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LOOK AT YOUR TORMENTING EMOTIONS Betty De Shong Meador Enheduanna, the Sumerian poet and High Priestess, says to her beloved goddess Inanna: "Look at your tormenting emotions." Inanna, no doubt, was in a fit of rage or pique, and Enheduanna had had enough. She had done everything she knew how to do to cool Inanna's temper. cajoled her with lengthy lists of Inanna's wondrous powers; cried to her in lamentation; performed every requisite ritual; threatened her; shamed her for deserting the devoted High Priestess. To no avail. Inanna still was "all day, every day weeping! " In those days the people of Mesopotamia believed their emotional upset was stirred when the goddesses and gods were out of sorts. If Enheduanna would only cool the goddess' heart, she, the High Priestess, would find relief. Who knows? Maybe they were right. I asked myself, how can I translate this belief into language that makes sense to me? In our search for wholeness, we know that emotional health and physical health are as intertwined as Enheduanna and Inanna. And, as Enheduanna learned in her attempts to calm Inanna, there is no magic key to emotional health. Emotional health, supported by daily loving, insightful attention, is as necessary to well being as is physical health, supported by good food and exercise. Emotions always tell us something about ourselves: what we deeply desire, who we deeply care about, who we hate, how much of life's hardship we can take, how self-centered we really are. I like to translate what I learn from emotion into messages from what I imagine to be the cosmic purpose and meaning of life, once called Inanna. When I make this translation, I find she is pushing me relentlessly to extend the circumference of myself. She gives me all the tools I need, principally in the form of emotion and the images that appear spontaneously with emotion and in dreams. It is up to me to learn to read these images. Clues to understanding emotions and their attendant images come in the form of two opposing pulls. One wants to keep us tied to old patterns, and the other offers release from the past and invites us into the chamber of the true self. The starting point of emotional health is the understanding that our beliefs about ourselves, our self image and sense of worth, were formed long ago, originally as ways of coping with the family and circumstances into which we were born. For some reason we are incredibly stubborn about giving up these beliefs, no matter how outdated, insufficient, and obviously wrong they are. Because they developed to protect us, these beliefs hang on with conservative tenacity long after we are able to take care of ourselves. This is step one to emotional health : Begin to differentiate and define your longstanding, typical emotional reactions, Particularly in situations of stress and distress. If you get discouraged at the slowness of this process, just remember that you like all of us, will be doing this the rest of our life. Spirituality, which I think of as that sense of a larger meaning operating in the Cosmos, appears to support emotional development. It appears to support the waning of old childhood and childish patterns in favor of larger, more objective, and actually more loving perspectives. Spirituality appears to support emotional development. However, this does not happen just because you are "good" or just because you say the requisite number of prayers. Spiritual development requires your active, intelligent involvement on a daily basis. Inside yourself, in your inner life, the two pulls are constantly at work. There are various ways to figure out the "m.o" of the two pulls. Emotions are your best clues. They usually take you right to the heart of what matters. What is that emotion really saying? What does Inanna really want? I'll give you an example. In the midst of a hard time, when I understood "all day, every day weeping," Inanna came to me in a dream. Now there's an event to occupy the rest of your life! She did not relieve my anguish. She did not soothe me in my distress. I understood her to be saying, "Move on. The loss you are grieving is a necessary cut with the past." Several years and hundreds of hours of contemplation and concentration later, I had another dream: Everyone in this town had decided to commit suicide because a terrible force was coming. A little girl, who, with her family, would be among those saved, asked me to pay in advance for lessons for her, since I was going to die: $1000 apiece. I thought those were mighty expensive lessons, so I asked her if she were sure her mother wanted her to continue them. She said yes. I'm trying to understand this dream in relation to my own emotions. Without going into the whole set of associations to the pictures, I'll tell you the essence of what feels right to me: I've bad to pay an enormous price to help this little girl (me) learn her lessons. The price I've paid has been in emotional pain and grief, but if you could see how healthy, happy, and strong the child is now, you would know it has been worth every cent. Besides, she is going to survive. Other parts of this dream, that I left out here, tell me that the Betty-who-may-or-may-not-commit-suicide is tied to old ways learned in childhood. That more constricted self cannot face or handle the terrible force. What force could it be if not the goddess Herself, who brings in her train the harsh face of reality. What other force destroys childhood illusions and desires? On the other hand, the little girl and her family have apparently built up an immunity to the "force." The little girl is a new possibility, a fresh start. She is closer to the real self, the essence of the person. Her nature includes the suffering of the past, but the past has not broken her. It has fostered her immunity to the force. No one said a spiritual life would be easy. There are many roads to follow. The one that has me in its clutches relies on the instruction of inner images, emotion, and dreams. These make up my sacred text. In a time when, for many women, collective religion has lost its attractiveness, we may turn to the deepest reaches of the Psyche and find our way.
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