Training Wheels

When you are learning to do something like ride a bike, it is helpful to have training wheels on the bike to help you find your balance without falling over all the time. When you have an injured leg, it is helpful to have crutches to help you be able to walk and relieve the pressure on your mending leg so that it heals properly and rapidly.

These things, the training wheels and the crutches are tools to aid you so that eventually you won’t need them any more. They are a temporary tool to assist through the process of learning and healing. They should only be used so long as they are necessary, with the understanding that eventually you won’t need them any more. So, you begin using them knowing that from the start, and looking forward to the time when you won’t need them any more.

See, the balance is already within you, the training wheels just help you to find it. The healed leg comes forth from within you; the crutches enable you to allow that healing to come forth without causing further injury.

This same thing is true when it comes to the playing “Feeling Better Game” (See my blog by that title dated July 20, 2009.) The thoughts you use to help you move up the emotional scale are tools to aid you in the process of feel better. The things you do to help you move up the emotional scale are also tools to aid you in the process. The point is, eventually you won’t need those thoughts or to do those things in order to effectively move up the emotional scale, you will just do it without needing those tools any more.

So, knowing this, you can let go of the beliefs that you “need” to think those certain thoughts to feel better, you “need” to do that certain thing to feel better, or you “need” to be with that special someone to feel better. If you “need” those thought, or to do those things or to be with that person to feel better, you haven’t fully grasped the skill of moving up the emotional scale yet. If you “need” those tools to inspire feeling better, you haven’t found the place within your own self from where these better feeling emotions originate. These better feeling emotions are already within you; these tools only help you find them.

The words of warning are these:

While you are learning this skill, you could develop an attachment to those tools. Many people get attached to the tools and therefore are reluctant to outgrow them, they feel assurance in using them, and they find them supportive and comforting. And, that is where the trap with using tools comes in, when you believe you can’t move up the emotional scale without them.

The truth is, you can. Using tools helps you develop the skill, understanding, awareness and confidence necessary to attune to better feeling emotions. When you begin playing the “Feel Better Game,” begin with this understanding; that eventually you won’t need the tools, and with this understanding and intention of transcending the need for the tools, you will pave the way for yourself to express and be free to ascend the emotional scale at will regardless of external stimuli.

Now, this isn’t to say that external stimuli can’t or shouldn’t or won’t inspire emotional responses, because they can and they do and that is all a part of being here now reveling in the joy of the moment.

It is all a part of being open to the grander possibilities which avail themselves to us, and for me, this is why I play the “Feel Better Game” in the first place.