The Dynamics of Emotion

The Dynamics of Emotion

Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia): We should kill him before he kills ...
Michael Corleone (Al Pacino): No. Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.

- The Godfather: Part III, directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Even a hoodlum knows that it's not wise to let emotions cloud one's judgement. According to Gary Zukav in The Heart of the Soul, emotion is nothing but a movement in our energy system. Whenever energy leaves our system, it produces an emotion, which is just a physical sensation localized on certain specific parts of the body: Sometimes it's felt deep in the heart, sometimes it's a "gut feeling", other times it's like a lump in the throat.

Let me save the discussion on this "energy system" for a later posting for it will be too esoteric to go any deeper. Suffice to say that, emotions are but a perturbation of our inner energy system, manifested as a sensation in the body. And if we are wise enough to read them, we'll know how to gauge our state of mind accurately.

A person who observes his emotion, is like a pilot who watches over the instruments on the dashboard of his cockpit carefully. Every tiny fluctuation of the dials is interpreted and the appropriate action taken immediately. The emotions we feel should be treated that way--as feedback signals, and nothing more than that.

We must always ask ourselves, why does this feeling of hate arises? Or why do we feel this intense jealousy towards someone? It always point to some kind of fear or weakness inside us. Sometimes it's because they trigger certain painful memories from the past. To evade the pain or to allay our fears, we often proceed to do something that seeks to cover, evade or postpone the issue. In doing so, we are merely acting on impulse, which further compounds the energy loss from our system.

When an emotion arises, we read it, like how a navigator would read the winds and the currents before deciding what course of action to take. This emotion is a reflection of our inner state--a spectral reading of our energy system. What is the underlying cause of this perturbation and how can this root cause be dealt with? That is the question that everyone of us must seek to answer--every single moment of our lives.

To be able to read the message from our emotions, we must learn detachment--or what I would normally refer to as equanimity (again!). The only productive way for energy to leave our system is through selfless love. But the so-called "love" that we mortals claim to give our loved ones is never a hundred percent selfless--that is why it causes so much perturbation in the energy systems of the parties involved.

I've used this analogy before--true selfless love is like sunlight: It is an emotional energy that radiates out harmoniously, giving life to everything surrounding it. No energy is every wasted that way because they are always used creatively to nurture growth.

Learn to read your emotions. Are you processing energy in the most efficient, productive and creative manner? You are the pilot and navigator. Check the reading on your emotional dials.