Geoff Laughton Presents Undoing Our Emotional Illiteracy – An Interview with Author Luis Diaz

Today, I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 10 of the Virtual Blog Tour for Memory in the Cells by author Luis Angel Diaz.

Newly translated from the popular Spanish edition, author Luis Diaz describes his book Memory in the Cells as “where Eckhart Tolle meets What the Bleep Do We Know, but taking you on a much more practical journey.” He says Memory in the Cells teaches “emotional education” and shows the reader how to transform the “pain body” into the “joy body”, helping to heal all aspects of their lives.

Yesterday, Luis visited Rochele Hirsch at https://beforethebehavior.magellanshop.com/blog/?cat=1. For today’s stop on the tour, I decided to ask Luis some questions about how to become more emotionally literate in our lives.

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Geoff: You contend that self-betrayal is a cultural habit, and neuroscientists assert that our brains are hardwired to orient towards the negative. Say more about how it’s a cultural habit, and what can we do to circumvent it?

Luis: Based on my experience in the last two decades, I can’t find real evidence that our brains are hardwired towards the negative. On the contrary, I’ve seen that there is a genuine and natural tendency to live aligned with wellbeing and the so called human values. Among others, they represent our need for peace, love, freedom, trust, connection, mutuality and equality.

The patterns of negativity based upon fear are part of the software or the programming we receive from the cultural system in which we are raised. We are authentic and honest beings when we are born. We learn to lie and to compromise our truth either by imitation (“My mom says she is ok, when I know she is very sad”) or through our own experience when adults tell us not to be sad, afraid or angry when we really are.

As adults, we get used to lying and pretending we think or feel differently from how we really do, in order to be accepted or liked by others, believing if they like us, they will help us or we will benefit from them. We also compromise our truth in order to keep the harmony in our relationships, or not to suffer exclusion from groups or family.
Compromising our truth leads to self betrayal. And when we betray ourselves, we pay with all sorts of imbalances in us, from low self-esteem and self confidence, to physical or mental problems.

Geoff: What do you mean when you talk about being “addicted” to emotions?

Luis: The more we suppress an emotion, the more layers of it accumulate within our bodies. The more layers we accumulate, the more our body wants to get rid of them.
The way the body gets rid of emotions is through feeling them! But since we are trained to deny or avoid them, we keep suppressing them. After a while, we become engulfed in this vicious circle and that suppressed emotion becomes a central piece in our inner landscape. As a consequence, we feel it most of the time! That is like an addiction actually. The more we try to avoid it, the bigger it gets and the more space it takes up within us.

Geoff: Do you feel that the “best” life is one guided solely by intellect/ego?

Luis: In my experience, I can say that the ego is not a problem as long as we are conscious of it as strategy of the mind’s creation in order to be safe and protected.
The ego is a problem when we let it run the show!

Since ego is our mind’s creation, it is the result of our perception; and our perception is the result of the programming we have. As civilized human beings, this programming supports and generates inner fragmentation in us. We are not just rational beings as we’ve been told. We are multidimensional beings. That means we are and live in different dimensions at the same time. We are physical beings; we need and have physical bodies in order to have a human experience. We are also mental beings; our minds are continually creating thoughts and opinions. Therefore, we generate endless streams of beliefs about ourselves and others.

But we are also emotional beings, as we generate feelings and emotional reactions as a result of the thoughts and beliefs that we have.

We cannot say we are complete, nor can we feel balanced and experience wellbeing, as long as we are unable to live consciously from all three of these dimensions. And that means consciously integrating and including these dimensions within us.

Geoff: What are 3 ways we can begin to undo our emotional illiteracy?

Luis: Getting an emotional education is the main thing. In the same way I got education in marketing when I wanted to promote my book! Here are some steps:

1- Find someone you trust from whom you can receive emotional education. It is crucial this is someone who applies what they teach in their own life.
2- Learn how to listen to your body’s feelings and sensations. Ultimately, your body will be your main teacher.
3- Be honest with yourself. Treat yourself as your very best friend and be present to your breath that connects you with life moment by moment.
4- Have fun with it!

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I hope you enjoyed this interview with Luis Angel Diaz and that you’ll check out his new book Memory in the Cells, which is coming to Amazon on Tuesday October 5, 2010. You can receive a complete library of beautiful personal development gifts when you buy the book on the day of its launch, including one from me: my special report “3 Steps to Transcending the Grip of Survival Energy.”

In addition, Luis is hosting a very special FREE telesummit entitled “Healing at a Cellular Level” on September 27th, 28th and 29th with a distinguished panel of some of today’s most inspiring authors and speakers on the topic of emotional healing and holistic wellbeing. If you’d like to attend, all you have to do is request a “launch reminder” about the book, and you’ll receive all the information to attend. If you cannot make the live event, you can download the audio at your convenience.

To find out how to buy Luis’s book and receive these gifts, including the FREE pass to the 3-day online telesummit, go to
http://www.memoryinthecells.com

AND, you can read all about the telesummit and the guests at http://tinyurl.com/cmr-telesummit

Be sure to follow Luis tomorrow when the next stop on his Virtual Blog Tour is Glenn M Smith´s Blog http://sensitiveselfhelp.com .

As usual, please do feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.