A little while ago today, I was quite frustrated.
I was working on my website and struggling with some technical details that simply refused to cooperate.
I could feel my energy changing.
And then I did something that has become so natural to me today that I hardly think about it anymore.
I noticed.
Oh, look. Ghislaine is frustrated.
I didn’t tell myself I shouldn’t be frustrated. I didn’t try to push the feeling away.
I acknowledged it.
I accepted it.
I let myself feel it for a minute.
And then…
Poooooooffffff!
It was gone.
I was back to feeling peaceful and happy.
There was a time in my life when I had absolutely no idea how to do that.
When I Didn’t Know What to Do With My Feelings
In the earlier part of my life, when I didn’t like the way I felt, I tried to make the feelings disappear.
Alcohol.
Drugs.
Shopping.
Anything that could push them away so I wouldn’t have to experience them.
Of course, that took me farther and farther away from myself.
When I became clean and sober forty years ago, I had to begin learning something I had never learned:
How do I deal with my emotions without escaping them or allowing them to control me?
Over time, I learned to become what I call the observer.
The observer isn’t the Ghislaine who is frustrated, frightened or angry.
It’s the quiet part of me that can step slightly away and notice:
Oh, look. Ghislaine is frustrated.
That tiny bit of distance changes everything.
Instead of being the emotion, I become aware that I am experiencing an emotion.
And in that space created by awareness, I have a choice.
I Learned This in a Much Bigger Way
Years ago, after living in the United States for thirty years, I returned to France.
I arrived feeling on top of the world—happy, joyous and peaceful.
But I quickly discovered that the environment I had returned to wasn’t the loving and welcoming one I had imagined. I experienced tremendous disappointment, particularly within my family, and allowed myself to remain in those lower emotional states for far too long.
Within eighteen months, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer.
I was stunned.
At the time, I had read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, in which she connected physical conditions with emotional patterns. Her interpretation of breast problems included themes around nurturing and love.
For me, it landed immediately.
I knew what had caused the cancer.
That is my personal conclusion about what happened in my own body. I am not presenting it as medical advice or suggesting that anyone else should interpret an illness the way I did.
But for me, I knew.
And I made a decision.
I wasn’t going to fight.
Even the word fight felt wrong to me.
Fighting felt like fear and stress. I didn’t want to make my body a battlefield when what I wanted to give it was love.
So I accepted the condition I was experiencing.
And I asked myself:
How do I choose to live inside myself now?
Peacefully.
Lovingly.
Without fear.
I received medical treatment, and at the same time, I completely changed what was happening in my inner world.
I let go of the disappointment.
I stopped feeding what had hurt me.
I returned to love.
I returned to peace.
After the second chemotherapy treatment, the stage 4 cancer had responded so rapidly that within three weeks it was all gone. My oncologist could hardly believe what he was seeing.
I believed then, and I believe today, that the profound shift I made within myself played an essential role in what happened.
Again, this was my experience and my conclusion about my experience. I received medical treatment, and I would never suggest that anyone make medical decisions based upon my story. Nor do I believe that becoming ill means someone has failed emotionally or spiritually.
Three Years Later, I Found the Map
I remained in France for another two years before deciding to return to the United States.
Less than a year after returning—and about three years after going through cancer—I discovered David Hawkins’s work and his Map of Consciousness.
As I studied it, I had an enormous realization:
Oh my goodness. This is what I did.
I hadn’t known there was a map.
I hadn’t known Hawkins’s terminology.
Somehow, when I was diagnosed, I had instinctively understood that fear wasn’t where I wanted to live.
Neither was anger.
Neither was resentment.
Neither was fighting.
I moved toward acceptance.
Then peace.
Then love.
Hawkins’s map gave me language for something I felt I had already experienced.
He described a progression of states of consciousness, beginning with shame, guilt, apathy, grief and fear, then moving through desire, anger and pride. Courage represents a turning point, followed by neutrality, willingness, acceptance and reason, and then love, joy, peace and enlightenment.
I don’t use the map as a rigid measuring system.
Its gift to me was much simpler:
I realized I could move.
You Don’t Have to Stay There
If I’m angry, I don’t have to stay in anger.
If I’m afraid, I don’t have to make fear my home.
If I’m frustrated, I don’t have to give the rest of my afternoon to frustration.
And this is important:
That doesn’t mean suppressing the emotion.
If I’m angry, I’m angry.
If something hurts me, it hurts.
If some technical problem is driving me crazy, I’m frustrated.
😂
Feel it.
Acknowledge it.
Accept it.
Then ask:
Do I want to stay here?
Maybe I can’t move from anger to joy.
Fine.
Can I move to neutrality?
This happened.
I didn’t like it.
And I’m okay.
Sometimes that’s enough.
There is no forcing.
There is simply awareness followed by choice.
It Always Comes Back to Love
For me, emotional mastery has ultimately become very simple.
I love myself.
And because I love myself, I care about the emotional environment I create inside myself.
Being angry for a moment isn’t a failure.
But if I spend the next six hours replaying what made me angry, having imaginary arguments and making myself furious all over again…
who am I hurting?
Me.
So my observer can simply say:
Oh, look. Ghislaine is angry.
Okay.
Let’s give her a minute.
And then:
Where would you like to go now?
That’s not suppression.
That’s love.
There was a time when I thought my emotions simply happened to me.
Today I know something different.
An emotion can be real without becoming my home.
I can experience it without becoming it.
I can acknowledge it without feeding it.
And I can consciously choose where I want to go next.
You can too.
The next time you find yourself angry, frightened, frustrated or overwhelmed, don’t judge yourself and don’t try to fix yourself.
Just notice.
Feel it.
Accept it.
Take a breath.
Then ask:
Do I want to stay here?
Perhaps raising our consciousness doesn’t have to be complicated.
Perhaps it begins with becoming aware of the inner environment we’re creating for ourselves—and caring enough about ourselves to choose differently when that environment is causing us pain.
It starts in the heart.
It starts with loving ourselves.
Because somehow, it always comes back to that.
Love yourself enough to become conscious of where you’re living emotionally—and know that you have a choice about whether you remain there. ❤️