A Soul Connection

Emotion as a Pointing Device toward Conscious Understanding -- Bridging the Relative & Absolute Worlds

Are emotions mental states that arise spontaneously? How are emotions related to feelings? What is the relationship, if any, to love as an emotion, a feeling, and a soul quality?

A general definition of an emotion describes a neural impulse that moves an organism to action. It's considered to be a psycho-physiological state and really does arise spontaneously and involuntarily.

As physical expressions, emotions are related to feelings, perceptions, beliefs associated with objects or others -- even a certain aroma can remind us of someone or an event and "wha-lah" a particular feeling and/or emotion arises instantly. We're all aware of how the physical body responds to emotions, i.e., changes in temperature and breathing; increased heartrate; tightness in throat, chest, or belly. You may very well come up with other ways your own body responds to specific emotions.

From a neurobiological perspective, emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. These mammalian elaborations use neurochemicals, e.g., dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonim, to step-up or step-down the brain's activity level.1 These 'states' are manifestations of any number of various non-verbally expressed feelings from one end of a continuum to the other end.

Looking at emotions energetically, we experience unpleasant (negative) emotions as energy-draining and pleasant (positive) emotions as energy-calming and sometimes as very alive and exhilerating. Emotions move energy -- e-motion (energy in motion) -- WHEN we facilitate rather than hinder the movement. Most of us have an automatic tendency (reaction) to "hold our breath" when we begin to experience a negative emotion. By doing the opposite, by breathing consciously, we facilitate the movement of emotional energy through us.

An emotion is experienced as a response to the nervous system and is a part of the Relative-world; a soul (or essential) quality is an expression of the Absolute-world. An emotion needs an "other" in order to arise. An emotion points toward a part/voice that needs something and is somehow trying to protect the self. An essential, soul quality doesn't point to anything outside of itself; it's complete, whole in and of itself -- it is what it is. There's no garment or anything covering up what It is. There's nothing else determining what It should be. Love is pure, unconditional Love. Strength is calm without needing to be inferior or superior to anything else.

Consider this. The Ego rules in the Relative-world and it trys to imitate Essence. From the perspective of the Relative-world, we are our Ego/Personality and from this perspective our emotions often define who we are, i.e., an angry person, a happy person. From the Absolute-world, we are Essence and our essential qualities define who we are -- our True Nature, i.e., Love, Value, Strength. From an integrated perspective, we're able to see both views; and, we're able to understand compasionately with an open heart what's being pointed to. We're not really an angry person. We're feeling angry and that feeling/emotion is pointing to some part/voice who needs to be heard, who may be feeling unloved, unappreciated, disappointed.

Guideline for Dialogue Practice
Actually, we've already done some dialogue practice with the Voice of Fear, one of the primary emotions experienced by both humans and animals. So, we know that we can find out interesting information by talking with Fear, and other emotions, directly. I'd like to suggest a slightly different variation for dialoguing with emotions. Let's see how it works for you.

• As usual, check in with the Overall Voice -- in this case, the Voice of the Overall Emotional Body. Think of this voice as the part of us that houses, or contains, all emotions. This voice is aware of all activity, i.e., agitation from some emotions, coma-like states from other emotions. We check in with this Overall Voice to find out about what's going on so that we can understand more about ourselves, thereby becoming more consciously aware. After checking-in, we can ask if there's a particular emotion we should speak to; or, we can just say, I'm curious about the emotion of ___________ and would like to dialogue with it.

Now, here's where you might want to experiment to see what works best for you. This next piece is the slight variation I was speaking about.

1. Let's say that you're curious about why you often feel disappointed (in relationships, at work, in Life). Disappointment seems to "be up in your Life right now." You could ask to speak to "the One Who (Always) Feels Disappointment." Remember to make the shift in your seat and then ask the question "who am I speaking to?" And, reply "the One Who (Always) Feels Disappointment." This helps seat you in (embody) the voice with which you're wanting to dialogue.
2. Ask any number of questions from the place of curiosity and wanting to discover whatever you can about this part/voice. The voice/part gets to say whatever it wants to say; it's speaking from it's perspective only. What the voice/part says may not, probably is not, the truth BUT it's the truth as that voice/part knows it from it's very limited perspective.
3. The dialogue that originated with Disappointment may lead to another, like "the One Who is Angry" or "the One Who Feels Unloved." Move along and dialogue with each of these as they arise, however, remember to be considerate of the voice/part with which you're speaking as you would with an actual person. You wouldn't just leave them hanging while you go off and talk with someone else who just showed up, would you?

• Once you feel like you've gotten to the bottom line, an understanding of some sort, you may want to see if you can find out which Essential, Soul Quality is being imitated? You may be able to find this out by asking the voice/part you've been working with, or you may want to explore dialoguing with the emotion itself. I'd suggest a question like: "What Essential (or Soul) quality are you most like?" How are you the same? How are you different?

Exercise
Using the handout sheet (bubble diagram) where you listed your emotions, pick those that you're curious about, those that you'd like to know more about, to use in your practice sessions. Use the guidelines provided above.

Comment Area Below
I encourage you to use the comment area below to share your experience and insights. Feel free to use your initials if you're uncomfortable using your name on this blog.

1 Source: Wikipedia Article on Emotions