Book Group: Emotional Freedom Chapter 1

This chapter is still pretty much introductory material.  The author present a little more detail about why we should want to find emotional freedom.  And once again, she emphasizes that it is about helping our love to evolve.  It's also about connecting to who we really are inside.

She shares stories, including one about her own experiences as a patient in a mental hospital.  In another story, she tells us of learning to trust her intuition.  She had been in a session with a patient and had a feeling that the women would attempt suicide.  Because there were no other indications beyond her own feelings that this was the case, she ignored it, and the woman did try to take her own life.  From this, Orloff learned that she had to trust her intuition, even if it seemed contrary to everything else.

Orloff tells of her experiences of finding a spiritual teacher, and finding her own voice and power.

The chapter wraps up with an emotional freedom test that allows you to assess how you are doing right now, and a short and very careful discussion of how men and women generally respond differently.  Any discussion of differences between men and women has the potential to blow up in your face, but I felt like she did a great job here of explaining general tendencies and the fact that these tendencies occur with "many (but not all) women" and "many (but not all) men".

I liked the emotional freedom test.  It consists of "20 questions for reflection." (I love that focus on reflection).  You respond to each question by checking Not true 0, Sometimes True 1, or Mostly True 2, and then adding them up to get your score.  It was interesting for me to see how much different my answers are now than they would have been 10 or 15 years ago.  I'm moving in the right direction.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

1.  Would you be more or less likely to trust a former mental patient as a dispenser of wisdom about emotions?   Why?

2.  How do you feel about intuition?  What does intuition mean to you?  Is intuition different from promptings from the Holy Ghost?  If so, how?  

3.  Who have been the spiritual teachers in your life?  Is there someone that you go to for guidance and instruction that is not part of your Sunday worship experience?  

4.  Are there areas in your life where you think you have found emotional freedom or are moving towards it?  Are there times that you still feel trapped by your emotions?