Are we emotion sensors?

  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
6 years 2 months ago #312296 by
Replied by on topic Are we emotion sensors?
Thank you Ob1 it is interesting to consider that our brain extend throughout our bodies. That our body is conscious but cannot act without the consent of the nervous system.
Arisaig are you talking about love or fear of abandonment? We often think we act out of love but most of the time when we give something we expect something in return and we get frustrated when we dont get it. Would you say that kind of behavior is love? I would say that someone truly having love in his heart will never experience frustration as a result of their love action.
Guys you just made me remember something I heard in a youtube conference called a walk through the presence process. The guy says that you are looking for authenticity in your emotions. For instance if the only kind of interaction you had with others was being abused it is authentic for you and you will seek out authenticity through abusive relationships in your life. Point is a negative emotion is here to give you something positive: Authenticity. According to him if you want to go out of this spial and create another type of authenticity you have to start treating yourself in the way you would like others to treat you and it will resolve by itself. I recomend this 4 hour audio thing it brought me a lot.

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
6 years 2 months ago #312300 by
Replied by on topic Are we emotion sensors?

Flojade wrote: Arisaig are you talking about love or fear of abandonment? We often think we act out of love but most of the time when we give something we expect something in return and we get frustrated when we dont get it. Would you say that kind of behavior is love? I would say that someone truly having love in his heart will never experience frustration as a result of their love action.


Love is absolute, or else it isn't true. Charities must love what they do or else they'd expect something for their time, and thus not be a charity anymore.

One thing the men of my family have in common is how far we take love. My grandfather had no passion for his wife, but served her faithfully without thought of reward, nor would she ever supply one. My Great Grandfather left his new bride to fight in the Great War for the sake of ensuring her safety. He didn't see her for years, for the sole purpose of ensuring her safety and happiness. My father has worked in jobs he hated and would return home to an exhausted wife who was too tired to do much for him other than make supper. And myself... well, people only describe my actions to my ex as selfless.

Love is selfless, it is without want. It gives with no expectation of return.

But yes, it can be frustrating to put in so much without any return. In a perfect world, that wouldn't frustrate people... but this is not a perfect world and we can become easily frustrated. But that should not be a reason to stop giving love. Give give give without thought of reward, feel frustrated, but don't let it stop you from loving.

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
6 years 2 months ago #312385 by Manu
Replied by Manu on topic Are we emotion sensors?
Found a cool article, might be fitting here:

https://ideapod.com/zen-master-explains-positive-thinking-terrible-advice/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=newhuman

The pessimist complains about the wind;
The optimist expects it to change;
The realist adjusts the sails.
- William Arthur Ward
The following user(s) said Thank You:

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
6 years 2 months ago - 6 years 2 months ago #312409 by
Replied by on topic Are we emotion sensors?
From an internal arts perspective, emotions are deeply bound to the constant state of flux within our bodies, and in a healthy interplay, affect each other so that there is less excess of one particular emotion. This basic idea has been the foundation of several different cultures' theories of medicine, and in the modern industrial world, we see it in the battle of neurotransmitters and their dance with the immune & endocrine systems. In my practice, emotions are not only part of what makes me human, but serve as a readout of what is going on with my general health, showing me what is out of balance and where changes need to be made. While these intentional changes do affect the emotions and have served well as longterm management for certain conditions, it must be stressed that it's isn't as simple as "thinking good thoughts" (in agreement with some of what has already been posted). The connection between mind and body is densely entrenched, and while our conscious thought can help direct our focus, the body must be worked on as well, on several levels to affect the deeper levels that the conscious mind has difficulty reaching.

Within the TCM system, even happiness/joy can be damaging when it is excessive, leading to mania or obsession (including the fear of not being in the state of happiness.) In the cultures whose teachings have influenced my path the most, "happiness" is not supposed to be the main pursuit of life, and is often posed as one of the great temptations on that path. For me, the point of spiritual work is to become more and more capable of perceiving Truth, and happiness is just one of the temporary filters I experience in that process (and I say that as someone who has experienced classic spiritual ecstasies, which do require a heavy counterbalance.) Rather than just the binary of happiness or sadness, TCM identifies 5-7 (depending on the system) emotions linked to internal functions. Similar to the checks and balances of neurotransmitters, each emotional energy helps to balance out the other ones. Of course, I have yet to ever meet someone who had it all perfectly in harmony, especially out here in the non-monastic world where many of us have to make do with what our time and resources allow.

Final note, I personally doubt that emotions ever truly disappear in the practice, and would be concerned if they did (it's just too easy to become deluded with the desire of claiming mastery over them, and that can be a major blind spot of spiritual pride). But we can become very aware of their limitations and impermanence through studying the mind-body relationship, which leads to the greater ability to not let them dominate our intentions and actions. And even love falls under that rule - ScreenPrism's "The Last Jedi: Why Love Never Works in Star Wars" has a humorous but great analysis of the different definitions of love as they may/may not apply in our understanding of the Jedi way. (not linking due to potential spoilerage.)
Last edit: 6 years 2 months ago by . Reason: typo

Please Log in to join the conversation.

More
6 years 2 months ago - 6 years 2 months ago #312412 by OB1Shinobi
Replied by OB1Shinobi on topic Are we emotion sensors?
These questions werent directed at me and the replies that have already been given were very good. I think these are interesting questions and id like to respond to them as well, if thats ok.

This one is simpler so it goes first...

Flojade wrote: Do you think being sensitive is a good thing and why?



It is quite good to be sensitive in the sense that you are attuned to your own senses and sensations, and that youre alert to the verbal and non-verbal messages of the people around you. Its very useful to be able to speak and act with some sensitivity towards other peoples emotions and mental states (yes i am aware that this is me saying this lol).

Being sensitive in the sense that you are fragile or timid, that your feelings are easily hurt, that youre mentally easy to unbalance, and/or that you hide from and/or over-react to other people as a result of your own neuroticism is....not so great.

Also how can we reward the brain?




Mandhars posts (slightly reduced for brevity) that preceded this question


Warning: Spoiler!


@Mandhar: that post was excellent! The things you said are basically correct and I can help by clearing up an area where the wording could be improved and by adding some of the science and psychology that backs it all up.

Mandar wrote: By mindfully focusing on the happy, positive and peaceful feelings, you reward your brain (even more) for feeling good, this will increase your likeliness to feel good again, creating a positive spiral.
....you see people slowly spiraling into depression. They start focusing on the bad emotions, rewarding your brain for feeling it, so you will feel more of those emotions on which to focus etc.



"Reward" is a tricky word in this context. Not that its wrong per se, but it would be easier to use the word "reinforce" instead. This is because (as Mandhar said) the more we return to a thought or a feeling, the more we focus on it, the more we PRACTICE it, the better we get at it. Part of the way that our brains (which are complicated beyond belief and still nowhere near fully understood) process memories, thoughts, and emotions is by creating channels or populations of neurons that consistently work together in association with a given experience.

from http://www.human-memory.net/processes_storage.html

"....memories are stored throughout the brain as groups of neurons that are primed to fire together in the same pattern that created the original experience, and each component of a memory is stored in the brain area that initiated it (e.g. groups of neurons in the visual cortex store a sight, neurons in the amygdala store the associated emotion, etc)."

Language, for example: every word that we know is stored as a memory in the brain, so when i use the word "memory", there is a particular group of neurons that fire together in a certain way. Before i learned the word "memory", those neurons didnt all quite work together in the precise way that they had to in order for me to learn the word. They had to be fired together many times, and every time that they were fired together, the connection between them became stronger and speed at which they were able fire increased. The more i used the word "memory", the more i understood it and the more thoroughly my brain was able to map its meaning and potential usage, and the more efficiently access it. I practiced using the word "memory" enough that its the easiest thing int the world now for me to access and return to, any time i try.

Thoughts, moods, and feelings all follow this same neural process. So, the more often we return to a particular thought, mood, or feeling, the easier it is for our brains to re-produce the experience associated with it.

Positive thinking is good if you understand it in a certain way (and rubbish if you dont). Its not useful to lie to ourselves, but we most definitely can focus on the positives in our lives. We can can choose to view MANY things in life in more than one way. Depressed people typically have a habbit of viewing things with a negative bias. This is what you can call "negative thinking" and it is possible to change that pattern to a significant degree. It takes practice to do that but its real and it works. This is the basic idea of what are known as the Cognitive models of therapy.

Cognitive therapies in general, and CBT (cognitive-behavior therapy) in particular, have the most success at treating depression and anxiety of all our current models. There are thought patterns that are pretty much always associated with depression (hopelessness, helplessness, and criticism/shame/unworthiness about the self, the future, or the world, in a nutshell), and there are methods for altering ones thinking in healthy ways which have been proven to work for many, many people. For instance, its common for depressed people to over-emphasize their shortcomings and under-value their successes or strengths. We focus on what we've done wrong far more than on what we get right. CBT helps teach people to balance out their focus by giving the positives equal recognition.. Its not "positive thinking" in the sense that we tell ourselves that everything is peaches and rainbows, but more like "no longer dedicated to negative thinking".
"Balanced thinking" might be a better term.

(This is not to say that there are not people who need medication or that depressed people should just "get over it" and "look on the bright side").

I want to say more but I am out of time. BBL

People are complicated.
Last edit: 6 years 2 months ago by OB1Shinobi.
The following user(s) said Thank You:

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
6 years 2 months ago #312519 by
Replied by on topic Are we emotion sensors?
Thank You all for your insights! It is interesting to perceive an abnormally predominent emotion as a health condition whether the emotion has a good or a bad coonotation.
However i am happy that you balanced the positive thinking article ob1. I guess chasing a specific emotion is never a good solution and that we all have to learn to accept them whatever their nature.
Something that works for me when i get angry or sad is to deeply focus on how i feel and then duplicate myself. I exteriorize the emotional part of me as if it was a close friend and i imagine myself as just being there for him while he feels that. Trying to understand him.

Please Log in to join the conversation.

  • Visitor
  • Visitor
    Public
6 years 2 months ago #312535 by
Replied by on topic Are we emotion sensors?
In my experience, there is a difference between being highly sensitive to emotions and being empathic. A highly sensitive person can tell what a person is feeling at a given point, but an empathic person, which is pretty rare, can actual feel what another person is feeling. They absorb the feeling of another person or environment. This allows an empath to internalize this energy and make it hard for them to identify whether what they are feeling is coming from them or the people / environment around them. There is no black or white to this. You can be highly sensitive to emotion and empathic at the same time and in different amounts. Think of it as a rainbow. Empath on one end and highly sensitive on the other, with an infinite number of of possibilities in between.

I think the real question we as humans being should be asking is where are these emotions coming from and why. Clinically depressed people have a chemical imbalance in the brain and prescription medication is needed along with qualified counseling. There is no shame in seeking help and being screened for these serious medical issues. If you know someone who may need help, please reach out to them because all life has value and we would never want to lose someone we care about.

Negative emotional responses, however, seem to be the direct result of our ego. Don't put your happiness in the hands of others. They will never live up to your expectations, and this WILL create a negative response in you. Let go of ego and take control of your own emotional state. To identify if it is ego creating your emotional state, ask yourself if are depending on your external environment to feel the way you want to feel. When you rely on other people's perceptions to feel good, then you are going to create fear. Fear of judgement, fear of failing, and you will start to blame others for how you feel because you are not getting the feelings you want. Don't rely on anything to make you feel what you want to feel. That is your job, to take responsibility for how you feel. Find a way to feel the way you want to feel that doesn't rely on the external environment. When you feel the way you want to feel, without regard for what is going on around you, you will negate the ego by taking away the energy that feeds it. Be happy for your own sake and not for the sake of others.

Please Log in to join the conversation.

Moderators: ZerokevlarVerheilenChaotishRabeRiniTavi