Tag: Emotions

Barrenness

All emotions bring their gifts, even if those gifts aren’t always apparent.

December 3, 2022

Tagged allowing, Creativity, Emotions, Melancholy, Opening

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It is fall here in Texas. This past week we have been blessed by some beautiful fall color. The oaks and maples are red and orange, and the fruitless pears are showing off shades of deep reds and purples. While fall here isn’t as beautiful as in other parts of the country, I cherish that one week or two when we have a bit of color. Here we don’t know what the weather will be, so we don’t dare put up our summer clothes. Wednesday the high was in the 80’s and today the high is in the 50’s. We don’t have time to get used to any one temperature because it can change thirty degrees in the course of a few hours. But now that the trees are finally turning, I know that winter is coming.

My mood these days has been a bit like Texas weather – up and down, and all over the place. I am not unhappy, but as is true for me every fall, I feel a bit melancholy. I suppose it has to do with the passing of time. It seems to fly by ever more quickly with each passing year. It is December 1, but it feels like it should only be mid-summer. There is a bittersweetness to fall that is poignant and sad and joyful at the same time. We are surrounded by incredible beauty, but that beauty comes to us because the leaves are dying. While my life is full and remarkably sweet, I know that with each minute that passes, I am inching closer to the end.

This week has been a week of barrenness. While I am meditating daily, when it comes to writing, my mind is a complete blank. I have no clue what to write in my journal or for this blog. Nothing seems to jog my creative juices these days. I am in a funk. But maybe that isn’t a bad thing.

Everyone has days, weeks, even months or years, when things seem barren. For me, during these barren times, my mind seems to be in neutral, and creativity is just beyond my grasp. Then I beat myself up because I’m not being productive, which makes me feel even worse. It becomes a vicious cycle that does no one any good, least of all, myself.

But what if I learn to sit with the void? What if I just accept the fact that my creative juices need a rest? What if I emulate nature and accept that it is okay to hibernate a bit in the fall and winter. As I sit in this barren place I can allow things to gestate in the dark. I can be okay with resting my body and my mind. I accept the melancholy feelings, along with joy of basking in the fall beauty. I can accept all of my feelings, not just the light, fluffy ones. I can just be in this barren space and allow the feelings to be what they are, knowing that when the time comes, creativity will blossom once again.

I love Jalaluddin Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House,” because it helps me see that all feelings and emotions are welcome to come to the house of myself. All emotions bring their gifts, even if those gifts aren’t always apparent.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)

What emotions do you need to sit with and allow today?

Barbara Garland
December, 2022

When Does the Spiritual Become Political?

Making Space for Transformation

As I ground myself in silence and make space for creation, the grief and despair them becomes transformed into something totally new. It opens me to a joy and hope that ripples out into the world. The cauldron that once held grief and despair has alchemized the old mess into gold.

Goddess Inspired

June 24, 2022

Tagged Creativity, Emotions, Liminality, Silence, Stability

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Making Space for Transformation

I think that most of my readers will agree that there is a heaviness to the world that most of us have never felt before. Pandemic, wars, political divides, climate change – it all seems overwhelming. Personally, I feel a deep grief for the state of the world as well as a tremendous dread for the future of our country and the planet. I continue to struggle with these feelings. How do I radiate love and joy when I feel these negative feelings so deeply?

This week I listened to a podcast from Lee Harris. “Lee is a globally acclaimed Energy Intuitive, Channeler and Musician who offers grounded, practical teachings focused on helping conscious, intuitive, and sensitive people heal, thrive, and live a better life!” https://www.leeharrisenergy.com/

In his podcast, Harris talked about the emotional and structural instability that we are feeling, both individually and collectively. It is a liminal time, a threshold time where some of us look back with longing for the old ways, some of us don’t know where to look, and others are looking forward. This threshold is an uncomfortable and difficult place to be in, since, as the old passes away, I don’t have any idea what the new looks like. How then do I navigate these unsettling emotions? How do I acknowledge and hold these feelings until they can be transformed into a positive blueprint for the future, not just my future, but the future of our world?

I firmly believe that the Divine Feminine calls those on the spiritual path to hold these feelings of grief, despair, and hopelessness. I must acknowledge these feelings, hold these feelings, and ultimately alchemize these feelings into something totally new. But how do I do that? How do I become an alchemical cauldron that changes these negative feelings into love and joy?

Harris posits that my power lies in silence and in creativity. Divine energy wants to help me during these difficult times, but I must quiet myself long enough to listen. I must practice stillness every day in order to ground myself in the depth of the universe. I must open myself to my intuition, to nature, and to being present in the Presence of divine energy. I must create space for the transformation to take place. In that space I can then open myself to the joy of co-creating in this world.

Creation is an act of bringing something new into the world. Creation doesn’t have to be art; it doesn’t even have to be ‘good’ to be creative. It is simply making something new, and everyone is capable and called to be creative. As I create, I expand – thoughts, ideas, words, art, music, math, childrearing, engineering, love – and that expansion opens space for growth and change in myself and the world. It makes space for transformation in myself. And when I transform, the world transforms.

Barbara Garland
June, 2022

The Cauldron of Transformation

We are the vessels that can hold and ultimately transform these swirling, difficult, contradictory energies. As we transform ourselves, we change the world.

Goddess Inspired

May 20, 2022

Tagged Divine Feminine, Emotions, transformation, Vessel

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The Cauldron of Transformation

There are a lot of emotions floating in the ether these days. Deep anger, hate, grief, fear, divisiveness, love, kindness, empathy, compassion, and understanding – all these emotions are swirling around in the cosmos. If you are an empath or even a person on a spiritual path, you are probably feeling all these emotions, sometimes all at once. So, what do you, as a spiritual seeker, do with all this emotional energy?

In a deep conversation with my spiritual director this week, I tried to articulate what seems to be true for me, and perhaps others who are on this journey, especially those who are opening to the call of the Divine Feminine. I have written about this before in this blog (see “Where Opposites Meet,” 11/26/2020). It is a concept that, while not yet fully formed, bears thinking about.

In many traditions, the Divine Feminine is the vessel, the one who holds all emotions, all energies. As one who deeply feels the energies that swirl around me, I sense that I too, am called to be the vessel, the cauldron who holds all the energies while they are being transformed into something new. It is in holding these disparate energies that transformation can take place.

I am called to fully feel all my emotions, not just the pleasant or happy ones. I must feel my anger, my fear, my grief, my sadness, as well as my joy, my happiness, and my connectedness. I must not deny any of my emotions. They must all go into the cauldron of my sacred feminine self (which, by the way, is also a part of men).

As I fully embrace my emotions, rather than stuffing them or denying them, they soften and change. In that cauldron these energies mix and mingle. They become greater than their individual parts. They are transformed in the stirring and the blending, the reframing, and the loving of all of myself. In that cauldron, fear can change to empathy; hate can turn to love; grief can become compassion. But this transformation can only take place if I allow all my feelings, the good, the bad, and the ugly, to be stirred in the vessel of my deepest self.

In these difficult times, I am coming to believe that spiritual people are called to live with the discomfort of the negativity of the world. We are the vessels that can hold and ultimately transform these swirling, difficult, contradictory energies. As we transform ourselves, we change the world.

It isn’t easy. I was taught to deny and repress any negative energies. In that old paradigm there was no place for doubt or negativity in one’s spiritual life. However, the longer I live, the more I am convinced that denying the negative only makes it more powerful. It is only by fully feeling and accepting those dark emotions as a part of being human, that they can be transformed into something beautiful.

To be the cauldron of transformation is an enormous responsibility and a high calling. If you are feeling the discomfort of the world, perhaps you are being called to be the cauldron, the holder of energies and the one who stirs those energies up into one delicious soup of wholeness and humanity.

Grief – Love – Joy

So many of our emotions are opposite sides of the same coin. In the case of grief and joy, what binds these emotions together is love.

Goddess Inspired

January 7, 2022

Tagged connection, Emotions, Grief, Joy, love

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Grief – Love – Joy

In the past two weeks I have experienced the depths of great grief and the heights of joy – a bittersweetness that has permeated my inner being. On Christmas Day, my beloved aunt and surrogate mom got her angel wings and passed into another existence. On December 30, my lovely granddaughter began her new life as a married woman. Depths and heights, bittersweet and achingly beautiful.

I used to think that I was capable of only one emotion at a time. I couldn’t love and be angry at the same time. I could not find joy in grief. After many years of living, I realize that we are multi-dimensional beings, capable of holding many emotions simultaneously. I can be angry and still love. I can feel grief and joy, love and hate, all in the same moment. In fact, I am meant to have wildly differing feelings about any given moment.

For example, in losing my aunt, I felt both joy and deep grief – joy that she was finally free of her frail body and confused mind and sorrow that she was gone. I was happy for her and sad for myself. I will miss her in so many ways.

At my granddaughter’s wedding I felt the same two emotions, joy and grief – joy for two lives joined together in love and promise, grief at the thought that my own life is passing so quickly. Both emotions were strongly present in me and not at all contradictory.

So many of our emotions are opposite sides of the same coin. In the case of grief and joy, what binds these emotions together is love. Without love, I would not grieve loss. Without love I would not know joy. I can hold both of these strong emotions simultaneously because in essence I can’t have one without the other. I must love in order to feel either. Love is the catalyst for feeling both joy and grief.

Love is the key component in our emotions. If I can find the love in what I am feeling in the moment – grief, rage, joy, surprise, fear, gratitude, annoyance, or myriads of other emotions – I can find a way to reconcile what seems to be conflicting feelings. I can accept the bitter with the sweet. I can allow the feelings to be what they are, to allow them to flow through me, and to be at peace within the tumult of many emotions flowing at once. Grief – Love – Joy, flowing together in a dance of life.

Barbara Garland
January, 2022

Sitting in the Muck

In order to BE LOVE, I must sit with all my emotions in the dark before I can come into the light. I must sit in the muck and the mire before the lotus blossom can emerge. I must be willing to do the hard work of transformation before I can truly BE LOVE.

Goddess Inspired

January 29, 2021

Tagged Anger, Emotions, Energy, Muck, transformation

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Sitting in the Muck

Our human world seems to be a very simplistic and dualistic world in which everything is supposed to be neatly divided into categories of good and evil, black and white, male and female. However the real world doesn’t really work that way. The real world is a messy place filled with degrees of goodness, shades of grey, and a continuum of genders

I, (and everyone else I know) am a complicated, messy person filled with complicated, messy emotions. I tend to categorize my emotions on the good and evil spectrum. In my personal emotional paradigm, love, compassion, empathy, joy, and connection are on the good side. Anger, fear, jealousy, and hate are on the side of evil. I want to deny all those evil, or lesser emotions, and move straight to the good ones. However, when I do this, I short-circuit an important part of my own growth process and miss out on a developmental step of transformation and transfiguration. I deny that I can have those lesser emotions.

In an earlier blog, I talked about how really sitting and communing with the emotion of anger helped me to see the grief on the other side of the anger. When I recognized the two polarities, I saw the symbol of a diamond. The two emotions were then transformed for me into the diamond of compassion.

In truth, all of my emotions are simply energy. Although I label them as good or bad, the emotions themselves are neutral, until I act on them one way or another. In acting without examining each emotion, I miss out on the step that is transformational.

Let’s look at anger, for example. I tend to almost always label anger as bad. However, when I examine the other side of my anger, I may find fear, grief, self-loathing, or other emotions. As I sit in the muck with those “negative” energies, I begin to find a third emotion, such as courage, empathy, or self-love, which are the true jewels which can arise from this synthesis. Then I can choose to act or not to act out of wholeness. I can take the energy of these emotions to effect change in myself or to initiate positive actions in the outer world.

Anger is not always a negative emotion, but I must examine my anger closely to make that determination. Sometimes anger can be a loving act. There is a righteous anger, born out of outrage at injustice and inhumanity. Once I determine that the anger is appropriate anger, I can then use its energy to make change. Whether I march in protest or pray for change doesn’t matter. I am using the energy of the anger to make a positive difference in the world. I am transforming the anger into actions born out of a true understanding of that emotion and the many faces of that emotion.

What is true for anger is true for all the emotions I label as negative. In order to BE LOVE, I must sit with all my emotions in the dark before I can come into the light. I must sit in the muck and the mire before the lotus blossom can emerge. I must be willing to do the hard work of transformation before I can truly BE LOVE.

Barbara Garland
January, 2021

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New blogs will be added to this post every Friday.

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About Me

I am a seeker of truth, a truth teller, a lover of the Divine Feminine, an aspiring writer, a mystery, an open book, a work in progress. I have lived a long and varied life, and now in my seventies, I am being called to share some of what I have learned over the years. I hope to share the wisdom of the deep Feminine that is being channeled through me.

If the Goddess has ever whispered to you, I invite you to join me on an incredible journey of love and discovery. May you hear Her wisdom through these words.

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