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ABOUT CONSTITUTIONAL MEDICINE
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Whatever is going on, good or bad, big or small, it is how we feel that ultimately matters the most to us, as it should. How we think, our perceptions, our beliefs, all these matter too, of course, but our feelings reflect a deeper reality, they show us the truth of our actual experience, how we are, where we are, how things are for us right now, from one moment to the next. Even if we 'think' that our feelings are quite remote, or removed, this is merely a trick of the mind. The reality is that our feelings are always there, affecting everything, including how we think. Our feelings are our 'being', wherever we are, there they are, affecting everything about how we experience the world. Our feelings inhabit us, and affect us, more than anything else in the whole of our lives, and yet only we can ever know how we truly feel, no-one else can feel our feelings for us, they belong to us, each one of us, utterly and completely. Imagine your life is a movie where you, of course, are the main character. In this analogy, your thoughts and conversations form the dialogue, but your feelings are what drives the plot and sets the lighting, sound and mood of the whole show! Our feelings are always there, setting the scene, creating the background, but we may only be fully aware of them when they are strong enough to override everything else and take 'centre-stage'. Then, we usually need to name them and can struggle badly with what to do with them, because there is nothing more compelling, and potentially more challenging, than our feelings. Under the chart shown at the bottom of this page, there are links to individual articles for each of the constitutions that go into the subject of the most challenging of these feelings in much more depth but, before going further, I want to highlight the most important point in all of this. Which is that we, you, me, all of us, simply must sometimes experience certain difficult emotions as a necessary part of being human, and that we do ourselves a great deal of harm by seeing these feelings as enemies that must be got rid of... and that there is another way to understand them and relate to them; with acceptance rather than rejection, as our 'dark friends'. For all that certain feelings can be intensely uncomfortable, for all that we would rather not experience them, and for all that there are a million ideas, systems and methods that supposedly show us how to get rid of them, the fact is that some of these feelings, ones that I am here calling the 'dark friends' are more than inevitable, they are actually essential to our growth and maturity as human beings. We must experience the presence of these feelings, at least sometimes, and rather than trying to just get rid of them, which never works in the long run anyway, there is another way, one that finds acceptance rather than rejection. This is not an easy approach to understand and obviously it is not a common one in today's world either, but it is not new or untried, others have found this path to be a true one, and described it in their own ways too.... The schematic below gives an overview of the key players, the 'dark friends' and some of the names they go by. The reason they've been placed in this order is that, whilst all these feelings are part of the human experience and can equally affect anyone, it can also be seen that, very generally speaking, each constitution tends to already be most familiar (and may be on closer terms) with the feelings in their 'corner' whilst they may tend to have the most difficulty, the most alienation, with the feelings shown on either side of them and especially in their opposite corner. This said, believe me when I say that, any person from any constitution can struggle mightily, and be on the worst terms possible, with any or all of these 'dark friends'. The most interesting and unexpected part of all of this is that, when we stop fighting and practice acceptance with these feelings, we receive some extraordinary gifts as also shown within the circle below. These gifts are things that we all want and need and are indeed are usually searching for in all kinds of ways...
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© 2011 R.J.Whelan Ltd