound clarity.
Knowing the Truth in All Things
The more we feel open heartedly, the more we loosen things up, heal, grow, and see clearer. It is in this space that the heart center becomes our magic decoder ring of truth sensing. We can listen to a speech by a politician and intuit his or her sincerity. We can interview for a job and immediately sense if it’s the right company or the right job for us. We can work on a new project and come to know if it’s a beneficial direction for us.
We can also sense when something is not right in a relationship, when there are things that need to be expressed. The more we practice open heartedness, the more “emotionally intelligent” we become. Which means simply that we are open hearted to the point where we see things clearly and can navigate emotional landscapes with ease and grace.
The concept of “do no harm” can be interpreted as a call to develop emotional intelligence — the acquired skill of discernment. How we do this is by feeling. Honoring our emotions, but not allowing them to run amuck. Trusting the quiet voice that feels when something is right for us or not.
David Hawkins conducted decades of research into the use of applied kinesiology (otherwise known as muscle testing) for the purpose of discerning truth. He wrote, “Truth is verifiable only by identity with it and not by knowing about it.” In other words, feeling into things more so than thinking about them.
The Akashic Records are a repository of all knowledge of literally everything known in the Universe, that is accessible to each and every being through the elevation of consciousness and the intentional tapping into this source of knowledge and knowing.
Traditional Native American wisdom keepers speak of how nature serves as a vast repository of knowledge for the taking, and all we have to do is observe nature and perceive what it is telling us.
Consciousness, observing nature, perceiving — all things we do through our feeling center, sensing into things and decoding with emotion.
It is available to all of us. And it’s the only true way to heal, to grow, and to elevate human consciousness.
Discernment is my favorite place to be! I am learning by feeling and unpacking the earliest times of knowing😘