The emotional domain is the gateway to the heart. To become a wholehearted human being, we have to be able to include the full range of our emotional responses, including the pain and difficulty of our lives. Diane Musho Hamilton, teacher of Zen, mediator and meditator, calls this kind of development, emotional maturity or emotional literacy. It involves our willingness to feel, to become awake to our emotional states, and at the same time, a complete willingness to let feeling subside or go, when it no longer serves.

Our troubled times need our emotional maturity, our capacity to feel, to be there for each other and for life itself.

This week on Radio evolve, Dr. Thomas Steininger talks with Diane Musho Hamilton about emotional maturity. (Diane will start an online course on emotional maturity on February 14th.)