Moving from Emotional Intelligence to Emotional Wisdom
Take a moment and imagine what it would feel like if you were to experience your emotions as a form of listening. Not just listening to yourself, but as a way of listening to each other and to the Divine living world around you. And what if your feelings were an effective source of guidance in a very practical way?
Emotional Intelligence vs Emotional Wisdom
We’ve come a long way in recent decades in recognizing the importance of emotional intelligence. But this perspective is still based in the Western psychological model of our emotions as personal events that happen in our individual brain. However ancient cultures and wisdom traditions hold the view that the world is actually made up of emotion and our feelings are a way of connecting us to this larger web of existence, to the nature of all life. When we expand our experience of our emotional intelligence in this way, a whole world of insight and guidance opens up to us. Our feelings become a way of listening to the world and a profound source of wisdom about how to respond effectively to the situations that life presents.
“Positive” vs “Negative” emotions
One of the challenges for us in our cultural view is that we are taught to label certain emotions “positive” and others “negative”. We then learn to suppress uncomfortable feelings or distract ourselves from them. However this is the source of much of our depression, addiction, stress and illness. Feeling the full range of our emotions and expressing them in a balanced way is an essential part of a healthy life. Even our so-called “negative” emotions are an integral part of the way we listen to the world and respond appropriately to life’s challenges.
Upcoming Emotional Wisdom series
In this upcoming Emotional Wisdom series, we will explore this experience of emotions. We will discover how the world is alive with feeling; how we can learn to listen to the wisdom of our emotions: what happens when we suppress our authentic feelings and how to be with the emotions that we find challenging; how our mind gets involved in either amplifying or suppressing our feelings; and how each one of our primary emotions hold great sustenance, protection and guidance for us when we are willing to feel and listen.
If this sounds interesting to you, you might want to check out Prema’s upcoming Emotional Wisdom 6 week teleclass from Mon Nov 7 th till Mon Dec 12th. Find out more.
