Many have faced great emotional challenges and upsets. It is why we exist as we do. We are to learn to master our emotions!

      One of the favorite tactics of this writer is to ignore them. Fortunately, another is to look at them full on, face to face. The first postpones the inevitable, the latter avoids much grief.

      This writer has often been in a position where the best option is to act in order to allow self and others to keep functioning in a living, breathing body. She can not only totally ignore feelings, she can suspend awareness of any and all feelings. This is not so good when injuries occur and the body continues to act instead of pausing to take care of the injury. Except when continuing is the better option, the chosen one.

      This writer has also found that the face to face approach may not leave any after effects. She was once driving into New York across the George Washington Bridge in rush hour on a cold, rainy winter evening when her car skidded on a patch of ice. The car spun around and stalled facing an oncoming fast moving 18 wheeler. Knowing the possibilities, she quickly restarted the car, spun around again and floored it. As she continued into the Bronx, she thanked all who had assisted her and only remembers the incident when there is a need to recall how well she is cared for.

      Ignoring feelings of guilt, however, can be rather costly. When this writer lived in a time when she was responsible for a large evacuation for an upcoming disaster, she had to wait until this lifetime for the right circumstances to balance the situation created when she judged herself for pushing those she was working with way beyond their comfort zone. She also needed a friend to point out why she was encountering the current difficulty in order to forgive self and let it go. As soon as she realized the situation's parameters, she forgave self¹. The current situation evaporated. It was no longer present. Peace and harmony was restored.

      Humankind has reached a crossroads in our spiritual evolution. We have faced many emotional challenges possibly without being fully aware of their magnitude and significance. That we have been operating in the dark is also a great challenge.

      What if this is all about to change in our consciousness? What if we are daily being shown how our story is not what we have been told? What if things are not the way we think they are?

      One of our mind's functions is to protect our ability to function in matter. The subconscious mind controls the amount of information we receive in manageable doses. It determines this by past reactions.

      Everything we humans build our society on is based on our own observed functioning or what we have observed in others. We are great scientists, reengineers, master imitators. We have two abilities: to know and to choose. Expressing in matter allows us to experience emotions.

      Our emotions present us with the choice to like or not, to love or ignore, to mainly serve others or to serve self.

      Our ability to feel presents us with the options to be grateful or fearful, to be compassionate or indifferent, to be loving or nasty.

      Are we consciously aware of the choice of loving self, or not? In order to love others, we must love self. To love self, we refrain from condemning self, from judging self. If we do judge self, we forgive self. We love and forgive self so that we may love and forgive others.

      We do not love and forgive others because they deserve it. We love and forgive others because we deserve it. How we treat others is the way we treat self. What we do to others always comes back to us. As we respect others, so are we respected.

      Do we respect others or do we mind their business instead of our own?

      Part of the crossroads we face now is to continue in polarity or to move into a spirit of cooperation, peace, harmony, joy. Do we stay in our heads or move into our hearts? We can choose to remember who we are, why we are here and where we come from. Or not.

      Our choice.

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