Emotional Space

We often cite the time requirements for emotional change. ‘Give it time and the feeling will pass.’ It is as if emotions come with an expiration date. Once affected, we need to metabolize our feelings until they sufficiently breakdown to be absorbed into the background sensations that provide the low hum and undercurrent of our consciousness. Yet, we also spatialize emotions. Feeling close or distant constitutes the basic topography of emotional spacing. Giving a person space usually entails an emotional distance whereby that person can process their existing feeling(s) without the constant friction from new impressions. Beyond our temporal differentiation of feeling, the metaphor of spatial proximity is perhaps the best way approximate our emotional relatedness.

On Sukkot, the third level of the Tetragrammaton–the letter Vav–embodies the spatialization of our emotions. In general, the Vav denotes the emotive spectrum that is particular to the human subject. On account of its status as a mode of Being (as a letter of the Tetragrammaton which means ‘Being’), the Vav moves past the questions we already addressed about the transcendent and immanent emotive structures of the Yud and Hei and lays claim to the nature of space–or more precisely how we are found in space. By virtue of my being in space, the being of space is altered.

A Vav in Hebrew equals six. According to Kabbalah, the six are the six extremities of space: up/down, right/left, front/back. Three spacial dimensions (length, width and depth) translate into these six extremities. But these are not merely indexes for measuring purposes. Psychologist Rollo May has remarked that emotion can be read e-motion–to put into motion. Thinking of feeling in terms of motion reinforces the notion that change is what’s registered as emotion and not just a fixed position. While we constantly acknowledge our mental states in terms of spacial orientation, deep down we are intending something more akin to vectors which have both direction and magnitude through which we generate a determination of our relative position. The relativity of physical space gets recycled in our reflections upon our emotional space.

We hear this when we use expression like: ‘I’m feeling up, I’m on a high’ or ‘I’m depressed, I’m feeling down.’ Our propulsion forward is by force of attraction. We reverse course out of repulsion or recoil.  Right and left represent conservative or liberal feelings or attitudes about the world. I relate through these spatial relations which continually shift. Space is not homogenous. Moving upwards relative to my inner psychological and spiritual space is not an indifferent or neutral movement. It is charged with feeling. Space becomes personalized as it is plasticized with emotion. One spacial position or movement is not interchangeable with another in that I pour out my heart into this locomotion (locus ‘place’ + motion) thereby generating a unique wrap bubble.

On Sukkot, besides the Torah’s imperative of ‘dwelling’ in the Sukkah, we are also instructed to take up and bind together four species of plants (etrog [citron], lulav [date palm], hadass [myrtle tree boughs and leaves], aravah [willow tree branches]). All four are often designated just by the lulav alone. Moreover, the centrality of the lulav is captured by midrashic literature which points out that it resembles the spine. It also looks remarkably like the letter Vav. The most basic spacial extension of our brain activity, the link of the head to the body, is by means of the spine. As the primary pipeline for distributing and collecting consciousness, the spine acts as the part that represents the whole–that of the entire body drawn as a abstract stick figure. The double movement of outreach and intake of and from our mind becomes the emotional nexus of the human condition. In Kabbalah, there is a set of letters that relate to the signaling mechanism of the emotions which are referred to in Sefer Yetzirah, as ‘double letters.’ A letter is a sign. Each sign is dual-directional. We have a duplex or manifold import/export between self and world via felt sensation.

Another beautiful allusion of the spacing of emotion and the emotive character of space can be recovered once the word lulav is sliced open. Lulav [לולב] can be read l’vav lev [ל’ו לב] meaning ‘to’ or ‘for’ (l’) the letter Vav is a heart (lev). Not only is the letter Vav an articulation of the heart, it provides a compact form for understanding an essential modality of the ‘being’ of emotion. Emotions may exist spatially. Their spatiality establishes them as relational, a thought communicated in the name of the Vav which both looks like and means a ‘hook.’ Grammatically the Vav usually functions as the Vav hachibur–the ‘connecting Vav’ or conjunction that translates as ‘and.’ This implies that the confluence of spaces establishes a looped band of affectation.

Having established the lulav as a sign of emotive directionality, we must also consider the waving ceremony or na’anu’im that defines our performance with the lulav once its bound. Beyond thinking of the lulav as a simple emotional compass or gyroscope, the waving of the lulav takes this object, which physically marks a singular direction, and moves it through all six possible extremities of space. Thus the lulav, which is the six emotions that extend in six directions (in one to one correspondence), modulate through all six within six.

In other words, if the lulav is thought of as a giant Vav which can only occupy one of the six directions at a time, then the particular direction in which it is pointed describes the overall orientation of the full set of six emotions due to the fact that the Vav by itself equals six as a number. This is as if to say that my ‘up/down, right/left, front and back’ are all up–that my emotional spectrum is all on the up and up. Everything is up. If the lulav is in the down position then the entire set of six emotions is down. Because my emotional orientation is all about relationships it cannot be related in and of itself. It needs something other to relate to. I must orient my orientation. I must relate to my relatedness. There are not six, there are six within six of 36 possible combinations.

Where do we find a hint of these 36? For those familiar with the full range of Jewish practices, the number 36 relates to the number of candles that are lit during the eight days of Chanukah. There are said to be also 36 tzadikim or righteous ones in every generation. However, for our conversation we turn once again to the word lulav which encodes an additional allusion: lu lev [לו לב] which means 36 (Lamed-Vav) lev (heart). The heart or emotions have 6 times 6 e-motions with which to re-spatialize space, orient our orientations or relate to our relatedness. Emotional space is holographic. Each of the six extremities contains all of the others in such a way that the full identification of any extremity necessitates a commitment to qualifying itself or conditioning itself via its relatedness to all of the other extremities. Giving space for emotion should not result in a form of emotional isolationism with discreet feelings that cannot relate to each other. On the contrary, emotional integrity elicits an integral relationship of heterogeneous feelings and allocates a space and a spacing for all of them. Point the way by waving.

The question of the temporality of emotion and its connection to the Etrog will be the subject of Part Four.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/taken-to-heart-part-4/

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