Negative emotions are the painful boundaries of our spirit—the limits we reach when, in pain and disappointment, we return to our limited consciousness.

We can spend our entire lives within a world enclosed by these painful boundaries and avoid approaching them.

Each time the storms of life, or our longing to go beyond ourselves, draws us toward these boundaries, we can retreat with fear and lamentation into our limited self; or we can look toward our higher Self beyond those boundaries and recognize that every boundary is ultimately a question posed to our courage to go beyond.

Through the pain it gives us, the question teaches us who we are and at which shores we come to an end.

Our fears, anxieties, anger, loneliness, despair, and depression are guides on the path of self-awareness for understanding these boundaries. They are among the most fundamental questions for the traveller on the inner path: questions from which one neither runs away nor fights pointlessly, but instead courageously enters their dark depth, where they reach into the unconscious, in order to learn.

On the other side of this darkness, our greater being and higher Self are always waiting for us.

Aydin Areta