Unconventional Wisdom

On this journey of deepening and enriching the intimacy within our relationship, we will all encounter some hurdles of emotional tension and blockages that can prevent us from fully exploring all that love and pure eros have to offer. How can we open our hearts and bodies to one another when it seems inevitable that such emotional bumps and scrapes are unavoidable?

When we aren’t educated in dealing with these moments harmoniously, the challenges that arise and accumulate between two lovers can eventually seem insurmountable. So, how to take the necessary next steps within our relationship when we meet these moments of emotional pain? As the 18th-century English poet, Alexander Pope, famously says: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

In this new series we will dive into the topic of emotional healing and the power of radical forgiveness.

Emotional Healing

The process of emotional healing implies two very important aspects: the first step of any process of healing is to put one’s full awareness into the perceived problem. This implies acknowledging it with all its facets, without hiding anything from this lucid investigation – even if (and especially if) we might have something to do with a part of the problem. In this respect, honesty is essential. This might seem obvious, but is rarely easy. Honesty implies having the courage to expose the problem in its entirety, on the background of clearheadedness and clarity.

The second step that must be taken into consideration in the emotional healing process is the willingness to manifest a beneficial, sublime emotion that has the power to cancel the harmful effects of the lower emotions that often come with the problem we are facing. Just as our experiences affect our emotional state, so do our chosen states affect our experiences, and thus our state of wellbeing and even health.

It is important to know that reason is not an ally when it comes to dealing with emotions. We might try to understand why the other person did something that hurt us. We might exclaim, “I don’t understand you!”, on a background of anger and judgment that spring from the inability to see beyond our own point of view. The challenge is that the more we try to understand, the deeper the problem becomes. Of course this seems paradoxical – one would say, “But I’m just trying to have more clarity about the issue.” What this actually brings is even more inner confusion, because the real problem is not in misunderstanding the situation, but in our emotional reaction to that situation; an emotional reaction that we then attach to the person who did the action, who “caused” the situation that we dislike.

By focusing our attention on “trying to understand” the other person’s motivations, we dim the light of awareness on the part of the experience we have control over. Some others might say, “I don’t understand why I feel like that”. This seems to be closer to the solution because they turn their attention towards themselves rather than looking at the other, and yet this still doesn’t bring the results we hope for. We first need to become aware of the emotion that we are feeling and ask some pertinent inner questions:
How exactly do I feel?
What are all the nuances of the ‘bad thing’ I am experiencing?

A first answer might be, “I feel horrible.” This process is an invitation to spend a little more time to see how horrible is that horrible. The idea of putting awareness into the inner experience, and not into why or who etc., allows us to discover many nuances in the feeling of “horrible” that can be very profound, revealing and useful in the process of healing.

Once we have a “grasp” on what happens inside of us, we then have the chance to act in the second step, by choosing to replace that destructive emotion with a sublime, elevated one. In this step we analogically reprogramme our consciousness to feed, to resonate with, uplifting and sublime emotions by orienting our attention in the direction we want.

One of the most helpful ways to replace a toxic emotion is to nourish a state of forgiveness. In this regard, forgiveness can be considered a standard of positivity in the emotional sphere. A true gesture of forgiveness expresses an exemplary capacity to first of all give up the attachment to our own perspective. Hanging desperately onto our own point of view is the behaviour of an ego that feels like it’s losing control – and that’s exactly the hurdle that prevents people from truly forgiving.

Have you ever seen someone fighting for their opinion almost as aggressively as they would fight for their own life? It seems funny from the bystander’s perspective, and yet for many of us, even when faced with a person we love so dearly that we are sure we would put our own life on the line should they be in danger… giving up our point of view in that moment feels unbearable.

The secret is that forgiveness cannot be manifested without giving up our perspective. We might bring ourselves to the point of recognising, “Ok, I have to forgive you because you did something wrong”, but real forgiveness also includes the awareness, “I have to forgive myself because I also did something wrong.” And usually, this awareness often reveals that the proportion of responsibility for our suffering is drastically different than we first imagined…

Stay tuned for more perspectives on how to deepen the emotional healing process and learn to apply a paradigm-shifting attitude of forgiveness in life’s most challenging circumstances.