When you’re floating down the river, and you get snagged on a rock, it’s usually easier to see how you’re snagged, in order to unsnagg yourself – instead of trying to pull away from it blindly, frantically. No?

The Emotional Guidance System is a great way to unsnagg ourselves when we get stuck in one of life’s emotional conundrums. It’s a way to understand ourselves and our emotions that goes outside of the conventional, and arguably often unhelpful, ways of understanding our emotions and how they function.

Commonly espoused by modern spiritual teachers and adepts such as Bentinho Massaro, the Emotional Guidance System addresses not just negative emotions, but the larger paradigm of our human existence – mainly, that of the Soul and it’s earthly incarnate purpose.

To put it simply, The Emotional Guidance System is a framework designed to help individuals navigate their inner world and make decisions in alignment with their true desires and higher purpose. In our case, that higher purpose might be some form of creativity, or art.

Let’s say that you are an artist, and you know this. You’ve embraced your earthly mission, which might be to find the beauty inherent in this world, to make connections between things that give you joy and insight, and to express this to others in the form of some type of art. And let’s say that you’ve already embarked on your mission, but you’re finding a lot of obstacles in your way – circumstantial obstacles, like recurring money concerns or relationship problems, or a general lack of ambition or creative inspiration, and as a result you’ve built up some negative emotions around these concerns about things not being the way you expected, the way you wanted them to be.

These negative emotions are very strong, and seem to keep you from doing what you love, and creating what you love to create. They keep you from being happy in your daily life. To boot, you’re not really sure why you have these negative emotions – and no matter what you do to get rid of them, they persist. They affect your overall mood and wellbeing, and they seem to be out of your control.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts about transforming emotions, it is possible to change them and use them in our creative process as energy for creating. But it’s also important to understand why they are here – why we have emotions in the first place, and what function they serve. This understanding is key to making big changes in our lives. It will help us become more emotionally intelligent, and more capable of navigating the frequently stormy waters of the creative life.

At the core of the Emotional Guidance System is the recognition that our emotions are powerful indicators of our alignment with our authentic self and the universal flow of life energy. Emotions serve as our inner compass, providing valuable feedback about our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. As artists and creatives, understanding this is one of the key ways we can transform the negative emotions and beliefs which give rise to our creative blocks.

Emotions can be categorized into two primary groups: high-vibrational and low-vibrational emotions. High-vibrational emotions include joy, love, gratitude, and enthusiasm, while low-vibrational emotions encompass fear, anger, sadness, and frustration. The Emotional Guidance System encourages individuals to strive for a state of emotional resonance with the higher-vibrational emotions. When you are aligned with these positive emotions, you are more in sync with your true self and the natural order of the universe.

The low-vibrational emotions are signals that you are out of alignment with your authentic self or that you are resisting the flow of life. They serve as wake-up calls to redirect your thoughts and actions toward a more positive and aligned state.

Important to note here, is that, according to a long list of ancient and modern spiritual adepts, we create our world via our thoughts and emotions. We mostly do this unconsciously, without knowing we are doing it. For instance, when we repeatedly think about some potential negative future outcome, and form negative, fear-based emotions around that outcome, we are actually creating that outcome in some form or another.

So, to put it mildly, it behooves us to pay attention to our thoughts and emotions, because they become what we end up experiencing. Furthermore, the stronger the emotions are around a thought pattern, the greater the likelyhood that those thoughts will become our physical experience in some way. Emotions, you could say, help to solidify thoughts…to crystalize them into a perception of an actual experience.

1. To use the Emotional Guidance System effectively, we must learn to become aware of our emotions in any given moment. Mindfulness, meditation, and self-reflection are crucial practices for developing this awareness.

2. As we become more aware of our emotions, when we come to experience a low-vibrational emotion, we can simply acknowledge it without judgment and use it as an opportunity for self-inquiry. We can ask ourselves why we feel this way, and what thoughts or beliefs might be contributing to this emotion. We can hold the understanding that this negative-feeling emotion is a sign that we are out of alignment with our Soul’s purpose, out of sync with our Higher Selves.

3. Once we’ve identified the underlying thoughts and beliefs, we can replace them with more positive and empowering ones that better resonate with our soul’s purpose – the emotions that feel good to us, such as compassion, or love, or gratitude. We can learn to reframe our ideas around our circumstances, to see them in a new light, from a fresh perspective, one that aligns with love and acceptance instead of fear or dissatifaction. 

Consistent practice and conscious intention are necessary to shift our emotional state over time. As we align our thoughts, beliefs, and actions with higher-vibrational energies, we’ll find that our life begins to manifest in more positive and harmonious ways.

Ultimately, the Emotional Guidance System is an effective a tool for self-discovery and personal growth. When we pay attention to our emotions and learn to work with them, we can create a life that is more in alignment with our true self and the universal flow of love and abundance. We become more creative, happier, more abundant and more spiritually awake. And as artists, we can deepen our creative process and make it more aligned, more authentic.