Emotional taming:
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
The world of the emotions is formless and as such emotions escape us, it is not in our control, unless we put borders to them they will continue to control us.
There is a war between form and content, the form wants to freeze the content, and the content wants to shatter the form and to go wild.
The emotions are formless, and as such they tend to take over our life. But it is difficult to accept that the emotions, which we consider as our natural self, and as part of being authentic are in need to be worked upon.
With it, we understand that the emotions of a child needs to be restrained and kept under control.
But there is a confusion between having control of the emotions and repressing them. In most grownups, deep in them, behind the social mask and the well behaved personality – are hiding the same wild emotions as with a child, just that they are repressed, which on the surface looks as though we are in control of them.
The emotions could be liken to a fence of bushes, which if it is not being pruned they will grow wild, therefore ‘pruning’ the emotions means putting borders to them.
It is very difficult to grasp that like the bushes that grow stronger when pruned, so it is with the emotions; putting borders to them is actually strengthening them… and letting them go wild, in fact might weaken them.
The emotions which were not worked upon are getting hot very easily and when they are in this state -it is difficult to listen inside, to the inner life, and it is important to take note that the emotions are not our inner life, they can hide our real being, our selfhood.
One of the problems of putting borders to the emotions is that one can see this as a limit for the expression of his inner life, people feel that emotions are life; if it is not for them, one feels that he is not alive, but it is difficult to accept that they could be ‘stilling’ from us the real experience of life, and being alive.
Only when our emotions are quiet we can experience life with all its power.
One of the ways in dealing with something that we wish to improve is us is by what is called: guided imagery, the person imagens a heavy weight being put on the hot emotions, pressing them down and out through the legs. But not to do it with force or will power, for it will only increase the hotness, it should be done in a nonchalant way, softly. The lower is the place of the body where the hot emotions are situated – the more is the control that we have of them.
The emotions are very combatable, they catch fire very easily, a good imagery practice is to imagen blue rain coming from above and thus cooling and lowering down the emotional flames.
Observing the emotions:
But the problem with this practices is that using force against that which is forceful, might get the opposite result…
The emotion are very powerful and when they get hot it is very difficult to stop them from bursting out.
The way to deal with them is not by opposition, for when we oppose something we make it more powerful (like in a diet to lose weight, when one opposes his eating habits, he in fact begins to eat more…). The way to deal with a powerful entity in us is not directly, but through a neutral vector, an uninvolved mediator. And it is called: the observer.
In Quantum physics, the observer effect is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. Physicists have found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena (by changing the test apparatus and passively ‘ruling out’ all but one possibility), can actually change the measured result.
The observer is supposed to watch that the emotions do not get over heated and go wild.
Most people do not observe their emotions, so instead of letting them flood us with every emotional stimuli – we can observe them, it sound strange that just observation can do something about such a powerful entity as the emotions. When observing for real one can discover hidden things which escape him in the ordinary casual look. We have a tendency to cover up our emotions, even from ourselves, especially when we have to admit something not so nice about them, such as admitting that we feel guilty or hurt or angry, it might disclosed to others characteristics which are considered in society to be ‘not so nice’…
When we observe the emotions a spontaneous intelligence
attaches itself to it, it is called: Emotional intelligence, and intelligence is about discovering what is nor normally perceptible.
Generally it is difficult to recognize that specific emotion is at play in us, but it is even almost impossible to get an understanding when one is personally involved, which means that the a feeling of being hurt or insulted, or humiliated – is taking over. When the emotions are hot or in a state of personal involvement, there is a kind of fog around them which does not allow us to see and understand what is happening there.
An emotional observation creates a distance from the emotions and the distance allows us to not identify with them and thus to not become personally involved.
Creating an intelligence about them allows us to be active and have an initiative about them, which is contrary to being passive to them and for them influencing us freely.
Understanding them better also immunes us against being a victim to their wiled operation.
Observation is an agent of our consciousness, which can moderate them from becoming riot.
The more observation we would have of the emotion the more understanding we would have of our life and have also the possibility to develop a higher consciousness.
Gabriel