Emotions as Thresholds: Crossing into Inner Knowing

Life often arrives in waves, intense, radiant, turbulent, or still. Emotions are the tides of our soul: sometimes stormy, sometimes soothing, but always meaningful. Rather than obstacles to avoid, they are invitations to encounter ourselves. In the symbolic language of depth psychology, emotions are messengers of the unconscious, speaking in the ancient tongue of instinct, imagery, and sensation. They do not come to derail us; they come bearing news from within.

Whether experienced as grief, elation, rage, or tenderness, our emotional states point us toward unmet needs, hidden truths, and forgotten parts of the self longing to return. When we slow down enough to listen, to feel, and to honour what arises, emotions become lanterns in the dark, revealing a path toward greater authenticity and wholeness.

Listening to the Messengers of the Soul

Therapists often speak of "welcoming" or "making space" for emotions, not to indulge them, but to understand their symbolic intelligence. Drawing from Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), pioneered by Greenberg (2011), emotions are viewed not as irrational impulses to be tamed, but as adaptive signals that orient us toward survival, connection, and meaning. According to Greenberg, primary emotions, those initial, bodily-felt responses, carry critical information about our core needs and values. When listened to and processed, they can catalyse transformation.

From a Jungian standpoint, emotional states may also represent archetypal energies, inner figures such as the Child, the Warrior, or the Orphan that rise from the depths to claim our attention (Jung, 1960). These emotional encounters are not merely intrapsychic; they are initiatory. Each feeling, when consciously engaged, may open the door to a deeper part of the Self.

Soul Cartography: Practices for Emotional Wayfinding

To honour emotion as both symbol and compass, we must develop tools that do not fix or suppress, but listen, translate, and respond. The following practices offer gentle but radical ways to build a relationship with your emotional world:

1. The Threshold Pause
Each emotion begins as a whisper. Before it swells, it beckons us. Cultivate the habit of pausing even briefly and asking:
What is arriving? What is this moment asking of me?
Let this be the sacred threshold where reaction gives way to reflection.

2. Mapping the Felt Sense
Borrowing from Gendlin’s (1981) Focusing approach, learn to locate emotion in the body. Is there a contraction in the chest, a flutter in the belly, a burning in the throat? These sensations are entry points into the symbolic realm. Sit beside them like a quiet companion. Ask:
What shape does this feeling take? What colour, texture, image arises?

3. Dialoguing with the Emotion
Rather than collapsing into the feeling or fleeing from it, begin a written dialogue.
Sadness, what have you come to show me?
Anger, what boundary has been crossed?
This inner inquiry allows the emotion to become a guide rather than a saboteur.

4. From Symptom to Symbol
Jung (1966) suggested that when we interpret symptoms symbolically, they cease to be mere problems and become mythic material. Your anxiety might not just be fear—it could be the inner exile yearning to return home. Let the emotion transform from signal to story.

5. Ritual of Integration
After engaging with a powerful feeling, create a simple closing ritual. Light a candle. Draw the image of the emotion. Speak a word aloud: I see you. I hear you. You can rest now.
This act acknowledges the soul’s message and releases it back to the unconscious with reverence.

6. Following the Energy
Each emotion contains life force. Even despair has direction it points toward something that matters. Ask:
What does this feeling want me to care for, to defend, to change, to birth?

7. Witnessing Without Fixing
Sometimes, the medicine is simply present. Do not rush to interpret or resolve. Sit. Breathe. Be with. In the words of Pema Chödrön (2001), "feel the feeling and drop the story." Let the emotion be what it is without an agenda.

Why This Matters: The Mythic Function of Emotion

To engage our emotions is to participate in the myth of becoming. Jungian thought teaches us that individuation, the path to wholeness, requires encounters with all aspects of the psyche, especially the ones we fear or reject. Emotions are threshold keepers at the edge of our awareness. When welcomed, they initiate us into deeper self-knowledge and help integrate the opposites within.

Emotion Focused Therapy suggests that transformation arises not through cognition alone, but through corrective emotional experience, moments when we feel and respond differently, reclaiming agency and authenticity (Greenberg, 2011).

Thus, emotion becomes not something we "manage," but something we befriend. And in doing so, we create the conditions for becoming fully, radiantly human.

References

Chödrön, P., 2001. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

Gendlin, E.T., 1981. Focusing. New York: Bantam.

Greenberg, L.S., 2011. Emotion-focused therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Jung, C.G., 1960. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Collected Works, Vol. 8. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G., 1966. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Collected Works, Vol. 7. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.