When it comes to emotions, I’ll bet you’re a millionaire.

The subtle shades of joy, love, curiosity and even sadness, build your inner fortune and make your life rich. The greater your awareness of the fine distinctions between your emotions, the more alive you feel.

Emotional Credit

Don’t you just love when you hesitantly open a bill only to find that you overpaid and you’ve got a credit?

You can get that same feeling when you look into any situation in your life. This works even with problems that seem insurmountable. It may look as if these gnarly conditions and their accompanying angst are costing you. However, when you look deeply into those troubled moments, you may begin to find a fullness. There is actually an abundance of feeling there. And that, my friends, is credit.

You may disagree with me because some of these feelings and emotions are negative. They are most certainly unwanted. Here’s where I’ll ask you to go a little deeper. When you find the anger or despair, rather than dismissing them as unwanted, zoom in and see what’s there.

16.7 Million Emotions

If you work with computer graphics you know that you can take any digital image and zoom and zoom and zoom and zoom until you have an abstract pixelated display of the most subtle gradations of color. When you look at a high-resolution digital photo, it dazzles you with its clarity and depth. How does it do that? Simple. It employs 16.7 million subtle gradations of color.

Sometimes these photos look more intense than “reality.” That’s because we are living in an emotional range of only eight or 16 colors. That photograph has many more gradations than we do and so it touches us. It wakes us up.

The next time you are depressed or joyful or bored or frightened, I invite you to zoom and zoom and zoom and zoom into your emotions. Find the subtlest gradations you can access and enjoy the variety.

It takes your mind off your problems. It enriches your field of awareness.

One Million Thoughts

Where are these millions of emotions coming from? They are bouncing off of millions of thoughts. If you take a digital picture of your front lawn, import it into your computer and zoom in, you’ll see an extraordinary number of shades of green. Do the same with the sky and marvel at the number of blues you have captured through your lens.

Your focus, like that of your camera, imprints your field of awareness. That which you focus on leaves millions of subtle gradations of color on your consciousness and you feel them as emotions.

Try This

For the next week, understand your mind to be a digital camera. Become a master photographer. Make sure that anything that has the attention of your life-lens frames an image that you love. Imagine bringing your images into some inner software. Let’s call it “Emotoshop.” Zoom in and see the gradations of emotion that are embedded within your moments. Become more and more of an artist as you chose your life experience. Become more and more rich as you feel the abundance of variety in your capacity to feel the moment.

Inner Wealth

In your million emotions, how often is your screen filled with the rapture of love? This is your truest wealth. How often are your cheeks wet with tears of joy? I invite you to invest your focus in the vision that overflows with beauty and in the heart that beats with kindness. This is your greatest fortune. As these riches proliferate in your consciousness, you become the supreme millionaire. You become a true human being.

© 2006 Rebbie Straubing

Dr. Rebbie Straubing, developer of The Yoga of Alignment (YOFA), is co-author of “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life.” She is a workshop leader, Abraham Coach and spiritual writer. Her free e-course, “7 Secrets for Manifesting Your Heart’s Desire” is available at www.YOFA.net . Her meditation recordings are available at www.affirmativecontemplation.com.