| We talked about the importance and relevance of emotional work for people on the spiritual path. At this point it would be useful to look in some detail at what is useful and what is not in terms of emotional work. Much progress has been made in understanding man's emotional nature and the function of these emotions within a physical framework. As we discussed earlier, a person's experiences in early life lead to a repression or sublimation of much emotional expression. We learn not to cry or be angry because that is not acceptable. We get strong messages from all around us about what is acceptable and not in terms of emotional expression. And so we gradually close down these processes through a systematic energetic blockage through muscular tension. If you imagine closing your fist and holding it as tightly closed for as long as you can, eventually you will become unaware of the great amount of tension it requires to hold it; your mind will block it out. It is the same with your emotional processes. The tensions required to hold them out of consciousness have been blocked out of our conscious awareness and we are not aware of them until something forces us to be. The spiritual journey invites us to revisit the beliefs, attitudes, and ideas we took on in our early years as well as examining and freeing our emotional expression. Many people do not understand how revisiting old traumas and hurts can be helpful. It is not helpful to revisit them if we have the same response to them that we had the first time. We then just re-traumatize ourselves or experience the hurt with no gain. The purpose in revisiting these places is to bring a new response to the situation. Aided by the presence of our adult and spiritual functioning, we can find new ways to respond. This allows us to heal and let go of these old injuries, thus also allowing us to let go of the chronic holding that blocked our healthy emotional expression. Another objection people have to doing this work is that it feels like they are blaming somebody or that they are being weak for not just moving on and letting go. The truth is that when these traumas and wounds occurred, there was a normal and healthy response to them which we were forced to repress. We do not go back to blame, for indeed, we are taking complete responsibility for ourselves and indeed, in reality it is us that is reinforcing the trauma and the wounds as long as we hold our normal, healthy emotional expression back. It is in this moment, right now, that we are repressing actively the emotions. The tension which blocks these energetic movements is a result of a choice made by us in this moment, even though it may be unconscious. This is not necessarily an easy concept to grasp, or accept, but it is nevertheless true. The forces which caused us to repress these parts of ourselves are no longer the threat they were, for it is our survival that was threatened we thought and believed. It seemed to us that we would be rejected, abandoned, or maybe even killed if we weren't behaving in acceptable ways but that is no longer true. As adults our emotional expression is in no way a threat to our survival. And so, doing emotional work is not about going back and blaming or re-traumatizing or remaining a victim. It is about learning how we are actively in this moment limiting our full emotional expression because of forces and events in our childhood. We take responsibility for who we are right now in this moment. We accept that we may not be conscious of all of the ways that we are limiting ourselves but commit to becoming more and more aware and expressive of who we really are. |
