Mining
for Gold
“How
many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to
final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are
radically a bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and
thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our
secrets.”
Thomas
Moore (Care of the Soul)
Yesterday,
I wrote about the subtle languages of soul. One of those is unease. I
don't know about you, but I hate to feel uneasy; to feel as though
something's wrong, but I don't know what it is. Or to feel
something's going to happen but I don't know when or why or even how
I know. Do you have those times? Do you ever go through periods,
sometimes days or even weeks, when a ghost hovers in your head,
distracting you, disorienting you, but when you look to see whose
ghost it is, it isn't there? Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's a
fleeting apparition, a dream whose effects you feel, but whose images
are now gone and you can't pull them back. That's what I'm talking
about—that's soul leading you to analyze and discover. It's
maddening; no wonder we try to end that tension.
But,
soul work requires that we stay with our feelings, even the truly
uncomfortable ones until we know what gems they hold. Think of them
as dragons under the mountain, sitting on their hoard of gold and
diamonds, daring you to come and steal some. Stealth is required.
Stealth and magic, and a good fire hose. I wonder whether you have
certain behaviors that help you to cope during periods of unease. I
am usually driven to move furniture, or, as I did recently, to move
books and rearrange them. Sometimes I clean out all the hobbit holes
in my house that accumulate 'stuff.' I am drawn to spend time in my basement, actually and metaphorically. Somehow in the process of
cleaning and rearranging, things come together. Clarity creeps in and
suddenly, I know what the trouble is and how to address it.
Subtle
feelings are the most uniquely human brain functions; we have them
for a reason. Yes, they are 'irrational' much of the time, but that
doesn't mean we should ignore them, or gloss over them, or bury them.
We should pay attention to them and allow them to teach us about
ourselves. They hold secrets that our smart brains miss.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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