“Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.”—David Borenstein (Polish Artist)
When I take my little dog Grace in to be groomed she always starts trembling like a leaf and clings to me. I try to comfort her with my voice and pet her soothingly while we wait for a technician. The last time we were there the groomer seriously said, “Grace is faking being scared.” Of course, I found this humorous because the fact that Grace is a dog and not a human being precludes her from faking her emotions. However, I thought the technician’s statement spoke volumes about how we see emotions in our culture. Her words also reminded me of that fact that many of us are tempted to deny, hide, and repress our emotions because we know that in some way they are unacceptable.
I once read about a tribal culture, which honored its women’s pre-menstrual and menstrual time each month. During this time, the tribe believed that the women had heightened sensitivity, greater awareness, and closer proximity to the wisdom of the Divine. This cultural perspective stands in contrast to the culture in which we live that often completely negates a woman’s feelings and emotions during this time as well as feelings and emotions in general. But it isn’t just others who we find negating our feelings; we often do it to ourselves as well.
When we negate, deny, or disown our emotions we might find ourselves blowing up or “going off” on others with little or no provocation. We can only repress our feelings for so long. Eventually, they will demand to be heard.
With my clients who tell me that they are struggling with their own emotional material or feel disconnected from their feelings, I will often suggest that they put their hand on their heart, to access emotional wisdom. Throughout history and across cultures and spiritual perspectives, the heart has been revered as the body’s sacred emotional energy center.
When we pay attention to our emotions and not judge them as irrational and therefore unacceptable, we can begin to receive the gift of insight that our feelings offer. I often ask my clients, “What if we honored the inherent wisdom of our feelings when we experience them rather than wait until they become distorted? What if we choose to feel empowered by our emotions, seeing them as an aspect of Divine wisdom, rather than as a sign of weakness?” I certainly think the world would be a better place, with much less angst and strife.
Honoring the wisdom of our emotions is not about being at the effect of our emotions and acting out feelings as the mood strikes us in a self indulgent or infantilized way. Rather, honoring our emotions is a gentle and perhaps quiet quest of self exploration to access the nugget of wisdom that lies latent beneath the more explosive and mercurial emotional content we experience. Most people would agree that our emotions should not be completely in charge of our behavior. We are multi-dimensional beings and our emotions are just one aspect of our humanity. However, let’s remember to that if we honor our emotions they can point us to deeper truths if we choose to listen.
