Positive emotions 😊

How often do you luxuriate in feeling good? How much time have you spent getting intimate with subtle nuances of feeling relaxed, safe, peaceful, successful?  

Perhaps counterintuitively, “positive” emotions overwhelmingly tend to be welcomed later than the “negative” ones (anger, fear, sadness, distress, anxiety, numbness), in most people. Personal growth practitioners often see pleasure as more superficial, or bypassy. Festival goers tend to overstimulate. Spiritual bypassers and communities of “bliss ninnies” tend to manufacture happy feelings based on ideas of what they should feel. 

Allowing the unique contours of a particular moment’s goodness to blossom in one’s awareness is much more vulnerable. Letting ourselves truly feel good often challenges basic assumptions of guilt and unworthiness that we’ve built identities around. Saying yes to a moment of grace is a surrender to God—creation, interdependence, an infinite resource of subtle, indescribable OKness that doesn’t need us or require anything from us.

With love, Jordan