EMOTIONAL WORK
Exploring emotions -- seems to be everybody's least favorite aspect of the journey. So much so that many find ways to rationalize that it is not necessary. But it is an essential part of the path to wholeness and one that really never entirely ends.
I doubt that there is anyone in our society who makes it through infancy and childhood without collecting some issues that become buried in the psyche. Generally some emotional incident is connected with the issue and, in our "suck it up", "don't be a cry baby" culture, those emotions are often buried with it. Physically those emotions and issues may lodge themselves in muscles, tissues, bones and/or joints anywhere in the body -- if there is any kind of physical trauma around the time of the initial incident, often the emotion becomes held at the point of injury. Energetically, emotions and issues that have not been examined and released reside at the third chakra level.
When muscles and tissues tighten and close around emotions to hold them out of consciousness, it interferes with the free flow of prana, or chi, in the body. When the third chakra is filled with unresolved issues, spiritual energy, or kundalini, cannot flow freely and thus connection to the divine is cut off or limited. The third chakra, which holds old emotions and issues, and the sixth chakra, which manifests reality, are paired and work together. Old emotions and/or issues can thus control what you create.
In order to reach higher levels of consciousness, spiritual awakening or enlightenment, then, that old "stuff" must be cleared. It is very easy to use spiritual practices such as meditation or breathing or chanting to achieve a state of greater relaxation that makes you feel tranquil. Without some genuine attempt at exploring the inner consciousness, such tranquility just adds more layers of cover to the hidden memories and emotions that still rule many or most of your actions and reactions, burying old issues even deeper.
There are a variety of ways to deal with those issues. The Eastern traditions tend to have very little interest in emotional release and often are in fact against it. My personal take on that is that those traditions arrived in times and cultures in which the kind of psychological and repression issues that are common in modern Western societies were not and have not been present. Buddhist mindfulness does contain the possibility of exploring the emotional landscape by noticing what thoughts arise and what emotions are attached and then letting them go. With enough years of practice that letting go can eventually release those emotions but my observation is that actually expressing the emotion is more likely to release its power -- and more quickly.
Now right up front I want to tell you that as far as emotional release work went, I, a former queen of repression and numbing out, was totally resistant. When I finally hit a pocket of material that set off hours of weeping, I was sure I had finished all that work, thank you very much. When I attended a workshop that included a round of emotional release I was sure I did not need it, embarrassed to imagine doing it with all those people around and totally uncooperative toward all efforts by the staff to get something more out of me.
So when I tell you that I went through an 8-month version of the Fisher-Hoffman process, believe me I had changed and reached a new level of understanding or I could not have signed up. The process includes both identifying the negative beliefs that you gleaned from your family and then getting in touch with and releasing the emotions that you have held onto about the ways in which those beliefs have limited you, wounded you, etc. It can be a harsh process, but I found its scope quite impressive and the changes it made not only in my life but in the lives of nearly everyone I knew who went through it convinced me for a long time that all that pillow pounding and yelling was necessary.
Since then I have see some very impressive results among people who have gone through Almaas' Diamond Heart work. I have also been having remarkable success with craniosacral work at getting through some core issues that I had not been able to access in the earlier work. Both of those are rather more gentle methods. Even in the craniosacral work, however, without the willingness to cry or express whatever has been tapped into, the release is not complete.
And, while I now believe that more gentle methods can be very effective, I encourage you to be very careful about trying to sidestep emotional release altogether. In our society people are generally encouraged to bury most of their emotional responses - be stoic, suck it up... We tend to have an uneasy feeling that the free and open expression of feelings is somehow unacceptable or only for children and people who are kind of nutty. If you have a problem about the idea of even once letting go and screaming, sobbing and pounding and find yourself insisting that you do not have any need to do such work or shake your head disapprovingly and assert that it is simply not necessary to use such methods, you probably have some major denial and repression going on. You do not have to do it in front of people -- I accomplished almost all the release work during the process by myself -- but let yourself be willing to let loose. I have also found it very healing to release in the presence of the craniosacral therapists and realize that they are just as supportive and caring when I am crying or writhing as they are at any other moment. If you can find a trusted therapist or facilitator to work with, it is better to have some guidance and someone who can assist/support you if you uncover tough material.
If resistance is strong, try to go into it and discover your feelings about self expression, about exhibiting strong emotions, about feeling angry at your parents (you are really angry at your perceptions, not them, in this work), about screaming, crying, stomping. If your stomach twists or your jaw tightens or you anxiously reassert that you have no need to do these things, look again. If you cannot let yourself own and express all of your emotions and look at the hard places in your life in order to let them go, then you are holding blocks that will impede your spiritual journey.
When I have staffed at Nine Gates Mystery School (
