In my role as therapist I often encounter people who devalue other wish they could ignore or eliminate emotional experience. There are many reasons why that’s not advisable, but foremost is that emotional intelligence is essential to human and magical intelligence. (thread) 1/6 https://twitter.com/ryancaradog/status/1296120965345288193

To get at why is emotional intelligence is so critical, let’s consider Kluver-Bucy Syndrome, which is caused by severe damage to the amygdala. The amygdala is well known as a brain center pertaining to fear, but it’s also broadly involved in processing emotional salience. 2/6

Among many other symptoms, Monkeys with Kluver-Bucy syndrome become basically unable to regulate motivated attention. Every object becomes equally worthy of investigation, equally free from fear, equally salient, equally meaningful/less. This is know as “psychic blindness.” 3/6

What I take away from the phenomenon of “psychic blindness” (apologies for the ablist term) is that emotional salience is normally critical to constructing/navigating a world of meaning/intention. Emotions tell us what matters. Others’ emotions tell us what matter to them. 4/6

So as much as it hurts or becomes uncomfortable, I encourage everyone to get on speaking terms with your emotions and the emotions of others. This is not just for your own psychological help. It is magical/divinatory praxis, because praxis must always be steeped in meaning. 5/6

Magic constitutively involves being in conversation with the world of meanings/intentions, and your embodied, ensouled emotional life—and that of others—is a critical doorway to this world.

TL;DR: don’t psychically blind yourself by turning away from the emotional realm. 6/6