07/04/2024
This expectation of perpetual blissful state with spiritual awakening is something I see all too often. I really appreciated this post by Mary Mueller Shutan about the value of allowing ourselves to feel the full range of emotion and thoughts about how to move toward grace with our emotions.
One of the illusions of spiritual awakening that is continually perpetuated in the modern world is that if we were only conscious enough that we would no longer feel, or would constantly be in a state of bliss.
This is an understandable thing being sold, as when we are suffering, the idea of not feeling, or of feeling only bliss, is what we believe that we desire.
But we experience our emotions for a reason. They are messengers. For example, we feel fear because it is a cue that someone or something in our environment is not okay.
We simply must get into right relationship with our emotions, and to learn how to skillfully feel them, to clearly hear these messages and respond appropriately to them.
We are not intended to permanently reside in a state of non-feeling, or a state of bliss. Our emotions require contrast. One side of the coin must have the other to exist, for us to know what they are. Bliss requires suffering, joy with pain, happiness with grief and despair.
The end result of truly feeling all of the emotions within us results in flow, in "e-motion"– emotions flowing through us, without the fear and resistance that we once had.
When we truly learn to feel, it is like sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The waves and tides can still be seen, they are still there, and we are a part of them, but there is an essential stillness amongst the chaos.
If we accept the chaos of life, the uncertainty, the fact that one thing always changes to another, we can find this stillness.
It is an odd thing to explain this to a world sold on non-feeling, or on feeling only bliss, but if we can accept that we will experience darkness, suffering, and chaos throughout our lives, we can then (and only then) feel the light and essential stillness of our beings.–
Mary Mueller Shutan
