Let’s get naked. Or at least imagine it for a moment. And I mean everyone. Let’s imagine that a new international law is passed tomorrow, and clothes are completely outlawed. If you want to go out in public, you have to go sans clothing.
Most of us aren’t opposed to being naked once in a while. In the shower or bath, or maybe in your house or even your back yard, it feels good to let all the clothes fall aside. Our skin can breathe, and there is something very freeing about not having the constant rub of clothes over our flesh.
But out in public? That’s another matter. You can imagine what it would be like for most of us if this law was passed. At least in the beginning, we’d feel very ill-at-ease. Many people would probably walk sort of hunched over, using their arms to cover up as much of their ‘privates’ as possible. It would feel rather strange when someone looked at places on your body that had formerly been covered by clothes. We might spend a lot of energy feeling exposed, ashamed, or uncomfortable in public.
This really isn’t about going without clothes, however. It’s about another kind of nakedness – nakedness of our emotional selves.
Emotional Coverings
You see, we learn early on how to put ‘clothes’ over our emotions. We learn that it’s not appropriate to display our sadness, our anger, our passion, or our grief. So we learn to put up a front to the world – a set of ‘clothes’ that tell people that we are mentally stable and emotionally healthy.
Take a journey to your local grocery, and look at the people there. You may note that most of the people appear rather grim – sort of like automatons. This is because we’ve been taught to have a certain emotional and mental appearance when we go out in public. It’s okay for people to smile if they see a friend or find a particularly good bargain, but it’s not really okay for you to get truly excited about something.
Suppose you come across a chocolate bar that you’ve been trying to find for months, and you start jumping up and down and screaming in victorious triumph. What will happen? People will stare. You’re obviously crazy. Management might kick you out, or perhaps even call the police, since it’s obvious that you’re a total nut-case.
Private Emotions
This is even more relevant in private. Whether it’s in our family, or even in our relationship with ourselves, we tend to wear a lot of clothes over our emotions. And just like real clothes, they rub and irritate, even though we’re so used to it that we don’t often recognize the sensations. What’s at work is a conviction that we’re not really supposed to have any emotions that aren’t placid, so we spend a lot of time covering things up and hiding things away.
Is it any wonder that we so often feel things building up to the point of explosion?
Let’s Get Naked!
I’m not a strong advocate of nudity (though it’s awfully fun to run around naked in the woods, pretending you’re a squirrel). But I am an advocate of emotional nakedness. After all, the emotions are there. When we hide them away, we only resist them, which means that if they are ‘negative’ emotions, they boil and fester, and if they are ‘positive’ emotions, they never have a chance to blossom into real excitement, passion, or joy.
There’s no real good reason to cover up emotions, except that other people are uncomfortable with naked emotions. When we cater to that discomfort, however, we continue to feed the cycle that teaches that emotions are ‘bad’.
It’s tough to get truly emotionally naked. You can work your way down to your undergarments (these are the folks who use rage dolls and have group screaming sessions), but when we get truly naked, something miraculous happens.
The miracle is that most of the emotions we were trying to cover up in shame (frustration, anger, jealousy, etc.), are emotions that can only exist in a culture of resistance. When we truly allow ourselves to Fully Feel, all of our former negative emotions become replaced with an indescribable new feeling – for lack of a better word, we often call it ‘compassion’.
Simple Awareness
We don’t achieve emotional nakedness by giving ourselves permission to vent every emotion we feel. Instead, awareness is what allows us to discover emotional nakedness.
Take the time to observe the clothing you use to cover your emotions. It is fascinating to watch how much energy we devote to suppressing our emotions. This simple act of observation is where the real magic lies.
In observing, we’ll see the dynamic methods that we use to cover our emotions, and we will naturally begin to question the reasons for covering our emotions in the first place.
As human beings, emotions are the ‘spices’ and ‘sugar’ we add to our lives. They are not a detriment to our existence. Let’s take off our emotional clothes, and see what it feels like to appreciate the world with all of our emotional faculties. We’ll be amazed at what we find.
amazing post. thanks for some interesting and wise words-of-wisdom.
Taking the cover off of my emotions has been the hardest and most rewarding work that I have done on my spiritual journey of recovery. This is a great article, but then your writing always is. I can’t remember who first directed me to your blog but Thank You to whoever they were. Your words are always so down-to-earth full of wisdom. You are never “out there” like some sites can be. Thanks for sharing that wisdom with me.
I can go for working on being emotionally naked. However, even more
work must be done before I ever entertain the notion of running around naked in the woods chasing squirrels with you!
Having said that…you are so right about how we stifle our emotions. We are conditioned to as you also point out. We let out what we really feel at our own peril we fear. “What will they think?”, “I must be muted to get along.” Yes, we are automatons to a great extent and it feels like 1984.
If only we could really know what others are thinking in terms of our own subjective realities. Perhaps we would discover that thoughts about non-duality and illusion are percolating in places we least expect it. Well, it’s nice to think that anyway.
Good and bad we are all one on the most basic boiled down level. Just One - having an expression that is revealed in the totality of it all.
So, if that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball - if thats all there is…and, let’s get emotionally naked and have some fun! (Some will be allowed to get physically naked as well)
What a beautifully written article!
I loved it
I am a new reader from TomStine.com just so you know - I understand why he added this blog to his list.
______
Being emotionally naked can be such a scary thing. I am working on it although so far all I’ve got it maybe showing my “wrist” to the people closest to me.
But when I do have moments where I’m out there, bare, it’s liberating and the pleasant surprise would be the connection it can bring within myself and a loved one who then understands.. or always did but I never gave them a chance to show me
excellent piece!
Greetings Zenator,
Thanks so much =)
Kenton
Dear Patricia,
It truly is a challenge — we are taught so fully that our emotions mustn’t emerge unless it’s during specially moderated situations.
Your presence here is very valued, and I’d like to thank you for the wonderful compliments.
Fondly,
Kenton
Dear Jerry,
Blending humor and truth, as always, my friend. Well done!
=) Kenton
Dear JEMi,
I’m so glad that you’ve made a landing here. A thanks to Tom Stine for being integral in crossing our paths. I’m pleased that you found something in this article. I’ve stopped by your site and am excited to explore more — my favorite personal development sites are ones in which people have the courage to share their stories, their losses, their growth, and their discoveries about life. I think this is one of the most fabulous aspects of the blog movement — a chance for all of us to have a deeply personal ‘peek’ into the lives of people from around the world. Thanks for being one of the people who has become a part of this sharing.
Love,
Kenton
Well, Mr Whitman, I am certain you’d know that I would relate to this article. And I did.
I don’t think I’m alone, but I do think there are some folks more prone to this sea of emotion. I suppose learning how to swim at an early age helped me a little. If nothing else but to navigate. I do however wish emotion had been and would be honored. It can sometimes be that that is forbidden, misunderstood and feared, as you said.
And there is always that very prickly feeling just beneath the clothes of my emotion, very often screaming just say it already! The metaphor couldn’t be more apt.
Glad to be visiting again. Hope you and your lovely wife are reclaiming the spring feelings of the days upon us.
Thank you for a lovely article, and reminding me of how great skinny-dipping is. Certainly, I clothe my emotions to a lesser or greater extent. Clearly, I do this out of fear. The kind of fear which eminate from our Lesser selves, that within us which is reluctant to accnowledge our divine and pure inner nature.
Certainly, one can approach things from many perspectives, and this is a very healthy perspective to approach nakedness and truth. I think I often stare myself blind at the ‘goal’ (knowing there is no goal, but still..), saying to myself ‘when I’m there, I’ll be naked, radiant, all the time’. I find this type of reasoning, too, to be eminating from the Lesser self..
You point to a middle way. Neither the search for wisdom followed by manifestation of wisdom, nor the manifestation of wisdom followed by the gaining of wisdom, but rather you show, the gaining and manifestating is inseparable. One does not proceed the other.
Anyway, I’m loosing train of thought here:
thank you Kenton!
Hello Barbara!
Thanks for the happy spring wishes — we have indeed been out, spending lots of time in the woods and playing with our horses.
Your writing adds a wonderful perspective to this — we’re certainly in a challenging situation when the majority of our culture encourages us to hide and fear our emotions. How freeing when we shake loose!
It’s so good to hear from you again =)
Sweetwater,
Kenton
Greetings Magnus,
In each paragraph you acknowledge and bring to light the different forces with which we grapple when we confront our emotions — the fear, the reaching for a goal we’ll never reach, and the curious non-dualism which makes all this confusion clear.
Sweetwater,
Kenton
Wow, I thought I was on my own in the running round naked pretending I was a squirrel front. It is great fun although my local supermarket hate it when I start hording nuts in the fall, especially as I have never got any money with me to pay on account of not having pockets.
Not sure how I found this blog, but I like it! Great stuff, keep it up Kenton.
Oh good, I’m not alone in this one! Thanks for the good laugh, Tim =)
Happy to have you visiting.
Sweetwater,
Kenton