Emotional landscapes
They puzzle me
The riddle gets solved
-Bjork
Emotions can really trip up our perspective and cloud our judgments. to see clearly, we need to extract the strings of emotions, trace each one and untangle them and extract them, to have perspective with clarity. We will look at distinct types of strings and what these strings are rooted in.
The Strings of Needs
When we leave home as a young adult, we suddenly see that the world will not just hand over all of what we need, like our parents did for us. You become suddenly keen on what is missing, whether that is connections, love, material means, or some intangible that we were missing in childhood. These needs drive us and is what we look for in others and in the world. We must be aware of these motivations, sometimes healthy, sometimes not.
The strings of biological needs and mental needs need to be distinguished, respected, and acknowledged. We cannot just push such needs aside as inconvenient to our world view. We need to bridge the gap between body and mind to untangle them, so they can be expressed either symbolically, or in our objective lives. Sometimes our need to be autonomous, or independent, ends up with ourselves denying them, instead of an honestly constructive confrontation with our inner needs.
The Pitfalls of Material Needs
Purchasing tends to be a socially acceptable funnel for unresolved feelings and emptiness, and the need for a home. Sometimes the purchases can be as personal as gender changes, cosmetic leg lengthening, and breast implants. Using the glow of the burn of financial energy and change to keep warm in a cold world. Finding warmth in the potential of what is being bought. I am not saying all purchases are wrong, but we must deeply examine the motivations behind them and see the strings for what they are. After all that energy and change, how will we feel after it is done? Is it worth incorporating it into our life Journey?
The panic people feel when the Jones are doing better than they are, is an invasive string that plays on our material needs as well. The feeling of missing out, describes the competitive scramble for resources that the material world plays upon us like a violin.
The Strings of Family Baggage
The roots of strings from family baggage, can go back generations. Can be ethnic in nature, or personal family hardships. You feel like a victim, and you do not know why, could be an abuse that happened generations ago, that you are forced to reckon with and process. Processing family baggage can take the burden off future generations, and off your own shoulders as well.
The Strings of empathy
Empathy can be far reaching and can touch the nerves deep within us. Empathy can tug at our family baggage, or tug at our needs and deeply entangle all our strings. But it can also help us tune into what strings need to be dealt with, reflected on, and untangled. Our level of empathy can always be improved upon, as we tend to dehumanize those who are different than ourselves, causing discord within and without. We cannot hold empathy too close as to be tossed around by the waves of existentialism, but not far enough to be devoid of compassion.
The Strings of Trauma
Trauma is a tangled web of strings that can take a lifetime to unravel. Listening to time and reflecting on the strings when time calls for it, loosens the tension and brings to bear the meaning in life and moment. We must remember, we do not have to be alone, but we can find the help and the backboard we need when we need it. We are the knights in the story of our life, we must confront and journey on.
Painting with Technicolor
Our emotions, strings, and all, flood our life with color. Like technicolor it paints the picture, fills the words, and controls the aspect of meaning that we find in our lives. Our ability to paint, depends on our understanding and reflections of the strings of affect, like tainting a color, and our ability to fill meaning into what is around us, what we read and what we perceive. The strings, give us color and spice, it is the pallet we paint with. We do not want to get rid of those strings, that make us who we are, but we do want to be aware of them.
The Battle Cry of Emotional Investments
Our emotional investments do take a toll on us but give us life and meaning. What helps is knowing which emotional investments are subjective or objective. Where empathy and compassion are called for, for those feelings on an existential ocean, like world events we are not a part of, but play havoc on our empathy. Emotional investments in an objective world, relationships we are in-trenched in, where commitment and a working relationship is called for. The balance of our emotional worlds, both large and small, keep us centered in belief and commitment.
Follow the Heart
So that is all nice and all, when someone says follow the heart, but what does it mean? Well lets attempt to define it. We have come this far defining, and detangling all these strings, such as needs, empathy, and baggage that drive our emotions. Lets look at how these strings can evolve into reins of control, and as such give us the means to steer ourselves in our lives. The more untangled and clear the strings, the more functional the reins, and easier it is to steer.
To go a step further we could then say that outer nesting dolls of affect (outer layers that affect the individual from outside themselves) could also take the reins. Wither I am talking about the collective subconscious, aspen, the trickster, God, or the devil (as examples), these reigns are taken to steer us depending on where we want to go, where we are headed, and what we are capable of. These gentle or not so gentle tugs on our heart strings to direct our attention where it is needed. The pantomime of the heart, like shadows on Plato's wall, we puzzle it out, feel the insight.
Who is the rider, and who is the horse? It is a constant partnership that is ever evolving and should not be stagnant or face the condemnation of the opposite aspect. These tricksters of the heart should never be left to their own devices, and we must know when to take back the reins.
Conclusion
Emotions make our lives worthwhile and multidimensional. Are your strings a tangled mess? Or are they straightened out enough to evolve into reins you can have a hold onto? That your heart can also have the reins to guide you occasionally?
A world without emotions is a world without color. It would be an empty building, or a prison without the color of emotions it could not be a home. Our heart, our home, needs to be a safe place for emotions, needs to be a safe place to express ourselves. Our heart needs to be maintained, organized, and a clean room. In a clean room, there is manipulation, but manipulation with purpose and arrangement. Clean your ‘room’ today.
To understand the trickster of the heart read this article:
To understand more about our inner horse and rider relationship read this article:
What I consider an essential need that often gets overlooked read this article: