The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness

Welcome
Our adopted Sioux uncle once told me, "Nephew, the longest journey that you will make in your life is from your head to your heart," gently touching his forehead and then his chest.
Linda Francis, my spiritual partner, and I are still on that journey, and so are you. Everyone is on it. The journey into the heart is our future and our only way of creating a future. It is movement toward wholeness, integrity, and compassion. It is the healing each of us longs for, and the healing that each of us must accomplish if we are to move forward into our fullest potential.
Learning to experience emotions is one of the most difficult tasks that can be undertaken. Many people do not know that they are angry, even when rage flows through them like a river. Some do not know that they are grieving, even when sorrow is the only sun that rises for them in the morning. Most people think of themselves as experiencing emotions only when powerfully emotional currents erupt through their lives, disturbing routines devoted to activities, accomplishments, or survival.
Emotional awareness -‹ becoming aware of everything that you are feeling at every moment -‹ is very difficult because we experience so much pain each moment. Becoming aware of our emotions means becoming aware of pain. It is challenging, difficult, and unpleasant. It is also more rewarding than most of us can imagine. That is because most of us cannot imagine a life free from compulsions, fixations, obsessions, and addictions, in which we act with an empowered heart and are free of attachment to the outcome.
The alternative to becoming aware of your emotions is to continue masking the pain that you experience. When you do, your pain emerges in unexpected ways‹distorting your behavior, changing your words, shaping your perceptions, and creating consequences that are as unwanted as they are difficult.
This alternative no longer works. Our species is undergoing an unprecedented transformation. Its consciousness is changing. Its perceptions are changing. Its values and goals are also changing. Individual by individual, old aspirations are being replaced by new. Comfort and influence are no longer goals that inspire, even those who live in poverty. The new goal is spiritual development. An awareness is emerging in millions of individuals that we are more than bodies and minds, more than enzymes and molecules, and that each of us is more than a temporary presence in the Universe.
This awareness is transforming the human experience. As it does, the determination to explore every aspect of consciousness, and to cultivate those that contribute the most to Life, is replacing the desire to bury painful emotions. This requires emotional awareness.
I am an author by choice, inclination, and aptitude. I love language. I love the rhythm and flow of words and sentences as they clothe ideas and give them expression. I love the challenge of writing without ambiguity, even though I know that is impossible. I know the slipperiness of language, and the delight of it. I know the limitations of my native language, and I honor the capabilities of other languages to shape thought and experience differently. I was born to know and use language. I am a fish and concept is my water.
Shortly after I met Linda eight years ago she told me, "Beloved, language is my second language." Now we have cocreated a book together. Linda's language is relationship. She excels at empathic communication -- she is sensitive to others and she often knows what they feel. She swims confidently in a sea of emotion. Her challenge is articulate expression. Mine is consciousness of emotion. Both of us strive to create authentic power in our own lives -- the alignment of the personality with the soul.