Childhood didn't teach me to channel my emotions

Sri Kala | Oct 2022

Growing up in school, I learned about history, government, mathematics, and element tables. I learned how to run track and bounce a ball. After 12 years of continuous life training, they left out the most important thing a human needs for life: emotional intelligence.

What good is mathematics when that anger boils up, and you don't know how to share your heart? So much of our educational system is set up to add more cogs to the wheel. Robots with no feelings have all the knowledge in the world about our nation's history, with no inner resources to stay steady when the emotional storms come rolling in.

In my life journey, I also grew up unresourced through my education. Unresourced through my parents to fully deal with my emotional body. Luckily, the devastation that life had for me only propelled me to ask more profound questions about who I am. Why do I feel this way? Why am I being treated like this? Can anyone help me when I feel trapped in my inner storms?

I was given renewed life through two avenues: my exploration of spirituality and creative expression. They swooped in like a river that cleared away my vision and gave me access to deeper levels of perception of myself and the world around me. It was my second chance at life.

In Spiritual exploration, I began to explore the workings of my mind through meditation. Certain scriptures taught me about the many types of bodies that exist within me. There is not only the physical; there's also the mental, emotional, etheric, and spiritual body. This knowledge was realized firsthand when I put my meditations into practice. I could feel where my mind ended, and my emotions began. 

  I also began to feel emotions when they were not mine, but I was experiencing them from the atmosphere around me. This was the start of emotional intelligence awakening within me—the mastery of these subtle energies and how they move.

Though I needed a complete picture, this inner path was everything I wanted. Even after I lived as a monk, traveled to India for pilgrimage, sat in sweat lodges, prayed with the Mayans in Guatemala, and more. When I got the final code of creative expression, I felt my full completion arrive.

I've always had a hunger to express myself creatively. To experience freedom through the canvas of my physical vessel. Before spiritual life, singing or dancing was something you did for fun or to become famous. After spirituality, I know why I sing and move because this is the best way to contact the subtle energies that move through my experience.

Clear the space and listen to what stirs within me—moment to moment, allowing each feeling to make its way into this world through every little vocal inflection. Every tremor in my notes. From the top of my throat, wails to the silent murmurs. Trusting my connection with the feeling and allowing it to move me.  In my creative explorations, only some things see the light of day. But most of my greatest works come from these creative composts.

I can give a musical voice to that pain that was locked inside me since childhood. The joys and pains of my ancestors, no longer stuck in my bone marrow, can now resonate forward and carve new paths.

  Making music can become a boring drag race to meet a deadline without this connection. Even with what I now understand, sometimes I have to remind myself of this beautiful ceremony that is expression. It's an opportunity to get free. Not only for myself but for the entire world, my body picks up so much from the world around me. It's part of my duty to sing into the earth. To be a part of the repatterning of life. I do this by being true to my state of heart and expressing it through creative outpours of sound.

   My mission is to continue cultivating a deep understanding of these energies in motion, these E-motions. They are a powerful force in this world and often go unhonored and undervalued. Remember that old saying that we only use 10% of our mental capacity? Though many have proved that a myth, I still believe there is some truth. The other significant percentage we can access is when we allow the repressed potential energy deep within our subconscious to come forward. Honoring these deep-seated emotional wellsprings creates a more profound capacity for a cosmic level of intuitive thought and physical energy as we spend a lot of mental and physical energy holding these emotions. The same energy we can use to create the lives we so desire.  

  Create time for emotional mastery, and your life dreams will have a greater playing field for complete actualization.