Smitty's ESH: The Wilderness of Emotion... where Angels Dare to Tread

Here is the essence too of our emotional learning....If we are fiercely honest with ourselves, we must start by seeing things we don't want to see.

Yet our wilderness, the parts of ourselves we rarely explore, is an important and valuable place.

To explore the wilderness in ourselves, we are counseled to sit in the uncomfortable as long as necessary to experience our self fully. We will be carefully tended here, with angelic tenderness and strength. The spirit drives us to this place where we find out who we really are. We set aside quiet time free of distraction to befriend ourselves and our wilderness.

In EA, we come from a clean slate where we have hit the necessary wall that causes us to take a new approach, that can facilitate a change and growth in us. We stop doing our culture's bidding and stop resisting emotional pain and instead face into it, learning from its lessons. There are no quick fixes here! While there is nothing wrong with Prozac, it is a wonderful gift. But to be fully human means living the full range of emotions---from great joy to great sorrow. When we refuse sorrow, pain, anxiety and confusion, we lose much rich experience. Sometimes the right path leads us exactly through sorrow, and our faith and honesty help us to find compassion there. Some chaos, some wild energy lives within you and God will show you how to find it and from our new truth will come new humility and new energy and freedom.

What are my temptations? Do they cause me to overstep myself, trying to see into the future, orchestrating a safe life, rather than living authentically, doing my best, following God's guidance into a future he or she intends for me?

When we enter the inner wilderness of our own lives and pysches, we find wildness, creatures, beasts, natural forces and worlds we cannot control.

Some forces, like ou emotions, rise unbidden and can seem like wild beasts. It is tempting to try to kill or fling off or talk ourselves into or out of feelings in this way we have the illusion of control.

But feelings don't die like snakes and truth is we need our feelings to be fully alive.

We need emotion: the wildness of emotion is the force that creates art from which children play.and from which our passion arises. Instead of muting our emotions we can befriend them, listen to them, counsel and channel the energy.

You will need care in the wilderness... we all do... who will be your angels?