To ask the self to allow emotions to be refined and purified is to ask the self to walk into the fire of suffering. For if one defends against pain of an emotional type or a spiritual type, one ceases to be able to go deeper within those many, many levels of self that move into the archetypal mind. Indeed, it is through repeated experiences with such deeply painful emotions such as grief, anger, jealousy and rage that one, oh so slowly, becomes able to bear the beauty of pure emotion.As in all things spiritual, the paradox is that as one is able to open oneself to the pain of going deeper within one’s emotional life, one is more and more able to see, to bear, to hold, to accept the emotions of joy, bliss and peace. For as in all of the levels and ways of understanding the one infinite Creator, the essence is always love. Consequently, the river of grief, the river of rage, all rivers whatsoever of purified emotion, lead at last into the ocean of bliss, which is the steady state of infinite love.