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