Willingness has two parts:
A. Willingness to feel all that you feel and,
B. Willingness to deal with all that you feel.

Each part is a choice. That is, there is no other skill involved other than a sincere commitment to feel all that you feel and to deal with all that you feel. This is the simplest, and yet also the most difficult skill of all. It is a choice to override the natural inclination to deny emotional experience, especially uncomfortable emotions.

Quite simply, you cannot gain the wisdom available in each experience unless you first allow yourself to feel all of the emotions that occur in any experience. Willingness is the choice you make that allows you to discover and claim a truth that you have not previously realized.

To be able to use your emotions you must first be willing to feel them, and then be willing to deal with them. Half a choice will not do. Both parts are essential.

Willingness …. It is the first choice of consciousness.

Exploration of all that you feel is a learned skill, taught by a therapist who knows how to explore emotions. You learn it as the therapist guides you through this process. You also learn to practice it through proper use of a personal journal.

Exploration is a valuable skill in itself, even if you do not complete the remaining steps on the Path of Emotion.

To explore an emotion, you repeatedly ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now,” and listen to the non-verbal cues that come from your body and your mind. This is where the training comes in. Each person has a different non-verbal language. The therapist helps you learn how to recognize and hear yours.

To explore your emotions thoroughly, you will refrain from trying to “get somewhere.” You learn to merely look around inside and discover what is there. You must be patient, curious, and committed to your willingness.

Many personal insights come from the process of exploring what you are feeling. Often, this discovery is reward enough. But exploration is not complete until you discover all of the sources of that emotion. Again, a therapist will teach you how to see and recognize an emotional source.

Only after recognizing the sources of your emotion can you move on to step 3 in the Path of Emotion.

The source of your emotion will always be one of, or some combination of, four parts of you: your beliefs, your values, your perceptions, or your early life experience. Most of this resides in your unconscious.

First, notice that each of these is a part of you. You create every emotion. No one else “makes” you feel anything. All emotions come from internal sources. Only through thorough exploration, Step 2 of the Path of Emotion, can you identify the sources of an emotion.

After you have identified the sources of an emotion, you are in new territory. For the first time can you test each of these sources for their current veracity. You will use specific skills you learn from a therapist to distinguish which sources are true for you now, and which sources are no longer true for you but still reside in your unconscious.

This is an incredible opportunity that frees you from untrue emotional sources, and allows you to update what is true for you now.

Of course, knowing what is true and claiming what is true are different. Claiming this newly discovered truth and making it yours, requires yet another set of skills that you will learn from your therapist. Hint: It requires a new level of self-responsibility, the core lesson on the emotional aspect.

The first three steps in the Path of Emotion result in a course of action that is readily apparent. Truthful behavior is self-evident when you have claimed your Personal Truth. But that is not the end of the story.

Since every behavior will have consequences, you will learn new skills for anticipating these consequences and preparing for them, if they should occur. You will also learn the skills to glean the lessons from any of the myriad possible consequences.

Thus, from any one experience, it becomes possible to learn many lessons. Your growth into higher consciousness is accelerated exponentially. You will be able to create a world that is in full accordance with your Personal Truth.