Emotion & Spirituality

So, milestone along the journey. This is the summary of some musings and thoughts I have had over the past several months. So let's start at the beginning...

I grew up in a Christian microcosm, a very intense microcosm. It wouldn't be until I was in my mid-20s until I realized how peculiar a microcosm it was. Spirituality was very intense. Holiness was stressed big time, and well...intense would be the most appropriate, if not understated, modifier. When I was 16, this world started to crack, and by the time I turned 18, breakdown was in full swing. I tried to pick up the pieces and move on as best I could. I tried for a while, but I eventually had to admit that I could not deal with the fall-out of my religious construct breaking down. This came to a head when a friend of mine confronted me late one night and told me that I had become as bitter and unforgiving as the very people I had spent the last several years trying not to be. At least they had fun getting to where they were...

So, for the past several years, I've been wandering around in a bit of an existential funk trying to find my way and all that depressing stuff. I admitted that I was in depression and needed help, so I got into counseling, only to have it end as I graduated from university. I recently started pursuing some kind of help with these same mental patterns and stuff that has been weighing me down.(help being something besides alcohol...)

Along the way, I've realized that I have very little ability to process emotion. The easiest way I can describe it, is that it is like a white blood cell. It surrounds the alien substance, and removes it from the body. It's like my subconscious recognized emotion as an alien entity and tried to remove it from my cute little world. This wreaks havoc on most of my friendships, especially those with the opposite sex. That is another story entirely by itself.

So where I have ended up thanks to counseling, is realizing the importance of emotion in everyday life, as well as in one's spiritual well-being. I've found that to have healthy or even outstanding spiritual growth is incomplete without an accompanying emotional health. To have one without the other is to be lop-sided - like an ancillary Disney character. (Kronk's not exactly ancillary, but you get the picture). One cannot be complete without the presence of emotional health. You fall over, you break your backbone - what makes you stand up - and you lose many positive things that would otherwise dramatically improve your life. Now, if I only I could find some emotional health...that'd be the trick.