Emotional Intelligence – AoteaRa: Dawn of the Sun

A dream:

I am watching the process of cooking a meal on a slow fire, but the boy is hungry and urges me to increase the fire. I refuse, saying that from my position I can see better that the fire is hot enough, but he gets angry and calls me a fool.

Then I start talking to him, explaining that I (as a woman) actually have two intelligences (“ordinary” and emotional) whereas he has only one intelligence (the ordinary one). I tell him that most men have only one intelligence and those who have two are usually made fun of. Although of course men can develop their single intelligence to a very high level, like Einstein, but still …. I have two intelligences and he has one, and yet he calls me stupid?

It is clear that the dream is largely symbolic and reflects what is happening in my own life, in my inner world, and this is particularly true of the symbolism of cooking a meal over a slow fire. However, the part of the dream that talks about the two types of intelligence is actually quite universal and relevant to all of us, regardless of gender.

It is also clear that this strict division of men and women by intelligence in my dream has nothing to do with genderism, sexism or feminism, but on the contrary invites us to see each person as a being made up of two equal halves – polarities: feminine and masculine. For every human being contains both: what is considered archetypal masculine traits and their balancing counterpart, the feminine aspects. In this dream, this is played out as two kinds of intelligence: what we traditionally call simply “intelligence” (i.e. the analytical, logical, rational mind), and emotional intelligence, which includes sensitivity, emotionality, intuition and other similar aspects typically associated with feminine traits.

I have already written about the situation in our modern society, where everything is built mainly on masculine principles, while sensitivity, intuition, spontaneity, emotionality are meticulously suppressed not only in men, but also in women.

This suppression is more pronounced in men, to such an extent that men practically deactivate the whole half of their intelligence (the ‘feminine part’, i.e. the emotional intelligence), leaving in their arsenal only logical rational thinking and forcing themselves to suppress emotions, to be more reserved and less sensitive. This distortion will certainly lead any person to internal and (as a consequence) external conflicts, and most importantly – it will make them look at life with only one eye, and therefore cause a lot of mistakes made by not seeing, not feeling and not understanding.

So what is the way out? Probably, for a start, we need to develop a respect for sensitivity, intuition, emotionality, i.e. emotional intelligence, which is as important as so-called “intelligence” (the generic term we use for something that’s missing its whole half!). And from this new position we can begin to develop in ourselves that which is made redundant or suppressed. Not in a hurry, but step by step, ‘on a slow fire’, listening to the voice of our own Emotional Intelligence.

** Quote on image from: https://www.llresearch.org/channeling/1989/0507