Widening Your Window of Tolerance

I encountered a fantastically talented and insightfully dark visual artist when I was around 19 years old. I met him only once, at his house, where he shared with me his art and his vision of life. The scope of feeling processed by this individual was immense (as obviated by his art), and at the same time he appeared quite docile and soft. We sat in his room late into the night, discussing the presence of darkness and light in humanity, culture, and the world. At one point he turned to me and in an intensely sober tone said,

“Tolerance is the key to peace”…

My emotional spectrum at the time was severely aberrated through abuses from outside and in, poisonous thought forms, toxic relationships, and thus I was unfit to digest the wisdom in his statement. Though on a deep level, I instinctively felt the value of it and to this day I chew on and struggle with these words to discover more and more value. I don’t know that much about peace, though today, I see it possibly as ‘emotional integration’. And I see emotional integration as intrinsically tied to ‘widening my window of tolerance’ in the sensation and feeling of my posture.

When look at our psycho-physical experience of life, we see all sorts of intolerance; of race, sexuality, beliefs, practices, etc. and mixed up in all of this is the fact that we as individuals seem to lack the capacity to tolerate the emotions which arise in us as we relate to this life situation. Might we find that tolerance of another’s different way of being is a natural and organic response to having a wide window of tolerance in one’s own field of sensation and feeling?

Emotion – Electrical impulse which runs through the nervous system of the human body, which is captured and interpreted by the intellect.

Emotional energy is like water running through a hose or pipes; it has temperature and pressure which modulate naturally in relation to stimulation from the environment. When the mind gets involved with the system, it adds a color to the water, gives it a name and tends to become fascinated and hypnotized by the process; totally identified and sold on the “fact” that the emotion is the most important thing in existence. I call this emotionality.

Emotionality – The experience of an emotional reaction capturing and occluding our sensation of wholeness and motivating behavior [often inappropriate to the situation]. Emotionality is the experience of an emotion dominated and controlled by the formative mind/personality.

Emotions arise from primordial feelings. Pre-feeling energy that pulses out of the deepest and most instinctual parts of the mind/body, before the formative mind and personality get involved. Examples of primordial feelings are: terror, rage, need, desire, and more.

Emotional Integration – The experience of feeling an emotion without reaction or the loss of the sensation of wholeness.

Emotional integration is a process fueled by trust; a vision of the human body as a whole system which has everything it needs to be in existence with all the demands of the environment and life. Emotional integration is necessitated by maintenance of moment by moment presence and attention to the body’s sensations and feelings, without interruption or interference.

*** The largest system of the body that can be used as an organ of perception is the fascial tissue. The fascia is a vast system of interdependent connective tissues which touch nearly ALL other tissues of the body (skin, fat, muscle, blood, bone, everything encased in bone, cerebrospinal fluid, and sexual fluid). The fascial matrix can be used as an organ of perception and as such affords the instant apprehension of the entire body at once! Sensation of wholeness anyone???

Hard questions to consider for emotional integration:

• • Am I listening to the story of the body, or ‘my story’ of the story?

• • Am I retelling ‘my story’ so as to keep hold of an emotion?

• • Is it possible to be genuinely honest in the ‘retelling’ of the story of body?

• Is it necessary to ‘retell’ at the story of the body?

*** These questions have no right answers. They are questions designed to bring a person to insight in themself. These questions are intended as gifts to foster personal and private epiphany. There is no need to share what you find verbally.

We live in such a time where all information is available by the push of a button and soon to be by the mere thought of wanting it. Do not confuse information for the truth. This information is a map. Traversing the territory of truth is a choice that only an individual can make. Each one which chooses to embody the possibility of emotional integration contributes to a massive connectivity potential which releases unnecessary strain, pain, and suffering from the whole system.

In the words of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche:

“This World does need your help so badly, very badly… So on behalf of this World, I would like to request for you to come and do something about it.”

By: Brent Kuecker – Yogi. Musician. Educator.