Clarity and Emotional Intelligence

I know a lot more about emotional lack of clarity than emotional clarity.  Like, four decades more experience in the lack dept.  But what I’ve found is that emotional clarity comes when one respects one’s emotional intelligence, understands it is an imperative intelligence in the scheme of things, as important as what we think of as ‘brain power’ or thinking intelligence.  

We live within many cultures (western, institutional/corporate, mainstream education) that don’t recognize this.  It has even been said that feeling-life is the orphan of the self, treated less-than in relation to other aspects of oneself.  So, those of us with that propensity, we experience shame through our continuums and feel the need to defend that perspective.  Decade after decade , we feel less than those with other strengths.  It’s not respected, or understood.  It’s not a cognitive approach.  Our schools don’t teach about emotional intelligence, our institutions and systems in the west have an alienation from this perspective.  There is no validation, nor affirmation for emotional intelligence.  We’re on our own.

So, what is this emotional intelligence?  What is emotional clarity?

Because of the external influences I am indoctrinated to and live under, there is an education to turn away from and not acknowledge the workings of my feeling life.  In doing this, I become estranged from the depth of me, the part of me that is soul connected. And also in doing this, I disrespect a core aspect of myself.  The pain of that, the ache, drives me to know something else. When I begin to know this feeling in me, stop turning away, no matter how unpleasant or unattractive, I begin to glean what is.  

Lao Tzu:  Seeing what is small is called insight.  Abiding in softness is called strength.

When I start to respect this core aspect in myself, I become more clear about the layers of feeling.  My discernment grows, it matures.  My appreciation for this subtly begins to spill over into the nature of other things.  I begin to recognize the care (the feeling) around me.  For example, I see the beauty of our food resources, the care and glory in this food made for our well being.  It inspires respect and care in the way I work with the food and for whom I work for in preparing.  It’s a circle;  I care, they care, you care.  Food has simple but definite vibration that my feeling life responds to.  What is the quality?  What is called for?  How does it need to be met?  What is being asked for?  My thinking mind, my experience join in and have a place. I’ve been learning not to let that override the more subtle impressions, but to be a servant to what is.  

This also occurs for me around small children and occasionally other people. If  I’ve valued this emotional intelligence, I’ve become interested and gotten to know my fears, experienced the mired self in her various stews.  I do this for my own benefit but mostly because I value relatedness.  The intimate experience of knowing pain and pleasure in oneself helps me in relating to others.  It opens my world, makes all my experiences more spacious.

A few years ago during a retreat, we participants spent a week learning a sacred dance.  It was about 20 minutes long and was physically very demanding.  There was a lot of standing from kneeling positions, rolling on the ground and standing from there.  Up and down.  A lot of sequences.  I found myself migrating to the back of the class, because I couldn’t do it well and I suffered the embarrassment of this and shame.  But I also noticed, though I was incapable of physically doing it, my spirit, my feeling was exactly in the right place in myself.  I felt a right connection in myself during the movement of it.  It dawned on me, isn’t it this that matters?  So, my despair and self disappointment was replaced by, “my perfectionist self can’t, but I can as I can”.  And I became able in this way (not the way I imagine I should be able).  My spirit, my feeling for the movement rescued me from the impossibility that was my physical self.  

During that week, I had the memory of being a child around the family dinner table, and the question being asked: What do you want to be when you grow up?  As an adult, I remembered that the answer was:  to be a nun.  But during the sacred dance retreat week, I remembered the truth. I said as a six year old, I wanted to be holy and the adults at the table put it in my head that holy wasn’t an occupation, so I’d have to be a nun.  I didn’t want to be a nun, I wanted to be holy; two different things.  And then at 10 years old, I wanted to be a dancer, which is the same thing (to me) as being holy.  That is the thing about emotional intelligence.  It finds its way (from nun to dancer), it navigates for the rest of me if I listen, if I stay true to it and don’t betray it.  Emotional clarity is not what I think of as clarity at all.  It’s a state of listening and following even when it doesn’t make sense to most of me.  It’s a willingness to not know or adhere to what is known or what is prescribed.

The methodical, linear-minded ordinary thinking is a different language entirely to feeling-mindedness.  When ordinary feeling becomes mired, confused, bogged down in despair, shame, the other aspects of myself— the body, the mind can be allies.  Initially the body’s inability in the sacred dance discounted the feeling capacity; it was caught up in its lack.  The creative mind had the perception that it did and the feeling part was inspired to see what really mattered in the moment.  But it took 3-4 days of acute ordinary suffering for this to happen, with the myriad of influences I was subjected to during that time.  That’s a lot of coinciding energies.

It’s emotional clarity that appreciates the sublime silence experienced in a group sitting, the weighty quiet shared.  It’s emotional clarity that is willing not to name or identify an experience or thing, but appreciates the experience of being there, with it, in it.  Emotional clarity celebrates the opague, the intangible, the moment of inexplicable intuition, the mysterious.  An understanding and clarity often unfolds after the event.  For me, it is not often immediate. 

If I don’t respect or acknowledge this aspect or capacity in myself, it won’t show itself.  Emotional intelligence is necessarily veiled because of its tendency in the world, and in myself to be discounted and disrespected.  If I begin to have an appreciation for it, it surfaces and is readily at my disposal.

Courage, Confidence and Wellness

We spend a lifetime searching for balance.  We learn about a new piece of dietary information; we try it out.  Science comes up with new info about our body's function; we consider this, perhaps, by modifying our behavior.  We accumulate information and try to verify an approach to our own wellness through the decades.  And if we're lucky,  something settles in us that isn't so reactive.  It's hoped for—that we become discerning in our responses to new information, not jumping from one new fangled idea or another in a quest to be healthier.  This would go for a spiritual growing up as well.  In all of this, what is the difference between adapting and adopting?

Courage and a Self Confidence is required. Through our continuum, there is a time to follow and "obey".  There is also a time to find the courage not to look toward outward "authority",  but believe enough in what one has experienced, gathered information-wise and trust in one's own maturation process.  Or, maybe it's about following the intuitive messages even though all that outward advice makes sense.  A reliable practice of self-awareness will sort the false impulse from the true impulse.  It is a growing up of sorts;  a confidence in one's own perceptions, knowledge/understanding base and the experience of having navigated dark corners before.  It's a trust in speaking up, being adversarial when necessary, being close to one's own truth.  This doesn't negate being open to other information or an other.  It just means owning one's own grounded material in what Is.

This sometimes means finding one's own language within the known culture, whether it be in spiritual practice or wellness lingo.  Human nature makes us prone to being static in our approach, clinging to what has been known, whether it be language, way of understanding, an approach to a spiritual or wellness practice, or dietary and movement habits.  Because everything is changing all the time, being light "on our feet" is necessary.  A regular practice of entering into unknown territory, making efforts that are not familiar, or may be somewhat uncomfortable and foreign.  Becoming familiar with how—and where—I recede and retreat into habits that aren't useful is part of the self awareness practice.  If one has relied primarily on external authority to direct one's efforts in the past, claiming a semblance of one's own "master" is initially a rocky road.  It's sort of like being 20 years old again, finding your young adult legs under yourself, making first time life decisions, leaning into resistance and not capitulating.  It's possible to boldly strike out, to find the courage to be enough where you are, recognize your needs, and make a demand of yourself or of others to meet those needs.

It is true there is an "action" component to all this.  But mostly, it's sublimely internal. The action has turned inward, hence, doesn't have to be externally manifested to the extent it has been in previous decades.  Stepping up to (the responsibility of) oneself minimizes confusion.  Confidence is confidence, not arrogance.  Courage is courage, not being cavalier.  It's clear.  Understanding and living these differences makes us our own leader, mentor, guru.  And if we somehow find we have trickled our way into arrogance or have become cavalier, that's ok.  Because we have, at our foundation, taken responsibility and owned what is.  So we own that, and we mindfully work with that manifestation.  It's a beautiful thing. No longer are we afraid of being—or experiencing ourselves—as arrogant.  We are more afraid of not seeing what is.  We are more afraid of being static and internally atrophied.  Scary personality portraits of old are now interesting, beguiling, surprising and refresh our perspective.

"To thine own self be true." Hamlet, Wm Shakespeare

“And you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.”  John 8:32

A Right Rest

For most of us, when the need to rest arises, the first choice taken is to lie down or nap/sleep.  The awareness that other types of reprieve are possible if we follow the availability of the body's call, is often unavailable.  This requires a more nuanced listening.

Rest is required when we have expended considerable energy, negativity has created a leak in my energy channels, or the failure to shift my energy through another type of activity (or too much repetition of even a good thing) can be draining.  Sleep is not often the only or best resolution.  Evolving one's own individual care-taking approach is possible.

There I was, wrapping spring rolls for 60 people, about 100 in all.  It was a lovely task:  the beguiling stretchy rice wraps, fresh vibrating herbs and slivered vegetables in interesting layers, ending with a careful tuck .  It was a small motor hand coordinated, delicate operation-- very pleasing to the senses.  About two hours into the task, it became apparent a gear switch was necessary.  A fatigue came over me, my legs had been in one place for hours, my hands in a small repetitive pattern for same.  I picked up a broom and vigorously started to sweep the floor.  I then mopped it with big wide sweeping arcs, a sort of dance that was fully enjoyable, a static containment getting released.

An entire day of large, challenging movement, considerable perspiration in extreme heat conditions, with a concentrated attention to a myriad of tasks --called me to rest.  I took half an hour, went into an air conditioned room and crawled under a large work table. (A vague recollection of spending a lot of pleasure time under tables as a child came to me.) There, I rested on my back, pulled my knees up, rolled side to side, enjoyed some prone stillness, played with my hands and elbows and provided a rolling touch to mostly unrecognized places like ankles, groin, back of legs near buttocks, sacrum, moving and smoothing (energy?) layers of self.  I followed impulses, some surprising, all of them deeply restful. I finished by rolling out from under the table, picking up a water loaded watercolor brush on the table and ran it across a piece of paper, appreciating its movement and action.  I completed the period by adding  a dot of color at the end.  Sublime satisfaction.

Unexpectedly, I spent most of a morning with someone with a consistently mild thread of sarcasm running through their dialogue.  By the end of the morning I was feeling depleted and fatigued.  Realizing, despite my efforts not to let that particular brand of negativity impact me, I had indeed been influenced.  I took a "bathroom break" and instead went out into the drizzle and energetically walked around the block, feeling the hips, femurs in the sockets, my arms swinging up and wherever they felt like going, the cool heavy precipitation dampening my exposed arms.  It wasn't an easy start; the body was halting and apparently in a stuck rhythm at first.  But before long, attention to the way the movement was unfolding and the almost joyous arm swings had me emitting small yelps of pleasure and the shift was made. I did a few chi (energy) baths at the end for good measure.

The common aspects in these different scenarios is awareness of the need for a change in energy and a willingness to let the body play (a type of rest/release any child would attest).  Rest for the weary can be finding play in the heart, mind and body. The right configuration is limitless, it just depends on following the call to where the awareness is leading you. Fingering a delicate branch of a plant, submerging oneself in water and receiving that new impression.  Lying still or allowing fingers to find their expression through another media or their own manifestation.  Sleep is a delicious mode of respite.  But a rightful, authentic rest can be found in our own nature's beckoning if we listen a little closer and respond.

Raising Up: Children and Parenting

I've had a few requests in the last  month to write a post on children, the act of "raising" them, what "method" is reliable, what books to read, what tact to take.  In no way do I assume a child expert role in this endeavor.  But I have a huge affinity for the young person through their amazing and varied continuums and I have considered them in many respects, my most important teachers.  So, here goes.

Children are an important influence because they are unrelenting models of the truth that everything changes all the time.  As a new parent, you think you've got it down (ie: an eating or sleeping schedule), and right when you start to feel like you have your bearings in relation to them, it changes.  Life as far as children go, is pretty much complete chaos (even if you are the organized type).  Once this has found an acceptance in your solar plexus, you might as well relax and find your sense of humor (kids are excellent mentors in this area).  Children help us to see we rarely know what we are doing, and that is as it should be. How could it be otherwise?  You never parented an infant, three year old, pre-teen, teenager or young adult before. And if you did, all others following the first are incredibly different and require different responses to similar situations.  It's always new.  Because of this, we are given the gift of humility.  The young challenge us in all ways to move/act/think/feel quicker than we ordinarily would like and give us an opportunity to get a view from another's almost continually open perspective.  In a conscientious adult, children inspire us to wake up, grow up and be better human beings.  Because of this, the act of  parenting/mentoring others, becomes the act of parenting oneself.


Children naturally seek relationship.  Their curiosity with the inside and outside world and the beings that surround them is unquenchable.  They deeply observe, listen, imitate everything.  They put things in their mouths to discover more about the object. (an incredibly interesting approach!).  As I have seen it, it is the adult's job to keep them safe (without being overprotective) and to respect them, their current development arc (again, constantly changing) and who they are evolving to be.  The bond we naturally have with them as a parent, complicates this basic approach and sometimes mires the process of their (and our own) evolution.  Hence, the imperative need for other adults and models to be major influences in their life (and in our process).  It does indeed, take a village to raise a child.

In children, we are reminded of our own possible resiliency and a life force that is insistent, hopeful and frequently present in Joy. In this awakening, the notion that we are supposed to be their life-model is turned on its head and it becomes apparent, it is the other way around.

In all this topsy-turvy unknown that goes hand in hand with being in the sphere of a child, how is a practically-fixed adult supposed to survive?  Many of us take the dictatorial approach, attempting to control the chaos, becoming master-director, feigning a knowing to manage the raw energy ever present in the young.  This approach secures our "adult" role and our ego's sense of omnipotence. It also occasionally is useful in a crisis. As a general modus operandi, it can be suffocating and repressive to the young who are naturally seeking autonomy, self reliance and self governance.  Another common parenting approach is to ignore or deny manifestation, letting children raise themselves (emotionally) while abdicating this responsibility to them.  Children demand (and deserve) attention; how one gives it determines the lesson learned, determines the relationship made between you.

As adults in the role of mentoring the young, we sometimes become fixed in the habit of directing and are swallowed by the conditions of too little patience (or being), too little time to support their self-discovery.  We become almost completely reliant on structure and schedules to maintain some semblance of equanimity. Structure and direction are both ways that teach self-discipline, accountability and consequences of actions taken.  Or they could be.  For consequences to be a rich experience, there has to be an empathic feeling present in the adult; a knowing intelligence in this realm which proliferates despite the outcome of the consequence (that doesn't turn into sentimentality or variations of rescuing).  Many times the structures and direction are put into place for the adult's benefit and comfort, but when the consequence reveals itself, the empathic feeling isn't present because the young person's well being or arising wasn't considered primary. Hence, the consequence falters, slides and becomes fodder for something else other than accountability.  As was said previously, the presence of children urges us adults at all times to grow up and be better human beings.

In my post Violence: a Cautionary Truth, discipline is mentioned:  How do we differentiate violence from say, discipline?  Respect of other is always at the base of discipline and fully absent in violence.  Also, there is an integrated intelligence which is responsive and not reactive in discipline.  Energetically, violence is raw and ungrounded, usually unpredictable and ego driven.   Whereas, discipline is a focused and aligned energy that serves as a guide without an agenda.  Domination is an impulse born of fear; it is a basic animal instinct present in one degree or another, always.  The more we bring a larger attention and awareness to our daily actions, the more we will  know ourselves, become more available to our fuller humanity, the less this impulse will be tolerated in oneself, the less weight of myself violence will usurp.   It would be noteworthy here to include violence as being sharp tones and language, withering looks as well as physical strong arming.

So, it may seem respect (without fear) is the cornerstone of relationship with children.  Respect can exist only in the void of the perception of "otherness", that children are somehow less than us, we being their older (not necessarily wiser) counterparts.  This sameness perception can be difficult to sustain in light of their diminutive size, dearth of experience, minimal maturity, limited vocabulary, lack of financial viability and cognitive weakness (frontal cortex of brain is not fully mature until age 26) which is the child's (partial) reality.  An appreciation and value for humanity in all its guises is the root of respect we have for children (and all people).

Despite all the child-rearing expert literature (which changes regularly), we generally don't know what we are doing as parents/mentors.  And we are in good company, because children don't know what they are doing either (they are visceral responders).  This relationship is an exercise in exciting exploration.  The great thing about kids is their forgiveness factor; it's easy for them.  They thrive in making mistakes (until they learn otherwise), falling down and getting up again is an impulse for another adventure.  They are completely cognizant of our weaknesses, frailties and shortcomings.  And they forgive and even love us anyway, (even when they are testing us).  They are fully aware of our adult sufferings, our struggles, our not knowing (even when we pretend otherwise).  And they are unfailing in their compassion for this, and are appreciative when borne for their sake. They learn respect not from being fearful but seeing respect modeled. There is no hiding from children.  You might minimize arguments and hostilities in a household, but they are extremely sensitized to the tensions that exist. Modeling non-violent communication for them (and yourself) would be a gift.

So, how do we navigate this impossible physical, emotional, mental task of a layered support for another being to adulthood? Understanding the objective developmental curve of the different phases or challenges in human growth would be good.  Having this knowledge under your belt would help you recognize the phase when it is exhibited and give you a heads up in preparing how you want to deal with it when it happens.  If I had known at the time, that part of an eight year old's development is about fitting in, mutual identification, not being wildly different from their social peers, I would have never put two different colored yellow socks on my son on a bleary, late-for-school morning.  (Now 28, forever mischievous, he still occasionally reminds me of the peer harassment he received.)  At 4 years old, this fitting in identity issue was not problematic (not part of that age development); when his shoes had been left home 200 miles away, we tied on to his feet bright yellow "grippy" rubber gloves and brought his antsy self to a playground full of kids to swing on the swings.  I'm pretty sure the other parents were mortified at this half boy, half Daffy Duck, but I had gotten past that parent developmental hurdle by that time. (Fingers crossed, yellow is not a PTSD-inducing color for him today.)  Knowledge about child (and parent!) development is helpful.

The "time out" concept was particularly helpful to me as a parent of young children; not only to allow a break in a mini-crisis for them, but a breathing space for myself to regroup my own energies and wits.   Directives, negotiations, strategies, reasoning.... they all fail at one time or another.  The only constant is relationship and the mutual respect that has been built; it is the foundation of who you are together.

Violence: a Cautionary Truth

“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles." 
― Mahatma Gandhi 

Violence begets violence.  The peacemakers through the ages knew this.  People like you and me when exposed to brutality, senseless or purposeful-- we become changed.  Things we never could dream of feeling or doing, a depth of hatred unimaginable materializes.  A violated being is capable of the darkest manifestations.  Violence happens out of a skewed sense of justice, moral authority, unchecked righteousness and rage.  The expressions range from biting language to imposed or orchestrated poverty to crusades to holocausts.

And we are surrounded, nay bombarded with one type of violence or another almost continuously, from birth to death.  Babies are "righted" in position and inclination, made to meet expectations in their feeding and sleeping habits, children are bullied and made to tow the education line frequently, hazing in college, premeditated cultural expectations on lifestyle choices for adults, neglect often is the elderly experience and various forms of abuse are endured through all continuums. Those in the military, in the middle or on the fringes of military conflict, are exposed at the very least to an inhuman rigid structure that can violate the "call and response" mechanism normal in the central nervous system.  Ordinary we each have our daily doses, imbibed through negative media, environmental noise, traffic or toxic stimulation; or at least, that's how this sensitive organism takes it in.  One of the responses to brutality is to turn it inward.  Whereas harming others may not be an option in a moment, often we swallow or self inflict a strike on ourselves.  We partake in obsession, addictions, worry, depression, have our own personal accidents and various levels of anxiety.  Stress is rarely noted in terms of self-violence, but our failure to check stress often determines the personal level of suffering experienced.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Isaac Asimov

We can become mired in these indulgences rather easily.  Closed throat chakras ban all truths from being spoken.  The body is brilliant at shutting down, becoming numb, deadening the truth of what is.  The psych denies, twists, forgets and minimizes.  All of this, in the name of survival from the brutality being experienced or known.

"Social justice cannot be attained by violence.  Violence kills what it intends to create."  Pope John Paul II

Humans naturally have this propensity; it is the animal in us.  Organic (and otherwise) competition often fosters the alpha qualities recognizable in our brethren, the beast.  Ego and ambition pushes us in that direction.

Violence is a strong word to describe what may seem ordinary to some.  How can it be used in this way?  Because it is ordinary and exists in the very fabric of our individual humanity and collective culture.  Violence is an inattentive force proliferated without awareness on oneself or another. No matter how seemingly benign (ie "righting" a baby to a feeding or bathing position that is comfortable for oneself but not asked for, indicated or required by a newborn being) when done without an intention or greater awareness, violates an others sense of self governance.  This is so common it is rarely recognized as a type of strong arming.  If one was more present at the moment, the recognizable taste of use of power by size, age, economic class or knowledge would be sensed and known as a major factor in the act.

"Violence is not merely killing another.  It is violence when we ue a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country.  Violence is much more subtle, much deeper"--Jiddu Krishnamurti

How do we differentiate violence from say, discipline?  Respect of other is always at the base of discipline and fully absent in violence.  Also, there is an integrated intelligence which is responsive and not reactive in discipline.  Energetically, violence is raw and ungrounded, usually unpredictable and ego driven.   Whereas, discipline is a focused and aligned energy that serves as a guide without an agenda.  Domination is an impulse born of fear; it is a basic animal instinct present in one degree or another, always.  The more we bring a larger attention and awareness to our daily actions, the more we will  know ourselves, become more available to our fuller humanity, the less this impulse will be tolerated in oneself, the less weight of myself violence will usurp. And we need this greater attention and awareness, because as Krishnamurti says above, the inner tyranny of violence can be quite subtle and it goes deep.

"In violence, we forget who we are." -- Mary McCarthy