I think of the underworld as an actual place and I honor the darkness as much as I do the light (well, almost as much). In the wheel of the year, there is a season for darkness; a season for light; and time and space for the infinite gradations between them. The same is true in our human existence, no matter what you may have been taught. Life is obviously not all sunshine and rainbows.
The underworld is a potent place you can traverse through… once you learn to recognize when you are in it. When you understand how to identify and navigate the underworld rather than trying to keep it at bay or pretending it doesn’t exist, you harness the tremendous power that resides in your emotional body. Like the power of a half-tamed horse, it can either take you for a wild ride or you can learn to saddle it, ride it, and guide it where you want it to take you.
The power of your emotions is that when you acknowledge and feel them, they pass through and out of you, layer by layer. You don’t even need to know why you’re feeling them. Just ride the waves. Feel what you are feeling. Breathe with it. Be with it. There doesn’t need to be a story or a drama attached to it for it to move through and out. Chances are, whatever you are feeling is actually something you first experienced in childhood that you’ve been reminded of, re-evoking the same feelings. When you are able to just be with the feelings, you are forging new neural pathways in your brain, effectively re-wiring yourself in a very positive way.
Excerpted from the forthcoming book, Dancing with Cancer – The Sacred Feminine Path to Wholeness by Amrita Grace