The medicine of emotions

In seeking out the enlightened path, we often make the mistake of recoiling from our darker emotions alongside the circumstances that draw them to our surface.

The ego mind calls it a bid for control in a situation or feeling state that appears chaotic.

But chaos is where the magic begins. 

Sore discomfort is a powerful impetus.

The combination of chaos in our outer reality and the potent emotions it stirs in us creates a container.

This container, manufactured precisely for us in the moment we have need of it, summons the exact environmental conditions necessary for The Next to blow in and through us.

Oya, Goddess of Storms & Winds, fierce and formidable, steps forward and breathes over our bodies.

Her breath is a tornado. A hurricane, a typhoon of massive proportion that blasts the existing structures of What Is so we can finally have room to move forward.

Her name means 'She Who Tears'.

And that is exactly what it can feel like.

And the feelings are valid, every one.

But don't make the mistake of maintaining that resolve to just 'gut it out', or push it aside.

That's the ego gripping at the heart, in its attempt to neutralize what it sees as a situation outside its control.

I've observed so many amazing wisdom walkers, light workers, guides and healers speak and write about the emotional experience as if it were something to be evolved past, shoved into a dark closet, minimized as the 'primitive' body to be endured on their way to ascension and mastery.

I've done this so often myself, and it is not helpful.

More than that, it bypasses entirely an important step in recognizing our human experience for the sacred unveiling it actually is.

Don't confuse mastery with control.

Your ego is not your Higher Self.

It is not the essential YOU of you.

The ego is a tool, much like a hammer.

But, it seeks to control. Situations, emotions, decisions, you. Anything you'll allow it to, really.

One aspect of its holy purpose (yes, it has a holy purpose) is to drive, as in - compel.

It's energy is endless, and its sensibility is that of a young, inexperienced (as yet) herd dog- enthusiastic, bright, demanding, easily bored, toothed.

If left to its own attention, it will dominate and corral every available intuition, soulful impulse and human emotion, using its sharp teeth as a prod.

And if we allow it to move unchecked in the realm of our emotional experience, our feeling states- our emotional experience moment to moment- can become shuttered, blocked or numbed in our quest to just get over it.

Emotions need to flow. 

That's why 'motion' lives inside the word. 

It's the key to embracing them as allies, and not resisting them as enemies, inconveniences or disease. 

They're always moving- across, through and away; wind and water.

They don't need to be held back, held to, grasped, thrown, kept or demonized.

As water flows and so remains clear and living, they rise and surge to reveal the divine voice as guide. 

They are sacred messengers of growth made manifest in our bodies.

All are holy; the motion of lost-ness, of hot anger, of disappointment, of wracking grief, of anxiety that wants to suffocate and even the feelings of fear that shoot to the surface and linger in the muscles.

It requires courage to return to the container of these painful feeling states with a committed intention to listen to what they have to say. 

And they always have something to say. 

Some piece of wisdom lodged like a gem inside the mouth, resting under the tongue.

Emotions are medicine teachers and wisdom keepers - some of the highest order- singing within the sacred ecology of our bodies. Allowing their wisdom to flow freely in us is to recognize and welcome their divine purpose- to wake us up to the truth of who we really are, to the boundaries we need to create, strengthen or assert, to the skins that need to be shed and to the paradigms we cling to that do us no service.

Honoring their reality in our bodies creates the space required to download and fully integrate each new level of understanding that appears along our pilgrimage to wholeness. Trust and Surrender are necessary and compassionate sisters that journey with us through this process. Welcome them daily, and receive their golden graces.

Emotions allowed to flow naturally won't linger past what is needed and useful in our evolution as souls. They will move on to make way for new experiences and new feelings to arrive and offer up their medicine teachings.

If a feeling state will not leave you, then you can be sure there is a teaching yet to be fully integrated and surrendered to. There is your work, in this very moment.

Go there. 

Be brave.

See what is uncovered.

The truth you discover in that process will be a key that you carry for the rest of your life. 

It will empower your path, and it will unlock doors for others. 

That's your medicine.

Teachings, without the emotional experience, are disembodied and impotent. They may be recalled and memorized by a powerful, linear mind and a dominating ego, but the truth of their beauty will be lost among the facts like diamonds hiding among glass.

They may be recalled- but they will not be re-membered. 

We remember best what is felt, first and always.

This is not always easy work, and it is not always joyful to experience, initially. But it is always worth it, and it is just as holy as any sacred or creative work we know we are called to embody. 

This emotional journey is the work of metamorphosis, of alchemy, of transmutation at the ground level of our life.

This is where we become.