Did you ever wonder about how we escape from emotional pain?

In my book, Your Cardinal Connections, I talk about the concept of Spiritual Escapism, which is a specific way to escape from emotional pain. There are others, such as intellectual escape and physical escape.

One of the most common ways to escape from emotional pain is indulging, overeating, overdrinking, and exaggerating in  "pleasures of the flesh" - which numbs our bodies.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people become fitness freaks (I myself went through a phase like that for a couple of years in my late twenties).

In these cases, we are

using our bodies to escape our emotions.

And we are not as aware of our bodies as we could be if we were willing to feel them.

So many of us don't want to face our inner world, because it's easier to feel physical pain than emotional pain.

To learn more about this, my Languages of Consciousness Ebook my bring some insight. Sometimes we feel we're going to die if we feel emotional pain. Or we feel we can't handle it, so we avoid it.

But it's there.

That's the problem, and it snowballs. It festers in our unconscious mind and makes itself be seen in symptoms, destructive behavior, and bad habits.

Other ways to avoid emotional pain become lifestyles.

This is something I've actually observed in myself. It took me a while to see what I was doing, but I've observed people around me in the same situation, and the more I saw how the escape mechanism was working, the more I got out of that mode because I was willing to try to solve this problem.

And I sometimes have the tendency to escape from emotional pain big time.

That's why I'm talking about this - I've been down that road and still am at some point or another.

We always have things to address, right?

I've dedicated a lot of my time to heal some of it, that's why I'm bringing this up and discussing it with you.

Aside from indulging, there are other more sophisticated ways to avoid emotional pain, which may even become lifestyles.

They're what I call intellectual escape and spiritual escape.

On the rational level, some people think the more they intellectualize their lives and the brain rules, the more control they have over emotions.

The brain becomes the predominant force in their lives and psyche, that they believe they will not be as vulnerable to emotional pain. It is true that brainpower helps us get more clarity, but by itself, it's far from being the solution to emotional well-being.

Intellectual escapism in some way or another makes us unhappy, and to an extreme, arrogant or even nihilistic.

When we intellectualize life too much without opening space for the heart and emotions to come through, we can become arrogant.

The same goes for spirituality. If we pray all the time and "spiritualize" life to avoid emotional pain,

it's not going to work.

It's fine to be an intellectual, and a spiritual person, as long as we

integrate the heart and face our emotions.

If we don't do that, we'll be avoiding emotional pain and trying to compensate with over-intellectualization or over-spiritualization.

I believe the key to life is to

integrate the physical, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual.

The spiritual level is not necessarily religious, but it really is about acknowledging the subtle aspect of life and allowing yourself not to be in a materialistic mindset anymore.

To hold on to a materialistic mindset in the 21st century is, in my honest opinion, an attachment to the past.

It's long gone.

Quantum physics and neuroscience are here to attest how energy exists in a very complex way - it's much more complex and beyond matter.

Matter is animated by not just energy, but also by consciousness.

As human beings, we must try to balance each area of life. We do have tendencies, and some people have an easier time with emotions than they do with intellectual activities, for example. But

whatever's out of our comfort zone is what we need to pursue.

 If you're very emotional, enhancing your brain power will help you balance your energy. If you're too much of an intellectual, connecting to your emotions will balance your energy.

And if you have balanced those aspects of your life, the next step is spirituality.

We're never fully realized as human beings, and we can be enlightened, but that's only happened to very few human beings in history, and our goal is to follow that path. Go down that road. And get closer to your Higher Self every day.

It’s not about denying the physical world. It’s about inhabiting it. And if we are not ready to address our emotional pain, we don't want to go there. If a lot of people are avoiding pain and finding their own escapes, don’t judge others and

keep your eyes on your road.

Everyone has a different soul timing and is on their own journey.

This is for everyone who’s willing to

connect to this broader existence as a human being, honoring the body, honoring the mind, honoring the heart, and honoring the spirit.

Now let us know what you think!

Share your experience and how you feel about this topic. And share this video with everybody that you know who can benefit from this amazing, powerful way of thinking that we’re developing as humanity in the 21st century. With everyone who wants to open their minds and live in a more meaningful, happy, joyful, healthy world.

Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and like our page and Facebook, and I will see you soon! Thanks for being here!

Much love,

Paola.