Psi-phoning Hate and the “Old Yeller” Principle.

My emotional clouds seem to be clearing.  As I mentioned, I have invoked a Shugyo of consciously inviting and encouraging all forms of negative energy to manifest and feel at home.  What I am finding is that this is giving my unconscious permission to offer up access to formerly closed in pockets of emotion that have been affecting me, coloring my life, in subtle ways.

Your unconscious tries to protect you.  It will not release anything it does not feel you can take.  This is why consciously showing it that you can take nearly anything increases its range of motion, its flexibility, its openness.

I watched two very sad movies in two consecutive days: Robert Bresson’s “Balthazar”, and the Book Thief.  Both movies evoked strong emotions.  Both made my cry.

But I felt stronger in the end.  Here is the thing: we build up sadnesses in our daily life, just living.  We put them aside, to be filed later, but we never file them.  They linger.

Watching sad movies allows us to process all those things, to make us wiser.  We process not only our own sadness, but the sadness of the world.  We become more compassionate, in useful and not compulsive ways.

I would like to call this the “Old Yeller” principle.  People don’t watch that movie any more.  It makes them cry, and we don’t like to cry any more.  And this makes us weaker and more coarse.