Scorpio - Understanding My Emotional Body

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #164, November 7, 2009

Planetary Alignments

• The Sun entered Scorpio 3:09am PST October 22nd (11:09am GMT). The Sun moves into Sagittarius November 21st at 8:23pm PST (November 22nd at 4:23am GMT).
• Taurus Full Moon at 10° Taurus, November 2nd at 12:14pm PST (8:14pm GMT).
• Scorpio New Moon at 24° Scorpio, November 16th at 11.15am PST (7:17pm GMT).
• Saturn in Libra/Pluto in Capricorn form a square at 2° of their respective signs, November 15th - and on-going through August 2010.
• Neptune went direct November 4th. It has been retrograde since May 28th.
• Uranus goes direct December 1st. It has been retrograde since June 30th.
• All planets will be direct from December 1st-26th.
• Mars goes retrograde December 26th through March 10th, 2010.

The Scorpio/Pluto Underworld Revealed

When the Sun moves into Scorpio, we enter the intense, penetrating and no-fluff reality of the Scorpio/Pluto underworld. Saturn and Pluto form a confrontational square November 16th, the day before the New Moon. The interaction of these two planets intensifies the need for radical change, exposes our inner dramas, and creates outer dramas when we refuse to deal with what is going on inside us. (Witness the dramatic shoot out example, of the army psychiatrist about to be deployed to Afghanistan). I will write more about the dynamics of the Saturn/Pluto square, which will impact us through August 2010. Their message is GET REAL!

Scorpio energy reveals the secret life of our emotional body, and obliges us to investigate the dynamics of our subconscious programming. Scorpio and Pluto (ruler of Scorpio) not only pull us into our inner depths. This archetype is about the deep inner transformation that is necessary to change emotional patterns and habits. Scorpio and Pluto not only expose our habitual programming; their energies make it possible to change destructive habits, and in the process to deeply transform our lives.

To reclaim our power from our subconscious, and to find inner peace and happiness, we must identify HOW we engage our emotional body, and understand how we are using our emotional energy.

Internal Awakening and Shift

I have been noticing recently that I am internally monitoring what I am doing with my emotional body. This is a sure sign that Scorpio and Pluto are alive and active in my inner world. Even more interestingly, I am choosing NOT to engage my emotional energy in others' stories. Choosing not to react helps me stay emotionally calm. My desire to be at peace is stronger than hooks that seek to engage me in emotional commotion.

Interestingly, I have talked with others who have noticed the same - watching what they are doing with their emotional energy, and choosing not to be pulled outside themselves into others' traumas/dramas. I have also been noticing how people freely and recklessly throw around their emotional energy, like attempting to slam whipped cream pies in your face. It is amazing how people fling their emotional energy around, totally oblivious of the impact that this might have on others.

What Am I Doing with My Emotional Energy

While the Sun is in Scorpio, and while Pluto pulls us into deep emotional healing, we get another chance to look at how we engage our emotional body. We get to live in the question - What am I doing with my emotional energy? Our self-investigation includes the following:

1. Paying attention to how we allow our emotional energy to get involved with external stories, people and events - and how we focus outside ourselves instead of on feeling MY feelings in MY body.
2. Becoming conscious of how we escape into our mind, and stories, to avoid uncomfortable feelings and emotional turmoil - and becoming aware of how we avoid giving ourselves enough time to:
   1. connect with what we are feeling,
   2. consciously internalize our emotional energy,
   3. contain our emotional energy, and
   4. find resolution in our emotional body.

This escapist strategy is a common factor in our human condition. This is how we waste our energy, perpetuate being a victim, and give away our power.

Universal Support

I believe that increased awareness of our emotional energy, and how we use it, is related to the awakening of feminine energy on the planet, which was activated, or at least coincided, with the 2 Cancer new moons and eclipse in July, 2009. It is very interesting that, throughout Europe and here in San Diego, many people say that they have felt major shifts since July. You too?

Universal energies impact all of us. That is why we are experiencing the same types of transformation. This is good news. We are being supported in waking up, and becoming more conscious of our soul energy, and how we are using the feminine polarity of our soul. This means that there is the availability of another choice, which in turn means that it is possible to react and respond differently, and thus to profoundly change our inner and outer lives.

Scorpio Reveals Our Secrets

When the Sun is in Scorpio (the second water sign), and when Pluto is activated in our personal and collective lives, deep emotional connection becomes more available and intense. Scorpio energy makes us aware of the secret life of our emotional body. It is Scorpio's job to reveal the inner intrigues, motivations, habits, and programs hidden in our subconscious.

Scorpio is the sign of death and rebirth, change, evolution and transformation.

Scorpio actually gives us hope. When we can identify what is controlling our reality, we can do something about it, and with the help of Kundalini Yoga, which alters our mental and physiological wiring, we can:

• transform the way we respond.
• alter our patterns.
• change our habits.
• install new responses.
• use our energy to become magnetic and creative.
• more consciously participate in co-creating our reality.

Scorpio's penetrating honesty is invaluable. Without access to this deep truth about ourselves, how else would we:

1. know what we are doing,
2. be able to change our self-destructive patterns and habits, and
3. build empowering habits and responses?

The Exit Strategy called Transformation

Scorpio and Pluto don't dump us in the black hole of emotional turmoil, and leave us without an exit strategy. Their exit formula is called TRANSFORMATION. We either VOLUNTARILY do our inner work and earn our way out, or we INVOLUNTARILY do our inner work to earn our way out. Either way, as we rise like a phoenix from the ashes of what were once our tormenting demons, we experience increased awareness, an expanded sense of self, and more inner peace.

The key ingredient is to fully feel our feelings in our body. As we feel and embrace the feminine polarity of our soul, and integrate this evolutionary energy into our feeling awareness, profound shifts take place in our consciousness. We no longer perceive our emotional energy as negative. We will, at times, feel uncomfortable and experience intense emotions, but we will also begin to feel rich and yummy sensations and waves of love. As we embrace all the expressions of this vital energy, we experience it as the dynamic force field of our soul.

The more we allow this energy to flow through our body, the more vital and alive we feel. The energy no longer gets stuck in expressions of depression, stress and anxiety. We no longer dump our life experiences into our subconscious, as unresolved issues that we have to deal with and process later. We feel lighter, freer, more empowered and more loving.

Self-Training and Awareness Questions

To create this inner transformation, we must train ourselves to monitor what we are doing with our emotional energy. We can do so by asking ourselves questions that help us indentify, and FEEL, the activity and location of our emotional energy:

• What am I doing at this moment with my emotional energy?
• How do I let it be engaged?
• Am I hooking into other people's dramas?
• Am I allowing my energy to leak out, and to be engaged and used outside myself?
• Is my attention inside or outside myself?
• Am I making others' dramas my dramas?
• Am I hooking into my own dramas?
• Am I relaxing and allowing my emotional energy to flow inside my skin?
• Do I feel it in my body?
• Am I able to separate my emotional energy from that of others, and contain it for myself?
• Can I observe what others are doing with their emotional energy, and avoid engaging my emotional body in their stories and dramas?

How do I Engage My Mind?

• Am I thinking or feeling?
• How are my thoughts engaging my emotional energy?
• How is my emotional energy engaging my mind?
• Our dual mind naturally links up with our emotional body and programming.
• Is my dual mind supporting emotional commotion, or can my mind go to the neutral channel where I can detach, and simply observe mine and others' stories?
• How long does it take me to connect with my neutral space, and get into alignment with my own flow?

Yogi Bhajan said that we have 4 seconds, to decide how we choose to respond and to change our response, before we create more karma for ourselves. This is a mental decision. In My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor talks about changing how she reacts in 90 seconds. She seems to be talking about emotional shifts. Everyone has their own formula. The important thing to remember is that the mind can shift in an instant, but the energy of our emotional body moves slower and thus takes more time to shift.

How do I Break Old Habits?

What we do with our emotional energy is habitual. We have created habits and reinforced them over the years. Habits are deep. We need to make moment by moment choices to change habits. One choice is never enough. We have to continually make a new choice to install a new habit.

The reality of changing habits is that both choice and transformation are required.

We must be able to unhook from others' stories and external stimulation. We must be able to hold on inside ourselves, even when what we experience is uncomfortable. Emotional feeling can be painful, but the good news is that e-motions always move. They will change. We can break habits by staying present to this energy until it actually transforms.

We find resolution in our emotional body, as we allow the flow of our emotional energy to effortlessly move in our neutral space inside our body. Deep transformation happens when we can relax, let go, and let God take care of it.

Self-Awareness is Required

Here are a few guidelines you can use to monitor your emotional energy during the day, and in the spaces between the exercises in your Kundalini Yoga practice.

The main question to ask yourself is - WHERE is my emotional energy? Inside my skin? In my body? Or outside myself?

1. Pay attention to:
   1. the emotional feels in your body during various daily activities,
   2. how you react to external stimuli,
   3. how you breathe, and
   4. the relationship between your thoughts and your feelings.
2. Notice when your emotional energy is engaged outside yourself. Bring your attention and energy back to your body.
3. Make moment-by-moment decisions about what you choose to do with your emotional energy.
4. Feel your energy move in your body, and allow it to flow inside your skin.
5. Synchronize your emotional energy with the flow of your breath.

Your breath is the silk thread that weaves your life.

Directive for Kundalini Yoga Kriyas and Meditations

All of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga kriyas and meditations create internal awakening, that makes it possible to do the self investigation required to observe and feel our emotional body, and to break emotional and mental habits. Below are two kriyas and one meditation that work. I have written out the directions for the first kriya.

Kriya to Break a Cocaine Habit

This short pranayama kriya was given by Yogi Bhajan, to break a cocaine habit and to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. By balancing the nervous system and creating a shift in the brain, we are able to break both physical and emotional habits. This kriya is on page 176 in Relax and Renew 2nd Edition.

In order to hold the breath out in this kriya, it is important to do warm ups that increase the power of the breath. I suggest spinal flexes and any exercises with breath of fire. Also inhale deeply and exhale deeply several times, to increase you ability to hold out the breath.

1. Mudra - Sit with the elbows bent, forearms up and at the sides, palms facing forward, thumb and forefinger touching in Gyan Mudra. Arms are relaxed. Palms will be about shoulder level. Press your shoulder blades together, so you press your heart open from the back. Eyes are closed.
   
   Inhale and hold the breath for 1 minute. Exhale powerfully. Do this 3 times.
2. Relax the arms down and let your breath come back to its normal rhythm.
   
   Notice any internal shifts. Make a conscious choice to be in your neutral channel, and to bring your attention from outside yourself and from distractive thoughts to what you are feeling inside your body. Don't think. Feel in your body. 1-3 minutes or more if you wish.
3. Resume the mudra with the arms at the sides. Inhale deeply, hold, press the tongue to the roof the of the mouth with all your strength. Apply the root and neck locks. Hold for at least 30 seconds. Exhale. Do breath of fire for 20 seconds to 1 minute.
4. Repeat [1] inhaling and holding the breath for 1 minute 3 times.
5. Inhale, hold and press the tongue against the roof of the mouth for 1 minute. Exhale and relax.

Take advantage of the internal shifts to move your attention to your neutral channel, and to feel what you are feeling in your body. Stay with your feeling awareness as long as you can. You are shifting a deep habit, of escaping into your mind to avoid feeling in your body.

You can repeat this whole series one or more times. Each time you will experience deeper awareness and transformation. Practice daily for at least 40 days, or longer, for permanent results.

Kriya for Thymus, Immunity and Cellular Oxidation

This Kundalini Yoga kriya activates the lower chakras and the heart, and gets us in touch with our emotional body in our physical body. This kriya is on page 95 of Transitions to a Heart-Centered World 2nd Edition. Between exercises use the following guidelines:

• Where is your attention? Inside your body and skin or outside or in your mind?
• Are you thinking or feeling? Bring your attention to how you are feeling in your body.
• Make moment by moment decisions about what you choose to do with this energy.
• How are you breathing? Bring back your emotional energy to the flow of your breath. Your breath is the silk thread that weaves your life.
• Feel your energy move in your body and contain it inside your skin.

We find resolution in our emotional body, as we let go and allow the flow of our emotional energy in our neutral space inside our body.

Medical Meditation for Habituation

The Meditation for Habituation activates that part of the brain which makes it possible to break emotional, drug, tobacco, coffee, sugar and alcohol habits. This meditation is on page 178 of Relax and Renew 2nd Edition.

It is the imbalance in the stem of the pineal gland that makes physical and mental addictions seem unbreakable. This meditation corrects this problem by creating radiance in the stem of the pineal gland. Start with 3-7 minutes. Gradually increase to 31 minutes a day.

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