Emotions

Peace be with you

I am going to make the case that the human being only feels two emotions – love and fear. Every other emotion one thinks they feel are just subsets of love and fear. Because both love and fear effect our actions and thought, those trying to manipulate our actions play on those two emotions to the point of seemingly irreparable catastrophe.

Affection, compassion, happiness, empathy, curiosity, euphoria, gratitude, hope, and wonder all are waters of the love well. These sub-love emotions are all heightened when you are in love. These are what are called “good emotions.” To create these good emotions all one has to do is love. If you love a puppy that puppy will fill you with affection, compassion, happiness, empathy, curiosity, euphoria, gratitude, hope, and wonder.

The sub-fear emotions like, jealousy, disgust, remorse, shame, worry, contempt, sadness, apathy, and hatred, are all the products of fear. No one wants to feel these “bad emotions,” but they are a natural yen to loves yang. Without fear we would have never survived as a species. It could also be said, that with too much fear we wouldn’t of survived either.

Spin doctors, and other nefarious types of doctors, play on these two emotions to control you. They play on them with logic. If the pretty girl truly loves the pretty guy on the commercial, then it is only logical that if I bought that same product I too would find a pretty girl to love me. Or perhaps, if I don’t buy that product logic tells me I’ll have something to fear. People who are taught hard sales learn to play on your fear, and love.

The problem with these manipulations is they are also felt. If your heart doesn’t feel the love or fear that your logic is telling you is real, you create a conflict between your head and your heart. This is easiest to see when other people are involved. There are those who tell you to be afraid of this type of person or that type, but then if you already know people of that type of person or you meet them and you realize there is nothing to fear. People of color, people of different religions, the poor, social activists, and on and on. One person can be scared to death of someone, while someone else is madly in love with them.

When I feel an emotion raise up in me, I ask myself, “what am I afraid of, or what am I in love with.” When one realizes what they are afraid of they can direct their attention on that, and not get side tracked on the sub-emotions. If I was afraid of being lonely, and spent my time dwelling on the loneliness I felt, then I would develop a state of depression. If I spent my time dealing with the fear of being lonely then I would do things to eliminate that fear.

By recognizing the fear underlying the emotion I find myself better served. If I feel anxiety I think, “what fear is causing it?”. Sometimes, at least at this point in my life, I realize that maybe it’s the thirty pigs arriving that set my spider senses off, and cops scare me. Other times I realize it is a fear of having to deal with an unshakable rhetorician, and I relax and the anxiety goes away. If I then start feeling empathy (love) for the rhetorician, I will rebuke their rhetoric, and tell them the truth. I guess I should mention that I find it extremely difficult to lower my anxiety around thirty cops no matter how hard I try to love them, but I at least I can suppress it enough to stand up for myself.

Envision dualism as a scale with the pure on both ends, and a mixture in between. For instance my body is right around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It could be cold like absolute zero (-460 degrees), or hot like our sun (11,000 degrees), but it’s not. It is neither hot nor cold, it is what it is. Likewise no body can feel both pure fear, and pure love at the same time. When the water is coming out of the pipes too hot you add cold water to bring it more towards the cold side of the scale, and when you are feeling too much fear, try adding some love and see if it doesn’t start back towards the love side of the scale. This was the purpose of Jesus telling us to love our enemies.

Only when we recognize the amount of love we put into our lives can we become immune to the fear that is sold to us as the truth. Jesus said in the Book of Thomas, “he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depth of the all.” Your heart recognizes love or fear – the perfect bullshit meter. If your heart and brain are always in sync then you are living a fantastic life, if not, then problems start to develop. It really does you no good to say, “you made me angry,” when it is your own fear that is at fault.

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