(The following is adapted from a talk I gave on 7-27-25 in Mountain View Hawaii)
The world we are traveling through.
As some of you may know or may not know I am a gamer, especially table top role playing games, and so I look at things through that lens a lot. One of the things that happens before we start a new game is that we often choose and describe the setting that we are going to be playing in, to have a context of the kinds of places we might pass though. We do this to know where our story will be experienced since there is a lot of difference between a High Fantasy world like The Lord of the Rings, or a Science Fiction world like Star Trek so it’s handy to have some reference. Given that I want to give you some idea of where we will be traveling together today; meaning what am I am going to touch on and where we may end up.
- I am going to speak on emotions and some new ways I have been thinking about them and working with them.
- I would like to eventually touch on the ideas of Kindness and Hope & how important that feels to me right now.
- I am going to finish up with a gentle guided meditation (because I always love to do that whenever I have a chance) and because I have some things that have been really helpful for me personally in my own journey recently and I want to pass some of that on to you if you want to come along.
So on to our first stop: Feelings/emotions.
I have been contemplating feelings a lot lately (it’s probably more accurate to say I have really been thinking about feelings a lot lately, but that is what I am in the process of shifting somehow, because thinking about my feelings and feeling them are not actually the same thing.)
In my life I have been really good at intellectualizing my feelings, I could probably get an advanced degree in that. 🙂
- I know how I got there
- I can often tell you the name of the feeling
- Where it might come from
- The energy around it
- How I developed that pattern
- What kinds of things I could do to change it
- How useful it is or isn’t
- And my personal judgment of myself for having it…
This is fine in a lot of ways and I have spent a number of years learning about myself and why I do what I do and where things come from and how to heal them. I am not saying that I wish I didn’t know that, or that I was better off not knowing any of those things.
However what I have been tapping into is that this often spends more energy than is needed, I can find myself to be more vigilant, more on guard about the fact I might feel something, and it’s less restful than is ideal for me. This not even including life in general which is very intense these days, also not even taking into account the level of increased energy that has been happening all around us.
Anyway I can truthfully say I have been doing some very deep work around this, intentionally on the one hand and also there is part of all of this which has been a somewhat organic process prompted by me making the decision to give myself a long break and recalibrate.
Meaning I quit my day job at the end of October and while I will most likely find my way back to working and commuting in the future, I have had the blessing of the last several months where I could really focus on myself in a way I hadn’t since 2020 during the pandemic (which was the last time I wasn’t commuting to a job).
This decision came about partially because of my sense of being overwhelmed by a stressful job and needing to make a change, and also the potential of a small settlement I might receive from an accident I was in in 2023.
That did in fact come to me although when I quit my job it had already been a year and a half and I didn’t know if or when I might receive any money. Regardless I just knew it was time for me to withdraw and trust the Universe would care for me in the same way it always has, even though it required and still requires a level of faith that if it were up to me I wouldn’t ever need to access. 🙂
It seems like even with me becoming more of a hermit over the last few months, there is still such an intensity to the overall energy and the astrology and even just the amount of light shining on the planet from our Sun and all of its solar storms and amazing processes.
I am not saying this is all bad, I am saying it feels to me to be non-trivial like OK wow, it’s another day of up leveling our collective energy. It feels like a large scale shift in energy. You may have been aware of this yourself in whatever ways you tune into these kinds of things. Yes?
Having time to be with myself and not be running to the next thing, has given me such a gift. Plus I am an introvert so being alone is lovely in many ways so that is an added benefit.
Where I have landed.
I have been working on deep things for a while now. As I mentioned, the energy of the world is prompting this, the energy of the planets are reinforcing it. These are all things I pay attention to. I ran across something that resonated with me in this process.
There is an author named Jess Saunders she uses the metaphor of a dragon to talk your nervous system and regulate it, I relate to this of course on many levels (gamer). I especially liked her renaming triggers “sparks” which I loved since it felt less critical when I think of them & so easier for me to sit with.
I loved this metaphor as I have a lot of affinity with Dragons anyway and work with their energy. So I started to play with the concepts in my own way using what I gleaned from the stuff I read.
One of the ideas is if you have had trauma in your life it’s very likely you had feelings you couldn’t fully feel at the time, because it wasn’t safe, or was overwhelming, or maybe because you were young. So they got kind of put in a chest and on a shelf where your dragon carries and cares for them because it knows that the feeling were important even if they haven’t been expressed.
Later in life when something activates them they spark and the dragon goes to get the chest and brings it out to see if it’s time to open it. That the reason this happens is so that there can be the opportunity to move through this, allow this, at a time when it is safe to do so.
Then the idea being if this spark happens (or I might think of it as a little nudge of a feeling I notice or a big loud nudge of a feeling) if I can identify the truth that in the present I am now in a safe place to feel (meaning I am an adult now, perhaps I am by myself, there is nothing actively trying to hurt me in this moment) then I can take the time to feel the feelings, just be with them.
If the spark trigger happens and I just run to the next thing (my MO), or I don’t notice it, or I don’t take the time, or don’t know how to let myself know it’s safe to feel (which can even mean to consciously save it for later when I am in a better physical space to do so) then it doesn’t feel safe for the dragon to open they will continue to put it back and save it for the next time it is activated to see if it’s safe to feel yet. These things are important to the dragon who has been keeping these treasure chests safe for so long.
Each spark is an opportunity. The sparks will often even start happening more often BECAUSE we are now in a safe space to process, in our life, or at our age, or in our circumstance, and just haven’t recognized it.
The path I have been walking.
So because I have had all this space to process. I started playing with this idea.
When I am feeling something, especially related to fear or anxiety. I started to take the time to sit down, often at my dining room table, find places where it would sooth my body to place my hands (usually for me it is my heart and my solar plexus) and I just sink into that space and communicate to myself that it is safe now, that it is safe to feel.
One thing that happened for me is that I found initially my mind started to try to form a narrative or tell me where this came from and what it was about it etc. because that is normal for me.
The new thing I started to do was to just say OK and let that fade and say that’s not needed right now. And I often would not even NAME the emotion I would just feel whatever it felt like no matter how vague or strong, and let it evolve into whatever it was going to be. I would find where I was feeling it, and just put my attention there, and simply be with it.
(I do want to say here that these techniques aren’t totally new to me, I even have taught over the years that emotions are the way the body communicates. This is just a new level of experience somehow.)
What’s new is that it is a feeling experience not a thinking experience, my only agenda is to feel what’s there.
It has been really cathartic, especially not using words internally. I have cried at times, I have been very still at times, I have done some deeper healing work while in the middle of this (being blessed with time alone has been a good thing).
Here is some of what I noticed.
How much fear & anxiety I have had in my body and how I judged it as bad rather than let my body be safe enough to feel it.
How that made me judge myself any time I felt it, so that made me want to understand it mentally, find the cause of it, and clear whatever I could to get rid of it.
How that was good for coping but wasn’t really letting my body process things.
This process I have been playing with lets the emotions shift and change and flow and evolve. Which I logically knew they would do but I hadn’t really trusted enough, or had a way in which to let that happen.
Somewhere in this I have started to recode what I do think when I feel something stir in me. I say OH there is a thing that I want to sit with, it will feel good to do that.
I of course do this when I can and have the space. But it is changing things.
Why is this important to me?
Well one of the main reasons has to do with wanting to feel good in my life of course, because I do want that, additionally it is important because so many of the teachings that talk about manifestation and demonstration speak on the emotion being an integral part of that process, and that the Universe responds to what we feel, the vibration we are sending out, more than what we might say we are sending out.
Or in this specific case: Me and what I am sending out. If I want to change the world or change my experience of the world, if I want to open up to a greater yet to be, then as I have been taught, I must believe and align vibrationally with what I want to demonstrate, I must feel as if it already is done, because on some deep level that is totally true.
If I am wanting to align with something that brings me joy or even with something that allows me a gentle feeling of relief, then that is an emotion I want to be able to feel and identify.
And if I am often unknowingly emoting fear or feeling a ton of anxiety (however rational that may be given the circumstances) I want to be able to know I am doing this so I can be congruent in my emotions & feelings & understanding.
Essentially I want to know how I actually feel.
I do not need to tell everyone, however I do want to know it within myself. This process continues to be very powerful
Kindness and Hope.
Something happened prior to getting to all of this, and may have actually prompted it, since it was so pleasant and unexpected.
A couple months ago I noticed (after I had started to kind of rejoin people in public spaces, Hilo mostly since I find myself there on occasion) …me feeling sort of like a bear coming out of hibernation, since I had been in such an internal space since October.
I had trepidation and wasn’t sure how I felt going out into public. The world felt very crazy. However what I started noticing when I did, was Kindness and Hope. I mention this because it isn’t what I anticipated.
Because of my own response to the world and all that had been happening. I was feeling very raw, and internally was in a defensive stance for protection, as if I was prepped for fight or flight just from being bombarded with all the intensity of the world and the energy.
However even so, what I noticed and what blew me away was that I could feel I was not alone in this and as a result people were being noticeably extra kind.
Just simple, kind things, like a checker at Safeway going out of her way to get me all of the extra points for my digital coupons and it gave me so much off my gasoline. She did not have to do that and just she offered.
Every time it happened it was like this calming soothing balm, like the feeling of dodging an imaginary bullet, the relief was palpable. Like a feeling in the pit of my stomach when something bad didn’t actually happen.
I remember feeling so intensely grateful when anyone anywhere was kind or friendly or helpful.
And there were other people who were just being mindfully kind. I had an entire day of this & it struck me so much.
I had the thought that this was related to all the big overwhelming things out in the world that we may not feel able to change or affect. But these small acts of kindness were so powerful. And people (either consciously or not) were using their personal agency / freewill to show up in this way. As if people were finding a way to say with actions. “I get it, we are all going through it, let’s treat each other with some amount of grace, we are fragile in our own ways.”
It was profound and I got a new appreciation of how my own kindness might have felt to someone in the past.
I got such a feeling of understanding of where so many of us were. The idea that I may not be able to actively change all that I am seeing but I can change what is right in front of me, and as I felt how powerful it was to me to receive that, I started to appreciate it in a much larger way.
It felt like collectively we as people were realizing the importance of these small acts and it healing a little bit of both of us. This gave me hope.
- Hope is the place where the energetic tables shift into possibility.
- Hope is HUGE. It’s breath when you couldn’t breathe the moment before.
Kindness can show us the way. And it’s doable. It’s possible. It can rekindle the ember of light.
So along those lines being a total nerd I have to say (here’s me being “look squirrel!!”) that the newest movie of Superman 2025 has been cathartic and left me with a renewed sense of hope as well. It felt so timely to me and to a whole lot of people.
The idea of “In a world full of hate, the most punk rock thing you can do is be kind”.
People have grabbed onto this new/old icon of goodness and really embraced it. I loved the movie so much and have seen it three times.
I wanted to add a short guide for a meditation for gently sitting with emotions, especially when you have noticed a “spark”.
To start with here is an excerpt on Grounding in the way I teach it, for anyone who isn’t familiar with my work, or wants a refresher click on the link below.
Then move on to the guide below. Enjoy.
- Breathe and Ground to connect into your body and have a way to release energy.
- Tune into your body.
- Notice anything at all that wants your attention.
- Let it be what it is.
- Breathe
- Put your hands on your body where it feels like it will help you ground and connect… for me I put them a hand on my heart and one on my belly (third chakra power center).
- Release energy down your grounding.
- Communicate to your body / dragon that it is safe in this moment to feel this and just be with it, let it start to decompress. Feel it and notice it as your do.
- Release energy down your grounding.
- Notice the emotions without even needing to name them or having a narrative about them, just feeling into them and letting them be and inform you however they do. Take time to do this, noticing rather than directing.
- Reground and feel how you feel, come into this present moment where you are safe. Remind yourself you are safe right in this present moment, not going into tomorrow, simply right here in this moment.
- Let yourself simply be, notice any changes, keep breathing and grounding
(Note: You can use any other mediation or healing techniques here if you want to, however simply being with the feeling will allow the releasing of what was in that specific chest the dragon was keeping and this one will have been emptied.)
- Ponder kindness including kindness for yourself, and let the idea and the feeling of that fill you and give yourself permission to use this for yourself and your body and whatever you are experiencing.
- Connect with the idea of Hope and the small sparkle of that, again with not a lot of words.
- Embrace your inner superpower of truth, and kindness and Hope.
- Let yourself be your own Superhero in your life and know that this ripples out to the entire Universe.
Aloha and Blessings, Erika Ginnis