"Many people never get started on the inward-bound journey because they wake up one day realizing they are emotionally poor and demand to be made emotionally rich immediately. When we discover our dis-ease we naturally want instant cures. But the psyche doesn't work like that. When we have been long addicted to alcohol, drugs, work, bad relationships, etc., we cannot immediately transcend our emotionally stunted lives. There are no authentic rags-to-riches stories in the realm of the spirit. It takes time to explore and recover the full range of feelings we have spent years denying and ignoring. In developing emotional literacy, we must begin with abc before we can reach xyz.
"Real spiritual journeys begin in the mud, the desert, the swamp, the wasteland, not in the seventh heaven. To recover fullness of feeling, begin with the emptiness of feeling. Begin by exploring numbness, boredom, confusion, ambivalence, depression — the gray, dappled, and blue emotions. They will lead you through red-hot anger and searing grief to the center of life, where you will find bursting golden buds, upspringing green, and royal purple. The best way to a Technicolor life is the willingness to experience the full spectrum. In the beginning of the journey you need only trust that there are no rainbows without blues."
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