Consciousness Sunday: Emotion & Control

Okay, so it’s Wednesday. No, scratch that — it’s nearly 3 a.m. Thursday. Pure Consciousness isn’t much for keeping track of time, you know–time is a construct of the mind. ;)

There’s a need to write about emotion, and about its relationship to the mental computer and to one’s self, and yet I’ve gotta preface it with a disclaimer — I’m doing this in a weak moment. Perhaps because it’s a weak moment. I’ll try to keep a handle on my theme, but as to the prose, I can’t make any promises.

Of all the descriptions of emotion I’ve heard and read, I (once again) like Eckhart Tolle’s the best: Emotion is the body’s reaction to, the physical reflection of, the mind. This makes sense because we all know that thought and emotion are linked — one can feed the other, or put a stop to it, etc. — and yet they’re not the same. Thoughts, by themselves, don’t hurt; they’re just content, data, usually interpreted as words. It’s when they “sink in”, when our visceral self experiences that content as real, that we get the physical component, the emotion.

An example: The boy you’re in love with unexpectedly tells you that he isn’t really into your relationship anymore, that he’s gotten tired of you and wants to move on. The words filter through your brain, which parses them for practical meaning and extra content derivable from the situation, body language, etc.; the brain works at “understanding” what it’s hearing. Then (you can almost feel this happening sometimes) the understood meaning moves down from the mind (which is skullbound or etherial, depending on your favorite view) into the body, and likely as not you feel a clenching of skin and muscle and a horrible stabbing feeling in your chest or stomach, as your body contracts violently around your vulnerable “heart” in response to the news. This brings on a flood of physical reactions, chances are you’re as familiar with them as I am. But the sequence illustrates pretty well how the mind and body are linked, but not inseparable. Sometimes it even happens that the mind mistakes or deliberately misinterprets the data it’s receiving, and sometimes the body will go along, but sometimes it won’t; sometimes the body will react to the “unfiltered” data even as the mind is filtering it for content — so as far as you’re aware, this is just a phase and your boy will get over it, but your emotions know better and are feeling hit by a freight train.

(Heh — the above example makes it sound as though I’m having a *romantically* weak moment; but no, not so, thank the lords and ladies. I’m just watching old videos, or was, and contemplating my own death. ;)

Often, the mind triggers an emotion, which then triggers more thoughts (based on old experiences with that emotion, or imaginings surrounding how it feels), which strengthens the emotion, which brings up more thoughts…yeah, you all know what I’m talking about. A lot of times you even know you’re doing it, but you can’t stop. You’re (for instance) afraid, so you think about scary things, which makes you more afraid, which makes you think of more scary things…This can be a seriously unhelpful situation, be it fear or any other emotional feedback loop you’re dealing with.

And now we come to the one slightly useful piece of knowledge I have — I know how to stop that feedback loop. It’s astonishingly simple and quite tricky; one of those things that just takes practice, but it’s pretty darn worth it, as it lets you control your emotions somewhat without the side-effects of just stuffing everything down until it all blows up on you later. ;)

It’s another case of stopping-an-unconscious-process-by-making-it-conscious. In this case, your mind is reacting to your emotional state by producing corresponding thoughts which then “feed” more of the same emotion — a nice perpetual motion machine; now if only it was good for something! As we all know though, it’s darn near impossible to stop your mind cold-turkey once it’s got momentum. And stopping a thought from resonating in your physical body is just as hard; you might as well drop a rock into water and try to stop it from making waves. You can, however, with a little effort, sever the connection from emotions back to thoughts.

This is done by keeping your attention firmly on what the emotion feels like. Aim your awareness right into the middle of it and take note: Does it hurt? Is it hot or cold? Tingly or numb? Where is it centered–right in your breastbone? Stomach? Abdomen? Neck? Does it move? You don’t have to actually formulate verbal answers to those questions, nor do you have to put a “name” to your emotional state; the important part is to pay attention to it. By doing this, you remove its ability to influence your subconscious mind, and you’ll notice right away that the mind stops generating “scary thoughts” or whatever. If you can keep it up for a minute or two, the emotion will eventually subside — it doesn’t have fuel anymore. Sometimes, often the first time you successfully do this, you’ll cause a chain-reaction that calms all the waves, smoothing over all the emotional vibration going on in your body, and believe me, that’s quite a cool state to be in — very unshakeable, very Zen, but not, as you’d imagine, cold or unfeeling. Just…clear, and smooth. If you’re like me (and, I gather, most people), you’ll achieve this “total calm” once, maybe twice, right off the bat, and then have to work at it for a long time before you get it back again (like juggling, heh). But even without that, you can still prevent yourself from freaking out nine times out of ten with that simple trick: Concentrate on feeling the physical emotion you feel, and so prevent it from spawning thoughts in the mind that perpetuate it.

One last note, and then I have to get ready for my 3:30 nap…Sometimes an emotion will feel intimidating, scary, like something you really don’t want to be looking at. Sometimes you’ll peer into your chest cavity and what’s there, causing that oh-god-he’s-dumping-me feeling, is this big black Kraken with its horrible scary tentacles around your organs, and you just want to not think about it. I’ve been there. Several times. Please trust me when I say that that scariness is just camoflage. I won’t get into it now, but there are very solid psychological reasons why your mind would probably prefer that you not pay such close attention to what it’s doing; and one of the ways it makes that happen is to make your own internal processes seem creepy and mystifying and threatening. Just keep watching — you don’t have to do anything other than notice, watch, feel. Stand there and hold a flashlight; you don’t have to fight the monster, and it won’t fight you (because it’s only a figment). Just observe it.

Yeah, in case you couldn’t tell, my secret mission with Consciousness Sundays (now in seven delightful flavors!) is to help people break the chains their own minds have put on them. Consciousness is freedom; anything else is being a puppet to your psychology, your background, and helpless against any mental issues you’ve ever had or may ever have. If you can’t control your own mind, what can you control? Jack effing shiznit, my friend. ;)

Night! Morning! Etc.!

-PD