January 25th, 2005
"You Must Have Shadow and Light Source Both…
…Listen…”
That’s part of a poem by Rumi that’s been arranged for a capella women’s choir and performed on SheWho’s newly released CD, “The Earth Will Turn Over.” (SheWho isn’t really relevant to this post, but what the hell, it’s a pretty song and they’re a good bunch, so I’ll give ‘em a plug.) The lyric is a convenient lead-in to something that’s bugged me for years–and that is, when one woman critiques another woman for bringing up “negative emotions.” This is different than having a negative focus. Some people definitely have a negative focus–the cup is always half empty, everything is so scary and dangerous that no one really ever ought to do anything except hold very, very still–and these people are a burden and a drag to be around. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Negative emotions don’t really exist. There are emotions that we don’t like, that are painful to feel, like hurt and fear and anger–but they’re not “negative.” Every pagan religion on the planet has acknowledged in some way that both dark and light, pleasure and pain, birth and death are normal and indeed necessary parts of life. How would we recognize spring were it not preceded by winter? How would a sunrise show itself if it didn’t have the velvety black sky to grow into? There are so many goddesses either completely or in aspect devoted to managing the dark side of life it’s ridiculous to try to name them all.
So to talk about “negative emotions” at once shows a lack of awareness of the natural ends of life’s spectrum and the many resources in human society for exploring them, and also a (dare I say?) negative orientation toward pain and difference. Because, frankly, mostly when I hear this is when I’m struggling with a person or group I care about towards mutually beneficial resolution of difficulties. And to call that “bringing up negative emotions” is naive and counterproductive. We can’t solve problems if we can’t talk about them, and if we don’t talk about them, we don’t know what they are. Anger is just a signal that something’s not right. It doesn’t have to lead to violence and the fracture of relationships, as it so often does in the malestream world–if we handle it responsibly. Fear can be a message that we need protection, or it can block us from reaching our potential. And no change, no growth, none whatsoever, comes without pain. If we refuse to examine our “shadow side,” the part of ourselves that contains the traits and emotions we don’t like, we come to be controlled by the compulsion NOT to look. We defend ourselves and our actions at all costs because we can’t afford to see the “us” our shadow might reveal. And we project that shadow onto other women and assume that their motivations are what ours would be, were we to act the way they’re acting. And unfortunately, when we do this, we can be so very, very wrong.
So to those of you who believe in “negative emotions,” here’s a gentle invitation to turn and put the sun at your back for a bit, and see what there is to see. For the whole poem (as arranged by Juliet Spitzer for SheWho) goes like this:
You must have shadow and light source both
Listen, listen
You must have shadow and light source both
Listen, listen
And lay your head under the tree of awe
Listen, oh listen
And lay your head under the tree of awe
Listen, oh listen
This door is not the door of hopelessness and frustration
This door is open
Come, come as you are
