Spiritual Understanding (standard:other, 816 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Aug 27 2007	Views/Reads: 5649/2157	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Giving up guilt and grieving can be a rewarding process, well worth the effort.

SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING 

Once you tell me your thoughts, you can let go of them, knowing they are
in safe hands.  This gives your brain space to work on new ideas.  
Creativity is the brain working on new ideas. 

That's why it is so important to have someone listening to what you say.
It opens the opportunity for more creative thought. 

That's why counseling works in psychology and why confession works in
Catholicism.  Once you can unburden your thoughts: creativity, grief, 
guilt, whatever, there is a kind of intellectual/emotional relief, a 
period of peace and laughter between crises.  This "spiritual 
unburdening" leaves room for more creativity, grief, guilt or whatever 
to fill the void. 

Perhaps the secret to spiritual understanding lies here: When you can
let go of thoughts and feelings by conveying them to a person of 
confidence, a person respected as authority, you become a receptacle 
for new thoughts and feelings.  In other words, if you never take a 
vacation from your involvements, you are shutting out additional 
thoughts and feelings that are clamoring for expression.  But if you 
have the chance to empty these thoughts and feelings onto paper or into 
a data base, it gives you an outlet for those pent-up feelings. And if 
someone listens or reads, and says, "I hear what you are telling me, 
and I understand, because I've been there myself," this gives you an 
opportunity to harmonize your feelings.  This is the original and true 
meaning of Dialog, as employed by Socrates. 

So to sum up, it is very good for my creativity if I can: 

o Express my thoughts and feelings on paper (you prefer to express your
feelings by voice). 

It is even better if: 

o Somebody I trust is reading my thoughts or listening to me. 

And it's even better if: 

o They tell me what they think. 

That makes room for me to tap into more creativity. 

The same goes for grief.  And for guilt. 

This is the Secret that Omar Khayyam spoke about in one of his verses. 

Would you that spangle of existence spend To find the Secret?  Quick
about it, friend! A hair, 'tis said, divides the false and true And 
oh!, on what may life itself depend? 

Over time, if you drain out all the creativity too fast, you run dry for
a little while.  Most writers find this frustrating.  I can understand 
that. 

In like manner, if you take a lot of opportunity to speak your grieving,
or talk about your guilty feelings (or whatever) you can drain these 
off to the point where your "spirit" gives you a little relief.  A time 
when you can feel centered and at peace with yourself. 

The relationship between creativity and guilt/grieving is, I believe,
the key to understanding Art.  When the temperament of a person 
continually produces a wide gamut of emotions, from ecstasy to despair, 
from pleasure to irritation in an instant, it is because a whole lot of 
creativity is bottled up inside, and needs to get out.  By "confessing" 
"sins", you drain off spiritual toxins.  By talking about your grief, 
you drain off spiritual toxins.  By expressing creativity in music, 
dance, writing, speaking, whatever, you are actually draining off some 
essential "waste products" of the intellect. 

People who cannot often or easily talk about their grief and guilt, feel
they have to "act it out".  That is, by antisocial behavior -- unless 
that tendency has been (or is being) guided in the direction of a 
socially recognized "acting out", called theater.  Or ballet.  Or 


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