Thought for the Day

In the ancient world healing and miracles were limited to the domain of the Gods/God and a few exceptional individuals....if....they happened at all, of course.....In the modern world we have some pretty incredible miracle workers which include doctors, dentists, pastors, counselors, and other honorable mentions.....Over the years I have relied heavily on modern miracle workers in large part because I lacked either the tools, faith in myself, or the important social network to bring about the kind of healing I needed, particularly as it relates to the inner world of my emotions. Physical problems have never been a great concern of mine. I just go to the doctor and do what he or she tells me and generally in a matter of days or weeks at the most the problem generally gets better or goes away....but....the emotions seem to be a different matter.....fear, despair, and various insecurites don't ever seem to go away and often when least expected they just reappear.

C.G. Jung once wrote: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious".......Now this is a novel suggestion...because.... We live in a society that goes to incredible lengths to suppress the dark emotions of the soul.....and.....the vast majority of us have created a whole series of coping strategies to suppress those uncomfortable emotions which we all carry around us and lie just beneathe our normal conscious. I am not implying that coping strategies are all bad. We all have to do what we have to do to survive, get through the day, and carry about our responsibities to others and ourselves....but..... I now wonder if in the process of constantly suppressing certain emotions that in the long run we lose touch of an important aspect of who we are as human beings....

Internationally known psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan writes, "Greif, despair, and fear are really neither positive or negative but simply human emotions; it is our attitude toward them that is negative. The dark emotions can be our best, albeit, most demanding, spiritual teachers, when we get beyond our compulsion to control them. By learning how to attend to, befriend, and surrender to the energies of grief, despair, and fear, we create the conditions, for something new to arise in ourselves and the world.".....Greenspan goes on to say....."we have to stop thinking emotional pain means were sick....Emotional suffering....is not a sign of mental disorder or illness. It's a universal fact of life."....and finally.... "the essence of healing emotional pain lies in listening to what hurts....listening is hearing with thoughtful attention".....

As I learn to listen to my own emotional pain I hear the voices of the past quietly and sometimes not so quietly telling me things that most often are not true....and......I am gradually learning that the pain inflicted by the voices of others is generally a reflection of their own emotional pain that they carry from their own past...It seems that the compulsion to silence the pain of our souls is one of the great temptations of our times but perhaps we should strive to begin to listen to what our pain is telling us about our past, ourselves, and in the process of listening to our pain learn to soothe and placate the very emotions that if left ignored for too long will no doubt wreck havoc on ourselves and others. Jesus exhorted us to love our enemies. Perhaps it is time to learn to love the enemies that haunt our very souls and in the process learn to love ourselves because if we don't love ourselves how can we love others? Just a thought for the day....