A Soul Connection

Bridging the Gap: Integration of Emotion and Soul Voices

At this point, we may find it helpful to look at the two words: gap and integration. What do these two words mean for you? Maybe a better question is "what comes up for you in this moment around the word integration? gap?

Your first thoughts will probably be the intellectual knowing that comes from "what you know." What you know comes from mental concepts and ideas based on what you've heard others say, what you've read, or maybe what you've experienced. The level where we "know" things comes from our archives of stored information from the past rather than what we're experiencing directly in this moment -- in the present.

Wisdom-questions, Knowledge-Questions
Wisdom-questions take us deeper into ourselves whereas knowledge-questions keep us at the surface level where we "know" things. You can imagine how much our soul might love wisdom-questions. And, conversely, you can imagine how much our ego might love knowledge-questions.

When we ask wisdom-questions, we're asking from a place of wonderment, openness, expansion. From this place/space, we're open to anything that arises. Questions coming from such an open, expanded place leaves plenty of room/space for answers to arise from outside of our archived data bank. It's interesting that wisdom-questions often evoke other wisdom-questions and these other questions seem to drop us into a deeper, more expansive space.

You can see how asking knowledge-questions results in a narrowing focus as our minds search our archives for "the answer" -- the correct answer! The answer to knowledge-questions is stored in a small space, so that's where our mind has to go in order to find the answer.

Gap between Emotion and Soul
In the previous article, I introduced how Emotion and Soul arise from two different worlds or perspectives: Relative and Absolute. Emotions show up because of an "other" -- person, place, or thing and needs an "other" in order to be an emotion. Emotions need cause and effect, because they are the effect of some cause (and vice versa). Emotions come and go. Soul, with all its qualities, is ever-present whether we're conscious of this presence or not; and, soul does not need an "other" for it to be "what it is."

We can perceive this gap (difference, opening, space) between the two, emotion and soul. Working toward understanding the different emotions through dialogue practice helps to bring light into this gap. We begin to understand why particular emotions present themselves -- what triggers them.

If we let ourselves be curious enough to discover what the emotion is telling us that we're needing from an "other," we also find that it's a soul quality the ego is trying to imitate. We're literally reaching outside of ourselves for the soul quality, i.e., love, understanding, strength, that is not only within us but it's part of who we truly are.

Integration
The first step toward integration is the uncovering. We finally understand what the emotion is pointing to. It's like "the finger pointing to the moon;" it's not the moon itself. Once we see this truth, we begin to notice the presence of soul qualities that were actually present all along. We can actually dialogue with any soul quality to find out anything we're curious enough to find out -- including how to integrate It, our very own soul quality, into our lives. We can ask questions like, "how can I be aware of your presence more?" The bottom line here is that the more we're aware of, and directly experience, the ever-presence of our soul and it's qualities, the less we need the pointing devices, the emotions.

The integration process begins with our enlarging the space (ourselves) that embraces and includes both the pointing device (emotion) and that which is pointed to (soul quality). The foundation for this integration process is curiosity to know the truth and the courage to ask the questions that will inevitably lead us there. A vehicle for this integration process is dialoging and reflecting back (verbally aloud or in writing) to ourselves what we've learned. Keeping a notebook helps provide a map of the territory we're exploring.