How comfortable are you with emotions? Particularly your own emotions and especially those that we consider 'negative'? How much do you truly love your heart, your emotional self?

Most of us aren't really that great at loving our hearts. We resist, deny, hide, and repress the emotional responses that arise in our hearts. But how can we love ourselves if we can’t love our own hearts? And how can we fully and passionately love others if we’re constantly acting as a gatekeeper with our own hearts?

No emotion is more spiritual than any other, nor is any more healthy than any other. They can all be unhealthy when we can’t regulate or identify them and they can all be healthy when we give them the attention and care they need. The goal is to integrate our unique emotional range and repertoire into a life that embraces the whole of our human experience in positive, creative, and loving ways. And that means that learning to love our hearts is a spiritual task that requires intentional spiritual practice.

In this episode, we’re exploring our hearts—our emotions and how to embrace them, express them in creative and healthy ways, and love them. And we’ll talk about how learning to regulate, label, and talk about our emotions is an important and life-giving spiritual practice.

The books I refer to in this podcast are:

1. Manopause by Lisa Friedman Bloch & Kathy Kirtland Silverman (affiliate link)

2. Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

You can find the transcript of this episode on the EvoFaith blog.

And you can access this podcast in video format on our YouTube channel.

And you can find more content and resources to help you to show up fully, authentically, and courageously on the EvoFaith website.

Music: https://purple-planet.com

Episode 38: When the Gospel Isn't Good News

The EvoFaith PodcastBy John van de LaarNov 16, 2022