People I deeply respect have told me quite frequently in recent months that emotions are a crutch, a delusion, and detrimental to my soul’s growth into self-empowerment…
More recently, and coming from multiple sources, has been the message that we are vibrational beings living in a vibrational universe, and that our emotions are our best, and most accurate, interpreters of those vibrations…
So… Today I wake feeling a heavy burden of Grief, complete with its related emotional states of sadness, irritability, hopelessness, and fatigue, with a repeated message that I’m in some sort of Denial about something… But I cannot find a single “reason” for me to feel this way…
Question: Am I deluding myself by acknowledging these melancholy feelings and granting them significance, or am I deluding myself by saying they’re just feelings that can, and should be, ignored?
Addendum: The question asked is mostly rhetorical, and has more to do with exploring our perceptions and how we define “truth” in our mundane existence. Experience tells me that in a dilemma such as this, one of two things will occur: either events will unfold in such a way that a valid “reason” for these feelings will manifest, proving they were accurate, albeit caused by some unknown (as yet) trigger; or the feelings will pass without consequence, becoming no more than a “mood” swing I am glad to let go of.
the otherhood of one 
Lisa my dear, I have to know; are you on any sort of medications? ones that could alter your mood. If not, or even if your are, don’t worry about anything. Everything will work out in time. Never, ever worry, about anything.
There is a plan. You my not be aware of what it is but there is a plan.
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No, I’m not on any medications. And I’m not particularly worried about anything. Just curious about how things work sometimes.
Thanks for your encouragement and suggestions! You are a blessing, Eddie… 🙂
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Emotions a crutch?….. What the……………………..??
Emotions are part of Life. It’s how we work, They are how we survive, how we respond. Simple as that. Any other analysis is simple posturing and looking for something that is not there…..
Whooooo…..rant over (sorry I’ve been doing another stint on a UK ‘Oh-We-Am-SSSoooo-Sophisticated-There-Is-Obviously-No-Spirituality-and-you-thiests-are-so-inferior ‘ apparently religion forum).
Anyways.
One of the great frontiers, is the Human Mind, which itself is linked to the Human Body and The Human Spirit. And they are work in one link and the Conscious never truly knows what’s going on in the background.
Waking up in that type of ‘location’ can have so many reasons. The sub-conscious could have been processing some disturbing or upsetting information which has left a residue in the Conscious. The body could feel a bit out of synch and in some tangled way it’s saying ‘I wanna slow down a bit’; usually as the day progresses the feeling tend to wear away as the events of the day take precedence.
We are complex creatures. We have that whole Universe out there and we’re trying to make sense of it all, and live our day-to-to-day lives too, AND relate to our fellow humans.
I reckon you have the right approach there Lisa, let the ‘mood’ pass.
All the best, take care
Roger
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Oh, yeah! I do so love a great Roger rant! Lol… (Is that really the name of the forum you were visiting, because it’s awesome! 😉 )
As to the emotions, I don’t think anyone is saying emotions aren’t part of the human experience, because they certainly are. It’s when they become the totality of it that they become a problem. I heard it explained best to me by a woman I recently met. She said we are spirits who enter human bodies in order to experience all that life can be, or feel. But emotions are addictive. We get so caught up in feeling human, that we forget who we truly are. We become trapped in our physical manifestation. We start to believe, maybe, that we are humans having a spiritual experience rather than spirits having a human experience… We have to learn to detach from those emotions in order to remember who and what we truly are…
Or put another way, emotions are like an ocean we long to experience. So we drop in, swim around a bit, enjoy the immensity and depth of our experience as humans. If we get too caught up in that game, we may well drown in it. Better to surf the surface, ride the tides, come ashore from time to time to remember our true selves are not limited to the waters themselves, but can also experience wind, fire (sun) and earth as well…
But yes, we are complex beings. And this, too, shall pass. Even moods… 🙂
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Ah I see.
Thanks for that clarification Lisa. Intriguing viewpoint, I can see the connection with some established religious thought.
(Hush my grumpy mouth!)
Naw, that’s my name for it. I’ll not mention it’s true name in case this lively WP place gets connected through me and I wouldn’t want their nihilistic toxicity seeping over here. They can stay in their own little bubble; they give Atheisms a bad name. (as bad as the most blinkered intolerant Christian; they share much in common)
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Isn’t it intetesting that they share so much in common? Perhaps it has less to do with what they believe, and more to do with how. Extremism and fanaticism express themselves in similar ways, regardless of the subject matter involved…
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Yes, actually Lisa you are a multidimensional vibration to be exact 😉
It doesn’t mean we aren’t real, just not what we thought we were.
Negative emotions will come up often on this journey to your Self. Let them rise and fall, you know this maybe, just watch them and have no reaction, but iften they are a sign of some trauma, recent of in the past. I would examine the signs and see if anything is coming up before or after the feelings. I’m a Jungian myself, so my views are roughly his. You need to root out fear and regret. That is your work.
Don’t let anyone confuse you about what you feel.
Pssst, there is no plan, it’s all in your mind or the All mind. It’s a state of being you are working towards.
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Excellent advice, Omega! It’s all about becoming more aware, about becoming more authentically what we already are but have somehow obscured from our I-sight.
At least that’s what I’ve come to believe. For now anyway… 😉
Funny thing about Fear and Regret… Every time I’m convinced I’m finally free of them, they come back. It’s a conundrum. Today, I decided to simply let them go without engaging them at all, and my mood improved throughout the day. Perhaps the messages about Denial were not so much that I was in denial, as that I needed to actually deny those negative feelings to prevent them taking root once more in my psyche. It is, after all, a jungle in there, and everything grows prolifically… 😉
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Becoming aware yes, actually you are learning to see things as they are minus all the names baggage and paths. You are the path. That is all ultimate awareness is. Accepting whatever comes moment by moment calmly. The Zen Buddhists And Lao Tzu can teach you this.
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“You are the path…” This intrigues me. I have come to understand that I am Awareness, but this statement feels new to me. I will want to ponder this one. Thank you!
As for the Zen Buddhists and Lao Tzu, they are the ones who started me on this path so many years ago. Perhaps it is time to revisit their wisdom to see how my perspective has changed… 🙂
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Don’t deny them, embrace and explore them and follow them down to their roots. You are not becoming a better nicer more loving person. You are already that, it is the outside works that has convinced you that you are suffering. As long as you identify with things in the world as your main awareness and attention, you will struggle. Peace is here. No effort is needed 😉
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What wonderful words to curl up with at bedtime… Thank you. 🙂
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There is nothing to a vibrating guitar string but the string itself. When the vibration ends, is the string gone?
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Hmm… Intriguing question…
The guitar string vibrates when moved by some force, creating sound and resonance. When the vibration fades, so does the sound, but the string remains the same…
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All of go through our eras. We go through periods of deep introspection. Sometimes we can brush things off with a laugh, others times we are too sensitive.
I hope you are well.
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I am wonderful, Andrew! And I so appreciate your concern. You are a kind man and a dear friend…
Please know I am sending you and Allie hopeful, healing thoughts, as I wish for easier times ahead for you two… 🙂
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Putting my foot in it again. I don’t have any advice, or at least what I’m going to say isn’t meant as advice, just as information. There’s a tendency on Earth to confuse feelings with emotions. This the Teachers explained to me at length, and finally I did get it. In the physical realm of our bodies our senses are equivalent to those long feelers you see on insects. We use our senses to experience our physical environment and learn from it. Senses give us feelings, connecting what we sense with feelings to the brain, which then get translated through the ego to the mind which is the final repository of everything we are, and are learning through our experiences. Once the “data” is in the mind, what information the feelings collected becomes basically useless to the brain so it tries to expel these feelings through a process fo flushing we call emotions. So… our emotions are basically exhaust. When we evolve beyond reliance upon the body-brain functions to determine how to live our lives, we discover that we have no use for emotions. We allow them to be flushed out. They can’t be reused or recycled anymore than exhaust from a car. Emotions are spent, or entropic, energy that can no longer be used to do work. And here’s the problem. The Earthian being is a very complex construct, basically composed of spirit, a mind and a body. Much spiritual teaching has been geared at confusing the being so it would never know when it’s being manipulated and lied to… in spades. Few people understand the purpose of the soul aspect – and note I did not include it in the Earthian being’s make up. And few people realize how detrimental it is to cling to emotions. The soul is a programmed implant which every Earthian (and perhaps some or all other sentient life) is born with. It’s a control app and it works extremely well to supply the false understanding that causes the average Earthian to never get off the obvious treadmill: s/he just cannot, and if pushed, will suddenly rebel against any thought of freedom and seek fulfillment within the soul programming: the comfort zone which relies heavily on emotions.
This is a very long story but to recap: clinging to emotions is worse than useless. It’s like sticking a pipe over your car’s exhaust and running it back into the car while you’re driving around. It won’t make you feel better, quite the opposite. Letting go of emotions is where freedom is found because then one can think clearly about the feelings that gave rise to those emotions, and deal with the information contained in the feelings. As long as one is trapped in the emotions caused by the feelings one cannot think clearly – it’s impossible.
My understanding, and experience 🙂
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Ahh, I am so glad, and grateful you jumped in, Sha’Tara! You have such an honest and consistent point of view that I learn a little more every time you venture into these discussions… 🙂
Yet I must admit to being confused still by the emotions/feeling dichotomy. I undetstand your words, and how you string them together. I can “see” how it works as you describe, with emotions being an exhaust or waste product. But I cannot seem to grasp what those initial “feelings” are, that initial sense data, that differs from emotion…
I suspect I’m over-thinking it, caught up in the language of it, and that’s where my incomprehension arises. Because for me feelings and emotions ARE synonymous, which is, as you say, the problem. Everything else is just sensory data (also called feelings sometimes, particularly with touch data), but not truly feelings…
Hmm… Recalibrating… 🙂
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That’s why I don’t give advice, just share experiences, observing how they combined and worked in changing my own life. We’re all individuals, wired differently, with vastly different experiences which go off the chart when we stretch out into past/future lives and their ofttimes totally alien experiences. Perhaps it takes a certain type of being to be able (or have the need) to separate feelings (which come from our physical senses and are necessary to survival and evolution) and the emotions they engender. Perhaps I’ve seen too many dysfunctional people go through life riding on their emotions and never able to get a grip on rising above that which continually drag them down. Perhaps I’ve seen how addictive and destructive emotions are, particularly of longing, pining, fear, hate, “in-loveness” and jealousy. Perhaps in the past I just tried too hard to be a normal Earthian and found the necessary adjuncts such as emotional responses, too irrational and shallow and chose “other than” as a response to the programming. What is detachment? It’s not, not having, it’s not being emotionally attached to a thing or an outcome. An emotional being can never understand detachment and detachment is essential to one who chooses the life of compassion, including detachment from one’s own physical life or body.
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Lisa, I love that you were able to put yourself out there like this and tell us how you’re feeling. I confess, as a highly empathetic and emotional being, this post truly resonates. We so often are hammered down with the words and thoughts and expectations of others that there is something we very often lose sight of… I feel as if what you’re getting too much of is advice and what you’re not getting enough of is SELF.
Do your melancholy feelings need attention? Let them have that. Feel them. Hear them. See them. They are significant if you deem so.
OR
Don’t. Don’t do anything but breathe.
Find some quiet, find your breath, and feel you on the inside. Listen to your truth, feel your self-love, and discern from yourself what you view as important.
Your life is yours, your emotions are yours, your soul is yours.
With love,
CearaInJoy
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I love these beautiful words, CearaInJoy, and the beautiful soul who brought them to me. Thank you!
And especial thanks for the reminder of what’s truly important. I feel as if I’ve been floundering somewhat, and your words brought me right back to Center.
Welcome to the Otherhood! It is Good to find you here! 🙂
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Emotions are all humans have. They spring from our chemistry and experience. One’s emotional reality is a huge part of a unique life. I don’t think there is anyway to objectively analyse it, there are only the outcomes of emotions. That we can try to understand, but the wellsprings of emotion are so basic we might as well try to know every molecule in our body and every atom that affects us in the outside world. Emotions, if they don’t lead to injury or death, are meant to be enjoyed, even the depressing ones. The lows of life give us clarity of vision and make us feel unique. As I’m sure you know, most of the great art of this world comes from suffering. Somebody once asked: Can a totally well-balance person make great art? I think the answer is no. My problem is that I am not crazy enough and therein lies the trick of emotions and art. Thanks. Duke
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Welcome, Duke! Thank you for this thoughtful, well-reasoned response. I especially like the idea that our “lows give us clarity of vision and make us feel unique”. I don’t think that ever occurred to me before! And, of course, you are right that art requires some suffering to be authentic and real…
Perhaps I can use this as an excuse for my brand of “craziness”? 😉
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I use my emotions to indicate and guide me toward what I do like or want and what I don’t like or want. If I’m judging someone….then I take a look at me. In the last few years, I’ve been following and listening more attentively to my spirit which is an unemotional guidance system. I takes some getting used to but I like it. I’ve written about some experiences in my blog. Here it is……maybe it will add another dimension to the emotional experiences…https://unbreakablejoy.wordpress.com/
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That makes sense, Julia. Thanks for jumping into the discussion, and offering your wisdom! I will definitely check out the link… 🙂
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