Return to Nature - The Five Pillars of Healing Page 8

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RETURN TO NATURE

Emotional Wisdom

As you look back at your life, begin to recount the years of study

and learning that you have gone through. Perhaps you have achieved a high
school diploma. Maybe you have even graduated from college. You might
even be lucky enough to have an advanced degree, like in medicine or in
business.

This accounts for a great amount of your life experience--studying

and learning. However, most of what you learn in school is about
memorization and rational thinking. You are taught to analyze data, recite
"facts" and dates, all while striving to achieve your coveted degree. You have
been educated within the Cognitive Brain world of words and intellect.

How much emotional training have you had? When was the last

time you took a semester of anger work, or even an hour? Who were your
role models who modeled functional emotional behavior? When was the
last time a teacher in school taught you how to grieve?

Unfortunately, most people have received a poor education when it

comes to their emotions and sensory experiences. They have been expected
to be socially functional when it comes to their emotions, yet most were
given little or no training concerning those very same emotions. We are a
society that has become emotionally illiterate, favoring words and rational
thought over real emotional experiences. Most of us have received far more
training in how to go to the bathroom than in expressing emotions.

In general, the training has been dismal when it comes to your

emotions because we live in a culture that favors control rather than
expression. A young child has the ability to express her natural emotional
wisdom, but that is soon repressed as she is taught how to hold it all inside.
We have become a culture that is emotionally constipated. For adults, the
outburst of emotion is often unskillful as only a few know how to express
themselves. Emotions often come in explosions of pent up rage and sobs of
misery.

While losing your natural ability to express yourself, you have

found addictions instead. Addictions will numb out the feeling that you are
unwilling to express and release. As you repress the energy of your emotions
inside, you seek out many different addictions to help you to not feel the
agitation that these feelings has created for you.

When it comes to wisdom of their emotions, most people are very

unintelligent. They have flunking grades when they talk about educating
themselves about their emotional and sensory experiences. A person with
a high degree of emotional wisdom has less need to use addictions to