Life Unfolding Beautifully

Last fall I wrote a post about the concept that Abraham shares with us about what they refer to as an emotional guidance scale.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the emotional guidance scale (or EGS) goes something like this:

Emotional Guidance Scale

1. Joy / Knowledge / Empowerment / Freedom / Love / Appreciation
2. Passion
3. Enthusiasm / Eagerness / Happiness
4. Positive Expectation / Belief
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment
8. Boredom
9. Pessimism
10. Frustration / Impatience / Irritation
11. “Overwhelment”
12. Disappointment
13. Doubt
14. Worry
15. Blame
16. Discouragement
17. Anger
18. Revenge
19. Hatred / Rage
20. Jealousy
21. Insecurity / Guilt / Unworthiness
22. Fear / Grief / Depression / Despair / Powerlessness

Here are a few ways to look at this scale:

Top: Expanding, Non-resistant, In alignment with the universe.

Bottom: Contracting, Resistant, Not in alignment with the universe.

In the post from last fall, I shared a very powerful exercise I was using to move up the EGS deliberately: Sidling Up the EGS. I tend to use the sidling technique just to feel better in the moment.

And… we are almost always a bundle of conflicting vibrations around any number of issues. I might be at Overwhelment with a friendship but at Freedom with a career choice. So, what’s a good way to move up the EGS on a specific subject?

Here’s how I do it:

1. Identify the issue as succinctly as possible. Get clear about what it is but keep it as simple as possible.

   Example: My friendship with Joe.

2. Starting at the bottom of the EGS, look for the word that corresponds how you feel. You will know pretty quickly as you begin to check in. This is identifying where you are.

   Example: I am feeling Overwhelment in my friendship with Joe.

3. Write or say out loud something along the lines of I am feeling Overwhelment in my friendship with Joe because…. and fill in the blank.
4. Pay attention to what you write or speak as you may move up the EGS even as you are focusing on where you are.

   Example: I am feeling Overwhelment in my friendship with Joe because I am doubtful it will ever get better (in this example, I have moved from Overwhelment to Pessimism).

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as you deliberately move up the EGS.
6. You’re done when you are at the top of the EGS or when the process itself feels irritating or overwhelming.

Here are some tips about doing this process:

• Write or speak out loud, if at all possible. While you can do this in your mind, I find it to be much more powerful if I see the words or hear them. There’s just something about actually getting it out of my head that moves me quickly up the EGS.
• As you are going up the EGS, you are getting relief from the emotion you just left, so to speak. Anger feels better than Depression. Overwhelment feels better than Anger. Boredom feels better than Overwhelment. And so on…
• The goal here is to get really honest with where you are so you can move up to where you want to be.
• Beware of the desire to move up immediately to the top of the EGS. This is a good exercise to help you become aware of how you feel and to not put a happy face on it. Often, we try to convince ourselves that we feel something because it’s appropriate or polite. It’s like bringing out a pig and then painting a big smile on its face with Chanel lipstick, stringing pearls around its neck, and placing a tiara on its head. The intention is to look good. But it’s still a pig (which are fine and wonderful beasts — no disrespect meant to them!).
• I discovered recently that the emotions at the very bottom of the EGS are directed inward — Depression, Fear, Despair, Powerlessness, Guilt, Unworthiness — these are all about what I did or what happened to me. Then the next set of emotions — Jealousy, Hatred, Rage, Anger — are directed at others. I think this is a very important piece of information. Expansion is occurring as we turn our emotions outward, even if they aren’t that pleasant. When you move from Guilt to Anger, you are moving up the EGS!!
• One last important thing to remember — this is about shifting your vibration on a particular subject. Be persistent but also go easy on yourself. You may want to move up at one sitting. Or you may want to hang out at one place on the EGS until you believe that you can have relief by moving up. Either way, being intentional and deliberate about the process will help you immensely on almost any subject.

But… what’s the big deal about feelings and emotions??

There are some people who feel it’s important to just buckle down and get through whatever feels bad. Like a bad dream or a rollercoaster, it will all be over eventually.

Well, this may not be a process that works well for you if that is your framework. There are many other ways to accomplish the same thing that moving up the EGS can do for you.

But if you are willing to feel, for just a moment, the emotion that you’ve been avoiding for the last 10 minutes, 10 days, or 10 years… then this process may be for you.

Interestingly, in Ask and It Is Given, the Abraham book that discusses this process, this is the only one that is recommended for anyone below Anger on the EGS. I have found it will work for almost anything, but it does seem to be the best and quickest way out of Depression, Fear, Despair, Powerlessness, etc.

So give this little exercise a try. Try it on something that feels stuck and see if you get some movement on the issue. Then let us know what happened by leaving a comment.

And be on the look out for more on the EGS — The 22 Day EGS Plan… How to shift your vibrational set point by moving up the EGS one day at a time.